Mark 1:40-45

As Jesus is travelling throughout Gallilee he is approached by a man with leprosy.  To have leprosy in Ancient times was to be an outcast, to lose all contact with friends and family and be required to announce their disease before approaching anyone.

Leprosy is often thought of as body parts decaying and falling off, but it’s more than that.  It’s a gradual deadening of nerve cells so that all feeling to a certain part of the body is lost.  Our ability to feel pain is a very important part of our body’s defense system.  The initial feeling of heat or pain warns our body that it is in pain and to take steps to remedy this.  However in the case of leprosy the warning never comes, and the body part absent of the ability to warn against pain is inevitably destroyed by unintentional contact at some point.  Thus leprosy is a horrifying disease that took a long time to kill the inflicted. Transferred by skin-to-skin contact leprosy was much quicker in killing a person’s relationships with others.

When the AIDS epidemic first hit our shores in the later 70’s, early 80’s, sufferers were treated much the same as victims of leprosy in the first century.  The public not fully understanding the causes of AIDS feared anyone who had it. They were quickly rejected from society and declared unclean.  What’s worse is that some churches declared AIDS as ‘God’s punishment on homosexuals’ and rather than offer any compassion to those with this dreadful disease instead spurned them all the more declaring they deserved the miserable death to come.

So in some ways leprosy was the first century equivalent of AIDS, sufferers were rejected and hated, rather than being offered compassion from the religious establishment, it was usually from the religious that they received the most hate.

Yet as Jesus was travelling, already developing a reputation as a religious man of miracles he is approached by a man with leprosy.  What is it about Jesus that made this man think Jesus was so different from the rest of the religious teachers who were responsible for him being cast out of society?  Was Jesus already developing a reputation as a man of great compassion, or was this man’s desperation so high that he was willing to approach anyone.

I’m not sure, but the fact is the man approached and with great desperation declares before Jesus, ‘if you are willing, you can make me clean’.  The question on the leprous man’s lips was never whether Jesus was capable but whether Jesus was willing. The man was ready again for the rejection he had no doubt received again and again.  But Jesus utters a short sentence, which changes this man’s life -“I am willing” and then Jesus reached out and did what no one else was willing to do – he touched the man.

To be continued …

Now: Read Mark 1:40-45

Then: Go Swedish (what’s this?)