Introspection: No Longer Untouchable

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No Longer Untouchable

A leper came to [Jesus] 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.

Mark 1:40-42 (NRSV)

Unlock your heart

Drop your guard

No one's left to stop you now

From "Anywhere" by Evanescence

In the Gospels we read that, one day early in Jesus' ministry, a man with leprosy approached Jesus.  He knelt down before Him and said, "If you choose, you can make me clean."  Jesus, moved by compassion, reached out to the leper, touched him, and said, "I do choose.  Be made clean."  At that very moment, the man was healed of his leprosy.

This story is seemingly straightforward.  It attests to Jesus' power over things like diseases that oppress humanity.  That said, I think that there are some things happening in this story we might tend to overlook.

Nowadays, the word leprosy describes a specific bacterial infection which is also known as Hansen's disease.  Biblically speaking, the word leprosy is a catch-all term for a number of different skin conditions.  Whether or not these conditions were actually contagious, they were treated as though they were contagious.  People with leprosy were considered unclean, and people believed that coming into contact with someone with leprosy would make them unclean as well.  According to the Book of Leviticus, people with leprosy were required to live outside of town away from people, to wear torn clothing and disheveled hair so that they could be easily recognized, and to announce their uncleanness so that people knew to keep their distance from them.¹

In Jesus' day, having leprosy was a stigmatizing and isolating experience.

People with leprosy bore a social stigma.  The word stigma is defined as "a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality, or person."²  The related word stigmata describes the wounds Jesus received when He went through the humiliating death of crucifixion.  A stigma is essentially the shame one is forced to bear for something bad that happened in one's life.  In the Google Dictionary, the example sentence accompanying the definition of stigma is as follows: "The stigma of having gone to prison will always be with me."³

Social stigmas exist because of lies that society believes about certain groups of people.  These stigmas become internalized when stigmatized people start believing the lies that are told about them.

Lepers bore a stigma that made them untouchable.

So often, when we read about Jesus' miraculous healings, we are so focused on the extraordinary aspects of the healings that we overlook the ordinary aspects.  Don't be so fixated on Jesus' power that you miss what Jesus did when He healed the man with leprosy.  He made it a point to touch him.  I doubt that, as a miracle worker, Jesus had to touch the man in order to heal him.  I suspect that He could have waved his hand over him or simply stood at a distance and commanded him to be healed.⁴

What I find fascinating about Jesus' healing the leper is that Jesus touched a supposedly untouchable man in order to heal him what made him untouchable.  Apparently, He was not at all concerned about becoming unclean, unlike most of the people of His day.  I suspect that, even if Jesus' touch didn't clear up the man's skin condition, the man would have still experienced some kind of healing that day.  A lack of physical touch can be damaging to a person's mental health.  One researcher has even called touch "a sort of species recognition," meaning that a lack of human touch is literally dehumanizing.⁵  If nothing else, because of Jesus' touch, the man with leprosy would have known that he was not untouchable as society had told him.

We experience healing when the lies we've believed about ourselves are proven wrong.  Pursuing this kind of healing requires not only faith but also some vulnerability.

The supposedly untouchable man had to make himself vulnerable to be healed of what made him untouchable.  The religious rules of the day required that the leper keep his distance from people, but, in order to be healed, he had to take a risk by breaking the rules and approaching Jesus.  When he approached Jesus, he said, "Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean."  The man with leprosy was surely aware of the possibility that Jesus might say, "You are unclean.  Stay away from me!"  Instead, Jesus reached out, touched the man, and said, "I do choose.  Be made clean."

Being healed of the lies we believe about ourselves requires some vulnerability on our part.  For example, if rejection in your past has caused you to believe that you are for some reason unlovable, then the path to healing is to drop your guard and to give others the opportunity to see you and love you.  Though you open yourself up to further rejection, people just might be more accepting than you expect them to be.

For many years, I have believed lies about myself.  In fact, I've actually used the word leper in the past to describe how I think some people see me.  As I've noted previously, when I sit down in a coffee shop and someone sitting near me just happens to leave soon afterward, I tend to jump to the conclusion that she left because of me.

A couple of months ago, on a late Tuesday afternoon, I arrived at a bookstore as it started raining.  I purchased a coffee at the cafe, and sat down at a table beside a front window so that I could watch the rain as I wrote in my journal and drank my coffee.  A few minutes later, the woman at the next table, whom I was facing, stood up and began looking for another seat.  I had made the mistake of glancing at her once or twice, so I assumed that she must have left because of me.  I wanted to crawl into a hole and die, so to speak.

I then remembered something that made me realize how ridiculous my thinking was.  Just a few days earlier, I went contra dancing for the first time in several years.  That evening, I danced all eleven called dances, and I had a different partner for every dance.  Not only did eleven different women allow me to be in close proximity to them and to look at them, they actually touched me and allowed me to touch them.  They must not have found me too creepy or repulsive if they were willing to dance with me.

It then occurred to me that the woman at the cafe probably started looking for another seat so that she could sit near an electrical outlet.  She probably needed to recharge her laptop or her phone.  After all, wall sockets cannot be installed in floor-to-ceiling windows.

I've gone dancing five times in the last few months, and I think the experience has been healing for me.  Asking someone to dance requires vulnerability because she might refuse.  Not every woman I asked to dance accepted my invitation, but very rarely have I ended up sitting a dance out.  If we want to be healed of the lies we believe about ourselves, we have to put ourselves in a position to have those lies disproven.  It's scary, because such situations are the same ones we fear will confirm the lies, but I'm not sure there's any other path to healing.  The reward will be worth the risk.


Notes:

1. Leviticus 13:45-46
2. Google Dictionary: "stigma"
3. ibid.
4. See Matthew 8:5-13.
5. Paula Cocozza.  "No hugging: are we living through a crisis of touch?"  The Guardian, 03/07/2018.

Healing of the Leper was painted by Niels Larsen Stevns in 1913.