A man suffering from a dreaded skin disease came to Jesus, knelt down, and begged him for help. "If you want to," he said, "you can make me clean." Jesus reached out and touched him. "I do want to," he answered. "Be clean!" At once the disease left the man, and he was clean.
Today Mark Gospel records how Jesus responded to a leper. For a Jew, leprosy was the ultimate in uncleanness next to being cursed. The Old Testament book of Leviticus gives detailed explanations about what to do when skin blemishes appeared. They were considered contagious and so the treatment was tough. (By the way, the term "leprosy" in the Bible covered all kinds of skin diseases).
Today leprosy can be treated with antibiotics. But in an era when there was no treatment for this sickness that would lead to eventual disfigurement and death, this disease was feared. The only way to treat leprosy and stop its spread was to isolate those who had the disease from the rest of the community.
"No one was to salute a leper...no less than a distance of six feet must be kept from a leper or if the wind came from that direction, a hundred were scarcely sufficient." (Alfred Edersheim). We see in Mark’s brief account the plight of a desperate man. He wants more than to just accept his condition as something that can never change.
There was no cure for leprosy and he knew it. He knew that his body would be horribly disfigured as a result of the disease (if it hadn’t been already). He was well aware that having leprosy was a death sentence.
He was a walking corpse – cut off from the people he loved and those with whom he once worked and socialized– and every day a bit more of his body died. He wants something more than any human is able to give. He believed that only the power of God could intervene in his plight.
He wanted Jesus to use his power to make him well again. He really believed that Jesus could help him and so the man with a skin disease did what he was forbidden to do. He came right up to Jesus. He said, "If you want to, you can make me clean".
Everyone else said, "a horrible, ugly, dirty leper! Get away from me", but Jesus didn’t. He did what no one else was dire to do – he reached out and touched the diseased man. Deeply moved by this man’s plight, Jesus said, "Be clean", and the man was healed.
Isn’t it true that we are often in the same situation as the leper? I don’t mean we have a horrible disease like that, but that we are:
The leper knew that he was powerless to do anything to change his situation. He knew he couldn’t heal himself or make himself clean. He probably had never even heard of a leper being cured. For years he lived with no hope at all.
He’s absolutely helpless, and he knows it. But he believed that God could help. Courageously he broke all the rules and went to the one whom he believed could help, if he wished to do so. If he hadn’t stepped forward when he did, he could well have stayed a leper for the rest of his life.
God is waiting for us to step forward and to humbly, yet boldly, ask him to use his power on whatever "leprosy" we have that is eating away at us at this moment. We are invited to ask the all powerful and ever loving God to help us.
By ourselves we don’t have a chance against the forces and foes in this world that cause us so much distress. We know too well from experience that it doesn’t matter how hard we try, we can’t extract ourselves from our problems, and the more frustrated and anxious we get.
There doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. You might say our problems are like quicksand – the more we wriggle around to free ourselves, the deeper we get until we are in it over our head.
Why not call on the power of God to help us? The leper did, and look what happened. When the disciples were out on the lake in a storm that looked as if it would swallow them up, they called on Jesus to help. And look what happened – Jesus calmed the storm. A father begged Jesus to come and heal his dying daughter. And look what happened – Jesus brought her back to life.
A man dying on a cross called out to Jesus and look what happened – he was promised a place in paradise. Sometimes it happens that when we ask God to help, his answer is not quite what we expected. Paul was suffering terribly and prayed that God would give him healing and relief.
He prayed this over and over again. The suffering continued, but God gave him the strength and help he needed to the point when he could say, "I am most happy to be proud of my weaknesses, in order to feel the protection of Christ’s power over me" (2 Cor. 12:9).
Finally he stated, "I have the strength to face all conditions by the power that Christ gives me" (Philippians 4:13). Even though life was tough, God gave him the power, the strength, and the grace to rise above everything that threatened his safety.
I am reminded of the text we heard last week from Isaiah. "Those who trust in the Lord for help will find their strength renewed. They will rise on wings like eagles; they will run and not get weary; they will walk and not grow weak" (Isaiah 40:31).
The touch of Jesus can have a profound affect. It totally turned around the life of the leper – the man who not only suffered physically but also suffered religious and social isolation. He was rejected, unwanted and unloved but Jesus changed all of that.
God looks at us with compassion, love, grace, and wants to reach out and touch our life. He wants to turn around our life. There is another aspect of this text that bears mentioning. We are people who have felt the touch of Jesus through his healing death on the cross.
When death threatens us we have experienced his healing touch through his words of promise of eternal life. We are people who have felt his touch when we have been overcome by sadness, temptation, suffering and doubt. He does this without any qualification on our part – he simply loves us even when we are covered with the leprosy of sin.
The question is this – how well have we reached out and touched the lives of others with the same compassion, love, and grace the same kind of love that Jesus has shown to us. There was no one too unclean, too untouchable, and too sinful that Jesus wouldn’t reach out and touch.
As community of faith, we need to be a people of compassion. Compassion is a quality that we experienced as a child, but we tend to suppress it as we get older and become cynical toward life’s hurts. What happens when we hear of someone going through tough times? We say their relatives should be doing something, or they have brought it on themselves.
Too often it’s easier to send a post card to someone who is grieving than to support them personally. I realize we can’t take personal responsibility for every tragedy we see or go into depression because of our inability to heal all the world’s hurts, but neither can we afford to shut our eyes to the fact that there are many people who need to feel the touch of Jesus through us. Jesus touched a leper – he calls us to touch the "lepers" of today. He is depending on our eyes to see, our ears to hear, our hands to touch with his grace – our feet to go - in healing, restoring, cleansing.
Some how, we have let sin harden our hearts and fail to show compassion. In many ways, sin is like leprosy. Sin does its worst damage by eating away at us, penetrating deep inside, causing us eventually to lose all feelings of compassion toward others. Like leprosy sin will isolate us from God. And like leprosy, there is nothing we can do about sin and it will eventually destroy us. (The story about Narcis dying of AIDS)
There is no one too unclean, too untouchable, and too sinful that we couldn’t reach out and touch with compassion, and the love of God. We thank God for the healing touch of Jesus. God loves us, and gives us healing. May God grant us the compassion and the desire to reach out and touch others with the love of Christ.
Healing Love that reaches up is 'Adoration'
Healing Love that reaches out is 'Affection'
BUT oh!
Healing Love that stoops down to our level is 'Grace'
Amen.
Rev. Samuel King-Kabu
February 12, 2006