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TOUCHING THE UNTOUCHABLE

Luke 5:12–15

While Jesus was in one of the towns – look you – a man who was a severe case of leprosy saw him. He fell before him and besought him, ‘Lord, if you are willing to do so you are able to cleanse me.’ Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him. ‘I am willing,’ he said. ‘Be cleansed.’ Immediately the leprosy left him. Jesus enjoined him to tell no one. ‘But,’ he said, ‘go and show yourself to the priest, and bring the offering for cleansing, as Moses’s law laid it down, to prove to them that you are cured.’ Talk about him spread all the more; and many crowds assembled to listen to him and to be cured of their illnesses.

IN Palestine there were two kinds of leprosy. There was one which was rather like a very bad skin disease, and it was the less serious of the two. There was one in which the disease, starting from a small spot, ate away the flesh until the wretched sufferer was left with only the stump of a hand or a leg. It was literally a living death.

The regulations concerning leprosy are in Leviticus, chapters 13 and 14. The most terrible thing about it was the isolation it brought. Lepers were to cry ‘Unclean! unclean!’ wherever they went and were condemned to live alone in a dwelling ‘outside the camp’ (Leviticus 13:45–6), banished from society and exiled from home. The result was, and still is, that the psychological consequences of leprosy were as serious as the physical.

Dr A. B. MacDonald, in an article on the leper colony in Itu, of which he was in charge, wrote, ‘The leper is sick in mind as well as body. For some reason there is an attitude to leprosy different from the attitude to any other disfiguring disease. It is associated with shame and horror, and carries, in some mysterious way, a sense of guilt, although innocently acquired like most contagious troubles. Shunned and despised, frequently do lepers consider taking their own lives and some do.’

Lepers were hated by others until they came to hate themselves. The leper came to Jesus; he was unclean; and Jesus touched him.

(1) Jesus touched the untouchable. His hand went out to the man from whom everyone else would have shrunk away. Two things emerge. First, when we despise ourselves, when our hearts are filled with bitter shame, let us remember that, in spite of all, Christ’s hand is still stretched out. The writer Mark Rutherford wished to add a new beatitude: ‘Blessed are those who heal us of our self-despisings.’ That is what Jesus did and does. Second, it is of the very essence of Christianity to touch the untouchable, to love the unlovable, to forgive the unforgivable. Jesus did – and so must we.

(2) Jesus sent the man to carry out the normal, prescribed routine for cleansing. The regulations are described in Leviticus 14. That is to say a miracle did not dispense with what medical science of the time could do. It did not absolve the man from carrying out the prescribed rules. We will never get miracles by neglecting the gifts and the wisdom God has given us. It is when human skill combines with God’s grace that wonder happens.

(3) Verse 15 tells us of the popularity Jesus enjoyed. But it was only because people wanted something out of him. Many desire the gifts of God but repudiate the demands of God – and, there can be nothing more dishonourable.