Mark 1: 40-45

Reading the biography of Francis of Assisi (1182-1226), the founder of the Franciscan Orders and one of the greatest figures and Saints of the Middle Ages, one can surmise that he was a man of very difficult personality and disposition before he converted to Christianity. He was horrified of poverty and all forms of suffering, but nothing raised his revulsion so much as leprosy. If he, by chance, saw a leper while he was out riding, he would dismount the horse, hold his nose, and send a messenger to give some alms to the leper. Then one day, at the beginning of his conversion, he unexpectedly came upon a leper on the road. His first impulse was to recoil;

however, he quickly remembered his desire for discipleship. He then slipped off his horse and ran to kiss the leper. When the leper put out his hand as if to receive some alms, Francis gave him money and a kiss. This was, for Francis, a significant turning point in his understanding of Christ. Now that he had identified himself with Christ and with the lepers, in action and not merely in theory, his practical understanding of the incarnation deepened in direct proportion to his active obedience.

Across the continents and throughout the span of history, all people have harbored and still harbor, to this day, a degree of abhorrence and disdain towards leprosy. Leprosy is truly a debilitating and fearful disease one that causes gruesome loss of nails, toenails and bodily hair, to include eyebrows and eventually result in gangrenous decay of the flesh and disfiguration of the facial muscles, tissues, and limbs. One of the greatest accomplishments of modern medicine has been the discovery of the cause and treatment of leprosy.

As a result, in most developed nations, the cases of leprosy a disease once considered incurable have decreased dramatically. Leprosy is often referred to as ‘Hansen’s Disease’ so named after Dr. Hansen of Norway, who, in 1874, discovered the pathogen that caused the disease. Leprosy, or Hansen’s Disease, lies at the lower end of contagious scale; in fact, the degree of contagiousness for leprosy is so weak that it is difficult even for a newborn baby to contract the disease from someone else. Furthermore, even if one is unfortunate enough to contract the pathogen that causes leprosy, the period of latency is so great lasting anywhere between 20 to 30 years that one may not even know one is infected with the disease. The important phenomenon is the fact that after Hansen’s historical discovery of the pathogen that causes the disease, many of the misunderstandings, misconceptions and stereotyping about leprosy in the US, Europe, and other developed countries have been gradually decreasing. In short, the long-held belief that leprosy is some disease levied by the heavens for upsetting gods is disappearing from the world today.

However, the people of Israel and the Near East, during the time of Christ, widely and firmly believed that leprosy was a judgment and punishment levied by God towards those who sinned and transgressed. The fact that Israelites of the Old Testament did not consider confession and repentance of sins as precursors and prerequisites for curing leprosy clearly shows us that not everyone considered sins and transgressions as definite causes of leprosy. Yet, in looking at the laws and edicts governing leprosy in the Book of Leviticus, chapters 13 and 14, we can see that leprosy and its surrounding factors take on a very particular religious characteristic. When a person showed, in those days, symptoms similar to leprosy, he or she was required to be seen and evaluated by a priest; in fact, the priest was responsible for evaluating the circumstances surrounding the contraction of disease, assessing the state of afflicted, recommending expulsion, or quarantine, of the afflicted from the community, and evaluating the patient to determine if he or she has fully recovered from the disease.

Then why did the people of the Old Testament classify leprosy as a disease of religion, its developmental stages from contraction to recovery subject to scrutiny and evaluation of a priest? In short, the people of those days classified leprosy as such because of the fact that the characteristics of leprosy closely resemble the attributes of sin. First, leprosy is an internal disease much like sins, which originate within our hearts. Leprosy is not a mere skin disease, passed onto others through skin contact; much like our sins, which originate deep within our spirits, leprosy starts with the pathogen entering the body and gradually eroding the physical structure of the body. Second, leprosy starts as small blemishes or lesions on the skin and gradually spread, uncontrollably, throughout the body. Like the old Korean proverb which denotes that ‘a needle thief becomes a cow thief,’ meaning all things start out small in scale, our sins often start out as seemingly innocuous and harmless want or desire. This want, or desire turns into greed and avarice that begets greater sins, and often leads to destruction and death (James 1: 15). Third, lepers generally are quarantined from rest of the community and society.

In Leviticus, chapter 13, verses 45 and 46, it is recorded that "the leper on whom the sore is, his clothes shall be torn and his head bare; and he shall cover his mustache, and cry, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ He shall be unclean. All the days he has the sore he shall be unclean. He is unclean, and he shall dwell alone; his habitation shall be outside the camp." Once deemed unclean by the priests, those afflicted were required to tear their clothes, as if to mourn someone dead, bare their head, cover their lips, and yell ‘unclean!’ in order to keep others from coming into contact with them. Furthermore, they were expelled from their communities, separated and quarantined from their families, friends and relatives and doomed to live in solitude. Living outside the camp of Israel shows the cruel and stark reality these lepers suffered, and goes on to show that they are outside the grace and embrace of God and although alive, they were no better off than those who were dead. Likewise, when we sin, we are separated from God and those whom we love.

In scrutinizing Leviticus, chapters 13 and 14, it does not seem as if the people who contract leprosy committed greater sins than the people who were not afflicted did. Just as we have outlined that sins and leprosy share many characteristics that leprosy is vastly divergent from holiness of God the people of the Old Testament adopted strict and stringent laws to block the contagious and destructive nature of this disease. Therefore, we, as humans, do not have to authority to judge and condemn lepers as sinners. Rather, the Synoptic Gospels vividly illustrate that Jesus showed greater love and sympathy towards the lepers than physically able people; therefore, we must always remember that lepers received greater love from God than healthier people did. Therefore, we must not literally interpret these rules and laws that govern lepers in the Bible as pertaining to lepers solely in a physical sense; rather, we must symbolically interpolate its applicability, that these rules and laws govern spiritually corrupt and diseased people. In other words, we must understand leprosy as an image of decrepit and deplorable human beings that deviate from God’s embrace. The image of lepers those who are devoid of civil rights and religious freedom, those who are doomed to live a life of hopelessness and desperation is akin to the image of people of today, those who live without God and those whose bodies may be alive but spirits have long since died.

With this complete understanding of leprosy and its background, let’s look at today’s scripture. The contents of today’s scripture is also contained in Matthew 8: 1-4 and Luke 5: 12-16, almost verbatim. Among the Synoptic Gospels, the gospel of Mark was written first; from this, we can glean that the records in the gospel of Mark are probably repeated in both Luke and Matthew, albeit with some minor changes in words. In order to properly understand the recorded miracle of Jesus healing a leper, as written in today’s scripture, we must first understand the rules and laws governing leprosy, as recorded in Leviticus, chapters 13 and 14. The fact that lepers were widely considered as people no better than or as good as those who were dead did not change during the times of Jesus from the days of the Old Testament. They were considered as sinners among sinners, a group of ‘untouchables’ that even kin and members of immediate family had reservations in associating and coming in contact with.

One of these lepers came forth to Christ; upon coming to Christ, this leper knelt and pleaded, "if You are willing, You can make me clean!" According to the laws of the day, this man was supposed to yell "Unclean!" and prevent Jesus from coming close to him. But this man had the belief, the faith, that our Lord, Jesus, was the only one who can cure and restore him, the one that all the rest of the people of this world and even the Heavens abandoned and deserted. It is recorded in verse 41 that "And Jesus, moved with compassion, put our His hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I am willing; be cleansed.’" In today’s scripture, the phrase ‘moved with compassion’ means Jesus took pity on the man; in other words, he felt sympathy for the man’s plight. Jesus took great pity and mercy on a leper who rest of the world abandoned and cast aside a man who believed that all people of the world, God and even he himself gave up on. Jesus even put His hand on this leper. Jesus could have easily cured this leper by uttering a mere phrase from distance; yet, He puts His hand on a man whose flesh reeked of gangrenous decay and stench, and wrought with infested pus and mucous, showing how much love our Lord harbored for this man’s spirit. In verse 44, this man, after being freed from the confines of leprosy, visits a priest and gets a clean bill of health after showing his body; through a cleansing ceremony, where he gave designated offerings to God, he redeems his civil rights and religious freedom (See Leviticus 42: 1-20).

Upon reading this scripture, I felt the great and surprising love of God, the love that calls forth all sinners of this world. The truth that I discover from reading the New Testament each time is that our Lord was always with the poor, the weak women and children and those who were abandoned, rather than being with those who were powerful and rich. Our Lord was with those who were sick, not healthy; He was with those who were widely and generally considered as sinners the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the lepers, and such rather than those who considered themselves to be holy and people of religion. Like He stated in Luke, chapter 5, verses 31 and 32, "Those who are well do not need a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance." Therefore, as it is recorded in the Book of Romans, chapter 5, verse 8, "But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

A psychologist recently said that he could dismiss 90% of his clients if they could heal their guilt over their past or fear about failing in the future. Psalms 103, verse 3, promises that God is the one "Who forgives all your iniquities, Who heals all your diseases." Furthermore, in Micah 7, verse 19, it is stated, "He will again have compassion on us, and will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea," and in Isaiah 43, verse 25, it is recorded, "I, even I, am He who blots our your transgression for My own sake; and I will not remember your sins." Karl Barth is probably one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century. The 14 volumes of Church Dogmatic, books written by Barth that have a combined thickness of 1 meter (or 1 yard), is a very famous work in theology. After writing some 7000 pages that made up the Church Dogmatic, Barth came to give one definition of God. He wrote, "The One who loves." It is true. Because He is the One who loves, God calls forth sinners like us. He does not ask what type of people we are, nor does he inquire about what we did before; through the glorious and sanctifying blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, He forgives us all.

There once was a man who bought a white mouse to feed his pet snake. He went home and dropped the mouse into the glass tank where the snake was asleep on a bed of sawdust. After a few minutes, the mouse kind of checked out where he was, and figured out that he was in hot water that this was not a very good place to be, since if that snake woke up, he would probably be swallowed alive. So the mouse started getting desperate, and he reasoned, "I’ve got to come up with a brilliant game plan, or I’m finished for good." The light came on in his head, and he began to gently, and carefully, cover the snake with sawdust chips until the snake was completely covered and out of sight. The little mouse wiped his hands and thought that he had solved his problem. What do you think? Did the mouse really solve his problems? No matter how much sawdust covered the snake, once the snake wakes up, he can easily come out of the sawdust mound and swallow the mouse in one bite. All of us need to remember that true deliverance always comes from outside of our own being, that it comes to us externally.

In 1935, a Presbyterian elder, Bill W., hit rock bottom in terms of his life. He was worn out, being a long-time alcoholic. He was tired of what his addiction to booze had done to his marriage, his family, and his career. He had truly hit rock bottom. He teamed up with his drinking buddy, Dr. Bob S., who was also tired of his own lifestyle, and together they cried out for help from the depths of their pit. While they were desperately searching for help in order to climb out of their personal abyss, Jesus came forth to them to lend them His hand. So, in 1935, Bill W. and Bob S. co-founded the Alcoholics Anonymous. They both were desperate people. They understood that they could not solve their problems on their own, through their own devices.

This morning, please believe that there is a power outside us, a power greater than ourselves that can restore our sanity; and that Higher Power, that Great Power is none other than Jesus Christ. Believe that our Lord, who calls all sinners to come forth, resolves all our sins and allows us renewed life. We cannot solve the problems of our sins on our own. Only our loving God, who lives outside of us, can help us. This morning, I hope that each one of us can leave the burden of our sin with our Lord and experience the true freedom and healing. Amen!