Variants

When he healed the leper, the bible says that Jesus was moved with compassion, a word in Greek that literally means “burning in the bowels.” Jesus felt the leper’s pain in a deep place. What’s weird is that some of the earliest manuscripts of this Gospel story had “anger” instead of "compassion." Scholars call this a textual variant. As we are learning with Covid, if unregulated, variants mutate over time, making things a whole lot messier. The scriptures are soaked with variants, giving voice to a very human element. The good news is that Spirit speaks in spite of the flaws—in the bible and in us. 

It makes sense to me that the original version of this passage portrayed an angry Jesus—and then, eventually, scribes edited it to make him more palatable for the people. There’s no doubt that Jesus was compassionate. But personally, I love the idea that Jesus got angry too. Because I believe that compassion and anger burn together. When anger is aimed at the actual people and policies that produce pain and suffering, it gives compassion the agency to shake off cynicism, apathy and despair. This healing hybrid empowers us to transform ourselves and the world. Just like Jesus did.