Medically, leprosy was, and still is, a ghastly disease. It’s a systemic, bacterial infection that infects someone’s nerves and upper-respiratory tract. It permanently damages the skin, nerves, limbs, and eyes. Until 1941, there was no cure. Even today, in some areas, leprosy is still a significant, public-health problem.
Socially, leprosy isolated someone from the community. Even more, the Levitical Law forbade any Jew from touching someone with leprosy. The book of Leviticus tells us:
The leper with an infection is to rip his garments and have unkempt hair. He is to cover his mouth and cry out, “Unclean! Unclean!” The entire time he has the disease, he will be unclean. He is to live alone in a place outside the encampment (Leviticus 13:45-46).
Lepers were unclean and not allowed within the congregation. That’s why Jesus told the leper to see the priest, to show that he had been healed.
But first, the man with leprosy had to see Jesus. He had heard the stories–stories about the demonized and the diseased, and how Jesus could heal with only a word or a touch. So, the leper approached the Healer, fell on his knees, and begged Him: “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”
But what would Jesus do? He was the man’s only hope. Was Jesus willing? Was it the will of Jesus to cleanse this man and restore him? The man with leprosy had faith and believed. He trusted that Jesus could do what no one else could do. But what would Jesus do?
Jesus looks at the man and compassion fills Him. Then Jesus does the unthinkable, something dangerous, something the book of Leviticus and your mother told you never to do. He reached out His hand and touched the man. For Jesus didn’t shrink away from the sick, from sinners, from outcasts, and from even lepers.
By touching the leper, Leviticus tells us that Jesus would have made Himself unclean. But this is Jesus, the Son of God. So, when Jesus touches the unclean, something remarkable happens–the unclean becomes clean. Jesus touches the man and speaks these two short phrases: “I am willing. Be clean.”
Jesus’ words do what they say, as they always do what they say. For His words are Spirit and life. His words are the creating, ordering power of the universe. So, when Jesus speaks, it happens. AsSt.Mark tells us, “Immediately, the leprosy left him.”
Leprosy is like sin–it isolates us and makes us unclean before God. Sin, like the disease of leprosy, is systemic: it infects our entire being. Like a leper, the sinner must be cleansed, or he cannot stand before God.
Jesus must reach out and touch us in our sin, for, without His touch, we cannot become clean. Without Jesus’ touch, we remain isolated, quarantined from all that is holy, left on our own in the hell of our isolation.
Sometimes, we think that sin is just a matter of working on this or that in our lives, as if sin only needed some self-improvement. So, we treat the symptoms, one by one. And while the relief of symptoms is agreeable, and will make you feel better, it won’t cure the disease. You and I have the disease of sin. It came from our father Adam. So, simply treating the symptoms gets you nowhere.
Everyone is born in sin. “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me,” David cried out in Psalm 51. That’s our condition, too. Even worse, there’s no human-created cure for this leprosy of sin. Only the sinless touch of Jesus can heal you from your leprosy of sin. The Sinless One must touch the sinner and make him clean. Only Jesus can do that.
Yet, sin is more than just an inherited, inborn disease. Sin also cuts us off. Like leprosy, it isolates us from one another and cuts us off from God. You can often tell when people are in trouble. They cut themselves off from family, from friends, and from the congregation. They withdraw and isolate themselves. Sin does that. It puts us in a sealed, isolation ward, out of touch.
Yet, to me and you in our isolating sin, Jesus still has compassion. He reaches out to us. He touches us and speaks to us, just as He did for that man with leprosy. Jesus comes to us in the preached Word and His sacramental touch.
Jesus touches you in Baptism, washing you clean from of the leprosy of sin through water and Word. Jesus touches you in His Supper, where He gives you His Body and His Blood for your life, healing, and strength. He speaks healing words to you: “I forgive you of your sins.” And so you are clean, whole, restored, forgiven, all because of the One who is the Word, who speaks His Word to you.
When Jesus healed the man with leprosy, He sent him away with a warning. “Don’t say anything to anyone. Instead, go and show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifice for your cleansing that Moses commanded.”
“Don’t say anything to anyone.” That’s odd, don’t you think? The man with leprosy thought that was odd, as well. So, he told everyone about Jesus healing him. For when Jesus heals your leprosy, it’s hard to keep your mouth shut.
It’s also hard to keep quiet when Jesus forgives your sin. But Jesus didn’t say to any of us, “Don’t tell anyone.” And so a Church that believes she is washed clean from sin can’t keep her mouth shut. You have to tell everyone.
Why wouldn’t Jesus want others to know about Him healing a man with leprosy? Wouldn’t it be helpful to know someone who could heal all your diseases with a touch and a word? So, why wasn’t physical healing Jesus’ main focus? He didn’t come to be a walking, medical clinic. He came to be the Savior of the world; and to do that, He had to die and rise.
None of these miracles of Jesus make sense unless you see them in the blazing light of His death and resurrection. The miracles were signposts along the way, telling people that Jesus was God in the flesh. They were signals showing the age of the messiah had come, that God’s rule and reign, in Christ Jesus, was here. They were sneak previews of the resurrection, when disease and even death itself would be no more.
But first, Jesus had to die on a cross and rise from the dead. That’s the biggest miracle of all, the one on which our faith rests. In the end, it doesn’t matter all that much if we get healed of our diseases or not. Oh, that would delight us. Oh, that would make us feel alive. But eventually, something will kill you, something will kill me. How many lepers were there inIsraelthat day whom Jesus didn’t heal?
Jesus didn’t come to put a band-aid on our sin. He didn’t come to give us an easy way out of suffering, as if all we have to do is “name it and claim it” and we could have anything we want. Jesus came to be our sin, to become the leper in our place, the outcast, the cursed One for us all. He became your sin, and absorbed it all into His own body on the cross to be your healing, life, and salvation.
His will is that you are to be washed clean from sin. That’s why He baptized you. That’s why He forgives you. That’s why He feeds you His Body and Blood. For those of you who have come to private confession, you may remember the opening sentence: “Pastor, please hear my confession and pronounce forgiveness in order to fulfill God’s will” (LSB, pg. 292). That’s right: It’s God’s will, revealed in Jesus, that you receive His forgiveness–and learn to live in the freedom of that forgiveness!
Oh, for Jesus to heal you with His touch. It means healing for a leper. It means forgiveness for the sinner. It means life for the dead. And it means eternal life for you. Amen.
