Sermon: We Are Lepers

Delivered at Bethel United Methodist Church on February 15, 2009.

We Are Lepers

Scripture:

A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, "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!" Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, "See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them." But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

Mark 1:40-45

Woe to me, I am unclean
A sinner found in Your presence
I see You seated on Your throne
Exalted Your glory surrounds You

From "Ruin Me" by Jeff Johnson

Leprosy, as we know it today, is a bacterial disease of the upper respiratory tract. The telltale sign that a person has the disease is that he or she will have lesions on the skin. If the disease is left to progress, permanent damage to the eyes, skin, limbs and nerves will result. Thankfully, there exist today effective multi-drug therapies that will cure leprosy. There are a number of common misconceptions about this disease. First, leprosy is not as contagious as people think. Most people are naturally immune to the disease. Plus, after the first few days of treatment, people with the disease are no longer contagious. Nevertheless, there are still some leper colonies in the world. It is also a common belief that leprosy causes victims’ body parts to fall off. This too is a fallacy. ¹

The man whom Jesus encountered in our reading today may not have had this particular disease. As many of you have probably read in a footnote in your Bible, the word leprosy is used as an umbrella term for a number of different skin conditions. The Hebrew word used to describe such conditions is tzaraath. If you would like to know what kind of conditions qualify, read Leviticus 13. The first forty-six verses of this chapter consist of criteria for diagnosing tzaraath and the rules and restrictions placed on those who have it. Just for clarification, from here on out when I use the term leprosy, I am referring to tzaraath and not the disease as we know it today.

The task of diagnosing leprosy was left to the priests. If a person had suspicious spot on his skin he was to be examined by a priest to determine whether or not it was leprous. If the diagnosis was uncertain, the priest would confine the person until the follow-up examination one week later. If the spot had spread, then the person was diagnosed with leprosy. Later on, if the disease were to clear up, a priest would make another examination. If the person had indeed been healed, a series of sacrifices and ritual acts was performed and person was given a clean bill of health.

The whole time a person had leprosy, he or she was considered to be unclean. Due to this chronic state of “uncleanness” the leper had to live under certain restrictions. Leviticus 13:45-46 reads:
The person who has the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, “Unclean, unclean.” He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.
Thus a leper is condemned by the Law to a very wretched existence for the disease he carries and the uncleanness resulting from it. Being ceremonially unclean meant that the one was not allowed to worship at the Holy Temple, so a leper was, in a sense, separated from God. A leper had to make his condition evident by his appearance and had to announce his presence by shouting “unclean,” or else someone might become defiled by contact. A leper had to live alone, away from everyone else. Imaging being diagnosed with this disease and being forced to live in isolation away from your friends and family. In this way, leprosy caused a person to be alienated from others.

Leprosy also carried a certain social stigma. Lepers were among the untouchables in society because of their uncleanness. I have already mentioned that the Hebrew word for this condition was tzarrath. This word is derived from the Hebrew word for smiting, meaning that leprosy was thought to be punishment from God. Certain rabbinic texts list a number of sins that were believed to cause a person to be stricken with leprosy including: stinginess, pride, stealing, sexual sins, murder, gossip, and vain oaths. ²

To put things in perspective for modern times, leprosy could be compared to the AIDS virus. Like the lepers of biblical times, AIDS victims are often ostracized because of their disease. Furthermore, many people think that AIDS is punishment for sexual sins and drug use. While it is true that some people contract AIDS because of dirty needles and promiscuous behavior, that is not always the case. Likewise, the Bible tells of several occurrences where people were stricken with leprosy because of their sin, but I’m sure that is not true for all lepers. We know from the Book of Job that sometimes bad things just happen to good people, but I digress.

So in our story today this leper, isolated from others and stigmatized by society, breaks the rules placed on him and approaches Jesus, begging to be healed. He falls to his knees and says, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Jesus, always one to buck tradition for the sake of other people, reaches out in his mercy and touches the man saying, “I do choose. Be made clean!” At this moment, the man was cured of his leprosy and became clean. According to the Law, one becomes defiled when touching a leper or other unclean person, so this means that when Jesus reached out and touched the leper, He himself became unclean. Jesus made the leper clean by becoming unclean. Perhaps it could even be said that Jesus took the leper’s uncleanness onto Himself.

We do not know much about the man in the story, but we can learn a great deal from the fact that he had leprosy.

• We know that he was condemned by the Law to a wretched existence.
• We know that he was, in a sense, separated from God.
• We know that he was alienated from others because of his condition.
• And we know that he was healed by Jesus Christ, who took his uncleanness onto Himself.

Now, I ask you, is any of this starting to sound familiar? Who is this leper?

I don’t believe that this story is just about some random leper that Jesus healed. I believe this story is also about us. This is the story of our own encounter with Jesus Christ. We, like the leper, are condemned by the Law, not for the spots on our skin, but for the sins on our heart. We have broken commandments; we have not loved God with our whole heart; and we have not loved each other like we should have. We have let our sins and our selfishness separate us from our Creator. We have estranged ourselves from the loved ones that we have hurt with our actions. So like the leper we approach Christ, unclean, diseased, and disheveled. We fall to our knees echoing the prayer “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” Christ, in his love, reaches out and touches our stone cold hearts. He takes our sin from us, and we are forgiven, and we are made whole.

There is an interesting way in which some churches observe Good Friday. In this practice, the church prepares a wooden cross. Each person will write on a piece of paper a sin or a burden that he or she has been holding on to. The person will then take a hammer and nail the piece of paper to the cross, symbolically nailing that sin to the cross. I think that this is a very appropriate symbolic act, because Jesus paid the penalty for our sins when he was crucified. In II Corinthians, Paul writes, “For our sake He [God] made Him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” When Christ was nailed to the cross, our sins were also nailed to the Cross. When Christ died, our sins also died. When Christ was buried, our sins were buried. But, unlike Christ, our sins stayed in the grave. Christ triumphed over sin and death. God says that He “will remember [our] sins and lawless deeds no more.” Christ has taken our sins from us “as far as the east is from the west.” We are forgiven; our slate is wiped clean.

When the leper was healed, Jesus told him not to tell anyone but to go and to be examined by the priest and to give the offering that was commanded in the Law. Just as it was the job for the priests to pronounce someone unclean it was also the job of the priest to pronounce someone to be clean again. The leper was so thrilled to be healed that he did just the opposite and told everyone he saw. This seemed to hinder Jesus’ ministry, because people everywhere start coming to Him with their ailments, taking the focus off of His message. This was not what the leper should have done, but it is a good example for us.

We need to let the world know that God loves us and that He has forgiven us. We need to show Christ’s love to others. We need to show them that they need not be condemned to some wretched existence estranged from God and from each other. We need to show them that there is another way to live: a life reconciled to the Creator and a life spent loving one another. We must let people know that they need not be slaves to their sin, their past, and their guilt. We need to break down boundaries just as Jesus did when he reached out to the leper. What better offering can we give God in honor of our healing?

We are lepers… but we have the Cure.


Notes:
1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leprosy
2 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzaraath