40 A man with leprosy came to [Jesus] and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”
41 Jesus was indignant. He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” 42 Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed.
43 Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning: 44 “See that you don’t tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.” 45 Instead he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere.
Click through to hear a different take on this familiar story!
Leprosy was the scourge of its age. A skin disease that rotted away body parts, it was highly contagious and greatly feared. A diagnosis of leprosy would change your life long before it ended it. Lepers were shunned, cast out from their communities, left on the fringes of society if not shut into isolated colonies. Leprosy labeled you forever. Whatever you were before, whatever else you had to give, neither mattered. To the majority of society a leper was all you were or ever would be.
The societal shunning which accompanied leprosy seems cruel, but is it really that different than some of our practices today?
I remember watching Gilligan's Island as a kid. Seven people got stranded on a tropical isle and each had a distinct personality. Gilligan was the kindhearted bumbler, the professor smart as a whip. The Howells were rich, Ginger was sexy, Mary-Ann was sweet and innocent, and the Skipper hard-working and earnest. None of them ever strayed out of character. You knew who each person was and how they'd react in any given situation.
A little later in life I got to enjoy The Love Boat. This show paired forlorn singles on the high seas. The funny thing was, you could always tell who would fall in love with whom when they showed the guest stars at the beginning of the show. An old person would always be paired with a second old person. If you saw an African-American man on the list you knew you'd find an African-American woman coming next. A person in a wheelchair would be scripted to sit on deck sipping cocktails and mourning his lack of love for half the show until all of a sudden the love of his life came by...also in a wheelchair. Everybody was locked in place with boundaries even true love (apparently) couldn't cross.
Having seen enough of this kind of thing reflected in society as well as TV, it's not surprising that my young adulthood perception of the world was simple. There were normal people and then there were other people. "Other" people had something different about them. Leprosy wasn't a concern but chronic illness, depression, poverty, different societal norms...a whole host of things could make people strangers. The sad part was that I, myself, suffered from depression during that period of my life. I wasn't "normal"! So my life became a constant struggle to overcome my abnormality so I could become one of the regular people again...get off the island, find love on the Lido Deck. I felt like I must be the only one who wasn't normal, a sad and lonely feeling to be sure.
As I grew older and began to encounter and understand more people I also grasped a shocking truth. NOBODY is normal. We're just all abnormal in slightly different ways. Some of us are depressed, some have family issues, some have odd habits, some are from different cultures, some like strange and unique things...the list could go on forever. If normal were a criterion for doing anything then nothing would ever get done! Therefore defining people by their abnormalities--he's the professor, he's Gilligan, he's in a wheelchair, she's got a terminal disease, he's a Libertarian, she's divorced, he's an alcoholic, they're from France--is a waste of time. Real, productive, wonderful people suffer from depression or get "D"'s in school sometimes. Fantastic moms can come from houses full of love and privilege where they had every wish granted. Fantastic moms can also come from houses full of poverty or abuse. If we're going to get hung up on all the abnormal things that separate us we're going to miss all the potential goodness that unites us.
Another way of saying this is that although the man in the gospel had leprosy, he was not a leper. Or at least that's not how he should have been described and thought of first. When Jesus healed him Jesus also said, in effect, the things that divide us, the things that scare us about each other, our abnormalities (so to speak) are temporary and will not stand. Healing, reunion, love...these forces are truly powerful, these things should define us over everything else.
This also explains, in part, why Jesus ordered the man not to tell anyone but the priest he was required to see by law. Everyone else would have seen the healing as a confirmation of the power of being "normal". They would have seen the miracle as "Jesus made this guy one of us again!" as if being "one of us" was the ultimate goal, as if nobody different mattered, especially when that difference involves suffering. The way they would interpret the healing would confirm everything wrong about their thinking. That was never the intent.
Only when Jesus died on the cross for all of us, taking all of our sins and infirmities upon himself, could we understand his true purpose. He did not come to save us from being different or abnormal. He came so that our differences and abnormalities would not define us for ill, so that our lives could be turned to good in him no matter what they looked like. Could a leper be loved? Yes. Would a depressed person or someone with cancer or someone feeling poor or ugly or fat or strange inherit salvation? Yes again. Wait...even if that person was still sick or ugly or strange? Yes! How about people in wheelchairs, people of different colors, people of different cultures and countries? All yes, and many more besides!
So wait...if Jesus died to save all of them, what's the difference? Yup! Now you've got it. All of those boxes that we try to put people in--to define them, to keep ourselves separate and safe from them, to give ourselves advantage over them--all of those boxes are meaningless. God springs the lid. Jesus died to break them apart and rose again to lift everyone out of them. He didn't die to make people normal. He died to change the definition of normal to include all the people he loves...to make his own sacrifice and caring the new definition for who is normal and who belongs. When we get on God's Love Boat you can't tell who's supposed to be linked up with whom just by looking at them. We're all linked together no matter how strange and abnormal we may seem on the outside.
Think of how you see, speak about, and relate to the people of your life. Think about the people in your church, town, community, country, and world. How do your vision, your words, and your actions define them? Who is "normal" in your life and how small is that definition? I've heard plenty of people in small towns like ours say, "She's the divorced one" or "He's the one who had a heart attack" as if those summed up a person's entire existence. Aren't people more than that? Jesus thought so. And he died to prove it. Since he went to all of that trouble (and since we profess to follow him) it's not really fair of us to keep defining people in the old way when he's given us this loving new one. That would be like calling our friend from the gospel a leper even after Jesus had healed him...certainly a denial of Christ's intent and power.
Start defining the people of your life by the love God shows them, by the blessings that unite you, by the grace which you, yourself would like to be shown. That's why God heals them. That's why God has healed you and made you more than the sum of your afflictions and your mistakes. Let people off the island. Get them out of the box. Then get to know them, love them, and live with them. You'll be surprised what a difference this makes in your community. You'll be surprised at the number of ills it cures.
--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)
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