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A leper came to him begging…, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!” —Mark 1:40–41
Womanist biblical scholar Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder describes the social ostracization caused by skin disease in Jesus’ time:
Leprosy was the term for a range of diseases from house mold to ringworm, from psoriasis to what is termed Hansen’s disease (modern-day leprosy). The common symptom was the breaking of the skin. The resulting impurity and the stigma that went with it prevented the infected person from fully participating in society. For the man who now seeks a cure from Jesus, this social barrier is as damaging as the physical malady. [1]
Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann emphasizes that we are all in need of Jesus’ healing touch:
[Jesus] touched him. He put his strong hand into the sore skin. He risked touching the contagious skin and thereby making himself, as well, socially unacceptable and ritually impure. He risked all of that in his compassion. And the narrator says, “Immediately! The leprosy left him, and he was made clean.”…
Now I know this is not your story. I assume that you are like me; none of you likely has leprosy. But leprosy in the Bible becomes a metaphor for all kinds of diseases and malfunctions.
Some of you may be HIV positive and find it to be a social disease with a stigma attached, a lot like leprosy.
Some of you may have an addiction that has power over you, a lot like leprosy.
Some of you are in a tough marriage or at the brink of a failed marriage, a lot like leprosy.
Some of you have broken relations with a kid or a parent, a lot like leprosy.
Some of you have made bad decisions, and wish you could undo them, but cannot find a way, a lot like leprosy….
Take that list, extend it toward yourself. And slot it all under “L” for leprosy. Leprosy is the threat that may undo the world, … because such a disease overrides all barriers and leaves all under threat.
Brueggemann imagines those healed by Jesus singing Psalm 30:5, “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes in the morning.”
A lot of lepers are still in the night. But they wait for the morning when comes healing. This faith of … Jesus and the church is not a moral code or an ideology or a quarrel. It is rather a performance of transformation, of old made new, of lost found, of dead made alive. And the whole cosmos is filled with the singing of ex-lepers, the saints of God who attest that gifts from the holy God are given that make for life. [2]
References:
[1] Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder, “Luke,” in True to Our Native Land: An African American New Testament Commentary, 2nd ed., ed. Brian K. Blount, Gay L. Byron, Emerson B. Powery (Fortress Press, 2007, 2024), 177.
[2] “The Song of the Ex-Leper,” in The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann (Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 331, 332, 333.
Gabriel Jimenez, Untitled (detail), 2017, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Humble soil and saliva are base elements and essential to one of Jesus’ healings. The capacity for healing need not be elaborate or ostentatious.
Story from Our Community:
I believe that if Jesus were to visit us today, he’d offer us the same lessons he gave those in power 2000 years ago. What we are sacrificing today … is even more devastating than what Rome did in Jesus’ time. What truly holds power in our world today is the relentless pursuit of money.
—Russel C.