In Mark’s Gospel this past Sunday, a leper begged Jesus to make him clean.  Jesus touched him, curing and cleaning him.  Then, Jesus sternly warned him to “tell no one anything, but show yourself to the priest.”

Now, what does the cured leper do, instead?  He “publicized the whole matter.  He spread the report abroad so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly.”  This is not the first time Jesus tells someone to keep their mouth shut and they disobey.  After Jesus cures a man of his speech impediment and deafness, he orders the man and the crowd not to tell anyone. “But the more Jesus ordered them not to, the more they proclaimed it.”  This leads me to wonder.  Did Jesus wink when he ordered silence? Otherwise, how could they disobey orders from the one who cured them? Did these people intuitively know that Jesus, in his goodness, would not take back his miracles because he was disobeyed?

No, more likely, these people just couldn’t contain themselves. How could they hide their joy and astonishment at what Jesus did?  Jesus, must have realized this, even though he ordered them to keep quiet. Perhaps Jesus, in his humanness, didn’t want events to move so quickly.  He must have had an idea of his ultimate fate, but understandably, wanted to delay it as long as possible.

“Do you complain a lot?” I remember being asked this question by a former spiritual director.  No, not me, I thought, in shock.  I’m not complaining, I’m just expressing my concerns.  At least that’s what I thought I was doing.

It hurt.  Here, I thought I was doing something good in pointing out everything that was wrong with the situation and wanted sympathy, a solution, or maybe just to vent.  But this person saw me as complaining.  I’m not a complainer.  My concerns are very important.  Well, even so, I’ve learned that there is a fine line between complaining and “expressing our concerns.”  All of us have blind spots and this is a common one.

When I look back on that situation, I still think that my concerns were valid, and I felt helpless to change anything.  I wanted this person, who had more authority than me, to be as outraged as I was. But, I did learn an important lesson in self-examination.  Now, before I share my “concerns,” I ask myself if this might rather be a complaint.  If it a complaint, and if there’s nothing I can do about it, or if I’m not willing to do anything about it, then maybe it would be better to just keep my mouth shut. Ouch, that hurts!