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Gospel: Mark 1: 40-45
A leper came to Jesus and kneeling down begged him and said,
“If you wish, you can make me clean.”
Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand,
touched him, and said to him,
“I do will it. Be made clean.”
The leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean.
Then, warning him sternly, he dismissed him at once.
He said to him, “See that you tell no one anything,
but go, show yourself to the priest
and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed;
that will be proof for them.”
The man went away and began to publicize the whole matter.
He spread the report abroad
so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly.
He remained outside in deserted places,
and people kept coming to him from everywhere.
The Gospel of the Lord.
***
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We continue following Jesus in Mark’s Gospel. Jesus has moved out of the synagogue, out of Simon Peter’s house, and into the open fields, where the impure wandered.
He’s now in the land of lepers.
Leprosy was a bit like COVID; it quarantined people. But lepers weren’t quarantined for two weeks; they were isolated for the rest of their lives, living like a separated species – defiled; unapproachable; even sub-human.
***
When news of Jesus’ healing power reached the lepers, hope began to stir in that wretched community, particularly in the heart of one man, whose life was about to change.
Courage welled so high in his poor soul, that he broke social conventions, barreling through a crowd of people like a bowling ball rolling through pins.
Knowing his chance had come, he threw himself at the feet of Jesus, looking like no more than a desperate mass of rotting flesh.
In other gospel accounts, this man is described as “full of leprosy,” meaning the disease had run its course.
He was like a walking dead man, forced by society to maintain a disheveled appearance crying out, “Unclean! Unclean!” anytime his stinking body approached another human being.
It was even illegal to greet him.
One can only imagine his crushing sense of worthlessness and despair.
***
But Jesus changes everything.
***
Eight times in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus touches the untouchable.
He touches Simon Peter’s mother-in-law who was deathly ill; he places his thumbs over a blind man’s eyes; his finger into a deaf man’s ears; his palm on the coffin of a mother’s boy; and today Jesus touches the putrid flesh of a desperate leper.
Lying flat on his face, dragging his lips across the dirt, the desperate leper cries out, “If you will it, you can make me clean.”
You can take my leprosy. My pain. My feelings of worthlessness. My loneliness.
And make me clean.
Stirred with compassion, Jesus kneels down, touches him, and says, “I do will it. Be made clean.”
***
***
The healing is sudden and complete.
This man’s eyebrows have grown back; his nubs have grown into hands; the stumps of his legs morphed into feet; the pus and scabs on his body, transformed into silky skin.
He’s no longer crying out, “Unclean! Unclean!”
But, “I’m clean! I’m clean!”
***
That is what Jesus can do for us.
He can take our impurities, our burdens, our pain, and make us clean.
***
After this miraculous healing, Jesus remains in the countryside.
The irony is stunning.
He cannot re-enter the city; by touching this leper, Jesus has become ritually impure, in a sense, making him the leper.
Still, the crowds come to him in droves, desperate to feel his healing touch.
***
What Jesus does for this leper foreshadows what he will also do at the Cross.
Just as he takes this leper’s impurity upon himself, so at Calvary, Jesus will bear the world’s sins, tasting death in order to free us from everlasting death, the greatest impurity of all.
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Think of today’s Gospel as a parable for our own lives.
Just as this leper was infected with leprosy, so we’ve all been affected by sin.
The nature of leprosy, with its deceptive beginnings, its slow progress, its destructive power, and the ultimate ruin it brings, makes it a powerful symbol of sin.
Sin ruins us; it damages our relationships; it separates us from others; it brings us down and can even make us feel unworthy at times.
Jesus wants to take those burdens from us.
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So, where do we need to be made clean? Where are we in need of the Lord’s healing touch?
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“I did not come to call the righteous,” Jesus says, “but sinners.”
Lent is the perfect time for us to grow in self-awareness; to call upon the Lord and ask for his help.
Then Jesus will look at us compassionately and say, “Be made clean.”
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