He Touched Me

Feb 12 2012

HE TOUCHED ME

Both the Hebrew text and the Gospel text talk about healings for leprosy. There are several lessons in these texts, but first we need to define what the Hebrew texts called leprosy. In Leviticus 13 and 14 we find the OT laws regarding leprous diseases.

Lev. 13 begins by explaining that if there is any swelling or eruption on the skin and it turns into a leprous disease, the individual shall show himself to the priest. If the hair in the diseased area has turned white, and the disease appears to be deeper than the skin of the body, it shall be a leprous disease. That follows with an explanation of the examinations the priest must make and a distinction between boils and reddish-white and white. It ends by stating that if the priest determines it to be a leprous disease, the person shall be banned from the town and must live alone, wear torn clothes, let the hair of his head be disheveled, and go about crying “unclean, unclean.”

But then the reading goes on to make a distinction about where the white spots might be, and what to do if leprous spots are found on clothing. But it doesn’t stop there. Leviticus 14 talks about a leprous house. What the text is really talking about is mold, fungus and bacteria. The rest of the text talks about the ritual ceremonies required for purification after the disease abates.

What this tells us is that “leprosy” could have been anything from an eczema reaction on the skin to actual leprosy, mold on clothing or the walls of a house, or actual leprosy on the body. That is a huge hint that the lessons to be learned are not because someone has leprosy, or is ostensibly cured of leprosy, but what can be learned because that person was cured and the motivation behind the cure.

We know the Levitical code was developed for the Levites who were the priests. It was also developed to set the Jews apart when they were taken into captivity so they would regain their identity as God’s chosen people. It was a set of laws to promote conformity and to set the Jews apart as a special people 

But, when we move to the Gospel lesson. The approach is totally different. In this account, the leper calls out to Jesus to make him clean. Jesus chooses to do so, but in deference to the Jewish law, Jesus tells him to go and show himself to the priest as a testimony to the healing and to tell no one. Of course, the man is so excited, he tells everyone.

But what would have happened had he gone and shown himself to the priest?

“You should have seen the priest's face when I arrived at the door. I suppose me grinning all over didn't exactly help. He knew my family ... especially my father who had helped to build the parish hall. My dad and the priest were very close, but they never talked about me.

You see, when you get leprosy you don't belong any more.

You don't belong to your family; you don't belong in the church.

This was the priest who had confirmed the diagnosis, the priest who had sent me from the sanctuary, never to return, asking God to 'have mercy' on my soul ... the kind of thing you'd say to a criminal en route to the gallows. But here I was back seven years later, minus an arm, presenting myself as cured.

He didn't know what to say. He didn't know which book to look for or which page to turn. He had only been taught the ceremonial word with which to send lepers away. He had never learned how to receive them back. It took a long while, a long while for him to come within three feet of me.

He wanted me to tie a blindfold on until I said, ‘I’ve only got one arm. You’ll have to do it.’ But he couldn’t bring himself to touch me. So he asked me to put a sack over my head, and then he took a pin and began to stick it into different parts of my body saying, ‘Where am I touching?’

And every time I knew; because every time it hurt. Pain had returned because I was healthy. He even pushed the pin into my stump and I yelled. Actually I yelled louder than I needed to, but I reckoned that if this guy was going to give me a hard time, he should feel some of the pain, too. Then he took the bag off my head and said… ‘How is this possible?’

I said, ‘It’s possible because in a world where everybody, including my religious friends, has kept back and avoided me, 

Somebody…

One man…

Touched me.

No, he didn’t just touch me, he embraced me as if I were the lost brother he’d always wanted to find. The priest didn’t ask his name. It was as if he knew, and as if he were disappointed that what religion turned away from, God embraced.”¹

Finally, we must ask, “What, really, is leprosy?” And the answer, in modern terms, is anything that will stop us from offering the love of God and the mercy of God to another human being. Leprosy is the dirty, homeless man on the streets of downtown Milwaukee, afraid to look anyone in the eye, and shivering in an entranceway in bitter cold weather. Leprosy is the person with a mental disease, who may not be afraid of us, but of whom we are afraid, because we do not know how to reach him or her. Leprosy is the prisoner behind bars who scares us so much that we cannot reach out to him. Leprosy is anything that we can conjure up in our heads that stops us from reaching out to those in need. Leprosy scares us, stops us, restricts us, and removes us from being able to share God’s love with another human being.

Leprosy is what we perceive as making a person unclean in our eyes because we have determined that whatever it is has made that person unclean in God’s eyes. So, not only do we remove ourselves, we justify removing ourselves by figuring out how that person could not be loved by God or accepted by God. If God doesn’t accept, neither do we have to accept. It’s quite a convoluted logic, but it usually works for the person seeking to exclude.

The next time that we are tempted to say that God wouldn’t like someone for whatever reason, perhaps we need to stop and remember the people that Jesus loved, and the stories in which Jesus healed. The real point of those stories lies not in what happened, but in why it happened. And love is always the reason behind the act.

We really have no justification for turning anyone away from us or from God. The ultimate point of acceptance lies in God’s overwhelming love for all people. While we are called to love, we often find it difficult to answer that call. May God grant us the courage and strength to do what we can, while we can, in a world that is quickly becoming overrun with hate.  Amen.

¹“The Leper – Reading 12” – from Present on Earth, GIA Publications, Inc. Chicago, 2002.