Jesus Touched A Leper

A few weeks ago I heard a report on National Public Radio about a medical team that went to Kenya to meet the medical needs of those who had the least receive medical care available to them. They started out with a survey to see where the people were and where the doctors were. And in that survey they were amazed to find a huge shantytown slum quite near the capital city of Nairobi that didn’t show up on their map. It was like the people didn’t exist. And if the people didn’t even get enough recognition for their city to be put on a map, was there a hospital or any clinics there? Nothing! It was like they were invisible people. And of course the medical team set up shop in that slum.

Sometimes people are invisible to us because we just don’t cross paths with them. Sometimes people are invisible because we don’t want to see them. Jesus had radar for seeing invisible people. And today we look at a downright shocking story of what Jesus did one day.

Please turn to our text in your pew Bible. It’s Luke 5:12-16 and it’s on page 62 of the New Testament section. And please stand for the reading of God’s word. And keep your Bible open after Linda reads.

12 While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him, `Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.'

13 Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. `I am willing,' he said. `Be clean!' And immediately the leprosy left him.

14 Then Jesus ordered him, `Don't tell anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.

15 Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. 16 But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.

Most Americans have never seen leprosy, but it’s a horrible thing. I visited in a leprosarium near where we lived in Nepal, run by a courageous Christian English woman, Eileen Lodge. For these patients the original disease of leprosy had been cured once they came under the care of a doctor. But the damage had been done. Most of the patients were missing fingers and toes. Leprosy destroys the feeling in your body. So you might push your hand against a burning ember that rolled out of the family cooking fire and not know that your flesh is burning. You could break your toe on a root in a path or get a piece of glass stuck in the bottom of a bare foot. And if you forget to check yourself carefully every day, you might not realize what happened until you had a horrendous infection. Lepers can wake up in the morning to find that a rat had chewed off part of their foot and they didn’t know what was happening. It’s horrible.

I once visited a much larger leprosy hospital in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, not far from where the standoff is happening around the Red Mosque in Islamabad. As the nuns were giving us a tour, they pointed out someone ahead of us near the side walk and asked us to guess how old she was. Her face was creased with deep, deep lines, making you think she might have been a hundred years old. But as we got closer her giggling gave her away. She was a teenager. And the disease had stolen her chances of ever finding a husband. I remember someone whose nose had been eaten away. There was just a gross hole in the middle of his face.

Leprosy can be cured and prevented today for those who have access to medical care. Probably all the patients I saw came from remote places where no medical care was available until it was too late.

Imagine now what leprosy would be like in a world that had no medicines to stop it and no antibiotics to fight infections. Open sores would just get worse and worse.

So did this guy have a bad case of leprosy? What does the Bible tell us? Look at verse 12. He was ‘covered with leprosy.’ This was somebody you don’t want to look at. This was gross.

Even worse than the physical problems that this would cause, he would be ostracized by the community. I remember visiting some missionary friends in a remote Nepali village. There was a woman with leprosy in their village. She had to live alone, outside the village, away from everyone. She had a sod house, with a dirt floor maybe a foot below ground level, walls made of chunks of sod, probably sheet metal roof, with more sod on it to insulate it from the hot sun. The roof was at most 5 feet above the floor. Even she couldn’t stand up straight in it. Our missionary friends brought her food each day. Otherwise she probably would have died.