"YOU CAN MAKE ME CLEAN."

Homily for January 8^th, 2016: Luke 5:12-16.

          The Bible commentators tell us that the disease of leprosy mentioned often in Scripture is not the same as leprosy today, which doctors call Hansen’s disease. Leprosy in the Bible is any kind of disfiguring skin disease. People afflicted in this way suffered not only physically, but socially and spiritually as well. They were banned from public places. And since they were considered spiritually unclean they could not participate in Temple worship. Anyone who touched a leper became spiritually unclean as well.

          This helps us understand why the man we have just heard about in the gospel reading is so desperate. He “fell prostrate,” Luke tells us, and “pleaded” with Jesus, “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.”  The man’s faith in Jesus’ power to heal is crucial. Faith opens the door for God’s action in our lives.

          Out of compassion with this social outcast Jesus responds at once. Reaching out across the boundary between clean and unclean, Jesus touches the man, saying: “I do will it. And the leprosy left him at once,” Luke tells us. Jesus has restored him to the community of God’s people. Jesus then orders the man to fulfill the provisions of the Jewish law by going to a Temple priest and offering sacrifice. Jewish priests were then also quarantine officials.

          The gospel writer, Luke, was what passed in those days for a physician. This is evident from the care he takes to tell us that the man’s cure was instantaneous. Note also what Luke tells us about Jesus at the end of the reading: “He would withdraw to deserted places to pray.” Luke’s choice of words makes it clear that Jesus did this repeatedly. Why?

          Jesus was constantly surrounded by people clamoring to get at him, to speak with him, to touch him. He needed those times of silence, alone with his heavenly Father. It was in those hours of solitude that Jesus nurtured the power to heal, to say to rough working men, “Follow me,” and have them obey him on the spot. And if Jesus, whose inner resources were infinitely greater than hours, needed those times alone with God, we are fools and guilty fools, if we think we can do without them.