Reflecting Jesus to the Outcast
Matthew 8:1-4
September 11, 2005
Introduction
As we begin our time in the Word of God today, I’d like us to think about someone we used to know that we’d avoid at any cost.
Maybe it was back in high school or college. Maybe you don’t have to go back that far. It could be that there is someone you can think of that you’re avoiding nowadays rather than just in the past.
But the thought of being seen around that person gave you the chills, because they were someone everyone else avoided.
In Bible times, people with leprosy were that type of person, only much worse. Leprosy was a death sentence in many cases, especially in Bible times.
Treatment was thousands of years away, and resulted in disfigurement and usually death.
It’s an infectious disease, spread by contact with droplets from the mouth or nose of someone who is infected. Just touching a person with leprosy can bring you into contact with these fluids and spread the disease.
It attacks the skin and peripheral nerves. It can cause the loss of limb, usually through injury to the limb that goes unnoticed due to the deadening of the nerves there. People could cut themselves or break a bone and not even know it until later.
Can you imagine a group of people who would view pain as a good thing? Most of us spend our lives trying to avoid pain, but these people would welcome the ability to feel pain!
But as bad as the physical effects of leprosy are the social effects were as bad or worse in Bible times.
When a person came down with leprosy, he was banished from the city, made to live outside the city gates with the rest of the lepers. If they came into the city, they were forced to cover themselves from head to foot, and cry out, "Unclean!" so people could avoid contact with them.
They were quarantined from the rest of the population. They were stigmatized and outcast. Families were torn apart, and lives broken with despair.
They were ceremoniously unclean, and not allowed to worship in the temple, synagogue, or church during the spread of the gospel around the world. Leprosy was viewed as being representative of sin, and so if you were a leper then it was assumed that you were in sin.
Being a leper was a horrible thing. I’m sure it caused many, if not most people to wonder if God had abandoned them by allowing it or cursed them by causing it.
Chuch Swindoll tells the story of his time in the Marines in 1958. He was serving with the Marine Corps band in Okinawa when their tour took them to a leper colony on the island. Swindoll said he was totally unprepared for what he encountered at the leper colony. He saw stumps instead of hands, clumps instead of fingers. He saw half faces, and he saw one ear instead of two. So heinous were those who lived on the colony that they were unable to applaud the band’s performances. He said he could literally see the anguished cries of the men, women and teenagers who made that place their home. He said, "We could play music for them, but we could not cleanse them of their disease." (SermonCentral.com - Contributed by Lynn Malone)
In Scripture the leper is symbolic of the ultimate outcast: infected by a condition he did not seek, rejected by those he know, avoided by people he did not know, condemned to a future he could not bear.
The divorced know this feeling. So do the children of alcoholics. We keep our distance from the depressed and avoid the terminally ill.
And often these people decide that rather than seek help, they’ll retreat from contact with other people. The risk of being hurt is too great.
Maybe it’s the homeless person who, because of the economic situation has been laid off and isn’t able to find work in spite of his best efforts. I’m not talking about the lazy person who’s not willing. I think you know how I feel about that. I’m talking about the person who is unable to work for some reason or another, and now has to survive on the streets, and maybe has had to leave family behind while looking for a way to support them.
Or maybe it’s the guy or girl in school who is not as pretty or handsome as the rest, or maybe has a physical condition that draws attention to them. Or maybe it’s the "geek" or "nerd" or whatever, and everyone avoids them.
Maybe it’s someone of another nationality or skin color.
The point is that there are plenty of people around that we would rather avoid being around, for one reason or another, and many times it’s something beyond their control, like leprosy.
What does a 21st Century leper look like? They are the social outcasts of your world. You have "quarantined" them from your world. I purposely chose the words, "your world," rather than "the world because just because you don’t want to be around them doesn’t mean others feel the same way.
I want us to see how Jesus reacted to the outcast, and how we can respond to the person others have quarantined from their lives, the "untouchables" around us.
Our passage for today, is found in Matthew 8:1-4. If you’re using the Bibles in the seats, this can be found on page 686.
When he came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. 2 A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, "Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean."
3 Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am willing," he said. "Be clean!" Immediately he was cured of his leprosy. 4 Then Jesus said to him, "See that you don’t tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them."
Jesus gives us a wonderful example of how to treat the "untouchables" and I’d like us to look at how we can make that example a part of our lives.
In doing that, I want to acknowledge my gratitude to Max Lucado and his book, Just Like Jesus. Some of what I’m sharing with you today came from that book, or at least was inspired by it.
Let’s look at these four lessons, okay? The first lesson we learn is that...
Jesus took the risk of touching the need.
What was the first thing Jesus did when the man asked for healing? Verse 3 says he reached out his hand and touched the man.
Remember, just touching the person could spread the disease by coming into contact with droplets from the mouth or nose.
Can you imagine the reaction of the crowd when they saw this? A collective gasp must have gone through them as they thought, "What is he doing? Does he understand that he is now unclean because he touched that leper? I thought he was a holy man! Not to mention the fact that he might get the disease himself!"
But Jesus didn’t care what the rest of the people thought. He was concerned about the man in front of him.
Touching him wasn’t politically correct, it wasn’t "proper," and it wasn’t even healthy. But he did it anyway.
Jesus’ touch was likely the first one he had had from a "clean" person since contracting the disease.
I wonder what his first reaction was? It may have been similar to the crowd’s response, but maybe mixed with fear that he would be the cause of Jesus coming down with the disease. Awe and astonishment that anyone would purposely touch him probably overwhelmed him.
And all of a sudden, he saw that he was accepted by someone. Jesus’ touch cured the leper of not only the disease, but of his loneliness. He was no longer the outcast, at least as far as Jesus was concerned.
If you’ve ever been an outcast, then you know the feeling of finally being accepted by someone you thought would never want anything to do with you. To have them shake your hand or put their hand on your shoulder or even give you a hug.
Touch is so powerful. A loving touch can make all the difference in the world.
Some of you may have noticed that often when I’m talking to you, I might put my hand on your arm or shoulder. That’s not because I’m trying to be overly friendly, it’s because I’m aware of what touch has meant in my own life.
When someone is praying for me, or when they’re just listening to what I have to say, especially when I’m down about something, that touch means the world to me.
Or when my dad would put his hand on my shoulder to tell me he was proud of me for some reason. You know what that’s like.
I try to touch my family a lot because I want them to know that I love them and care for them. I think God designed touch to be used and understood that way.
And here’s Jesus. The perfectly sinless Son of God being intentional about touching this person full of disease.
I don’t know about you, but that just blows me away. And when I reflect on just who I am, my shortcomings, and my sins and mistakes of the past, I’m filled with awe and wonder that he would love me so much.
So let me give you an action step you can take to help the social outcasts in your world. Next time you see that person, put your hand on their shoulder and look in their eyes for a moment.
And in doing that you’ll communicate something they have probably not heard in a long time. It communicates, "You’re no longer an outcast to me."
That, ladies and gentlemen, reflects Jesus into the lives of others.
Oh, and by the way, if I come and put my hand on your shoulder, it’s not because I think you’re an outcast, okay? It’s because I’m kind of a touchy-feely person like that.
Maybe you’re not the "touchy" type like me. That’s okay. But you can still touch people by sending cards, visiting them, or whatever. Do something.
Here’s the second lesson we can learn...
Jesus spoke words of compassion.
Jesus didn’t just talk about the person and their need, he talked to the person and their need.
He said, "I am willing. Be clean."
Not just words of pity, but words of compassion. What’s the difference?
Pity is defined by Merriam-Webster as "sympathetic sorrow for one suffering, distressed, or unhappy."
Pity is the feeling we have toward the suffering, and that’s a good thing. But often pity doesn’t go far enough. We need to move on to compassion.
Compassion asks the question, "What can I do to help?" Then it finds an answer and acts on it.
Compassion is the action we take toward the suffering.
Jesus didn’t just say, "You know, someone should pray about this so maybe the Father will hear and heal this guy. Any volunteers?"
Jesus said, "I’m willing to do something about this." And he did. He spoke healing into the man’s body and spirit.
And the man was clean from that point. I think it’s interesting that it wasn’t the touch of Jesus that made the mad clean, it was the words of Jesus. He commanded that the disease would leave, and it did. And he did this after he was already touching the man.
We can’t always speak words of healing, but we can verbalize our desire to help when we can. We can’t always send money or tangible items, but we can always pray for people.
Telling someone you’re praying for them is a huge deal. I can’t tell you how often my own spirits have been lifted when hearing that someone was praying for me.
But the point here is to speak words of compassion - words of action on your part to help someone, especially those who can’t help themselves.
So here’s an action step you can take. Tell them of God’s compassion then demonstrate it tangibly to them somehow. It’s important to recognize that Jesus’ words were tied to his actions. Make sure your words do the same.
Here’s the third lesson we can learn about Jesus from his interaction with the leper:
Jesus saw the person behind the need.
Jesus didn’t see a problem, as big as that problem was. After all, this guy was cut off from everyone he loved and had to live on the good nature of those who were willing to bring food, clothing, bandages, etc. to help him and the others.
He didn’t just see a disease needing to be cured, although that would have been enough.
No, Jesus saw a person created by God, in his image.
A person for whom God had plans. A person whom God had gifted in certain areas to contribute to society and to the kingdom of God. A person with potential to do great things and influence a great number of people.
A person he would die for.
When you look at the "outcasts" in your sphere of influence, what do you see?
Do you see the problems? That’s what most people see.
But you need to grasp the fact that God sees way past all that. God sees someone he loves so much that he sent his son to die for that person. A person he loves every bit as much as he loves you.
2 Corinthians 5:16 (New Living Translation) -
So we have stopped evaluating others by what the world thinks about them.
So here’s the action step you can take for this lesson:
Action step: Pray that God would help you see people with his eyes.
Now let’s take a look at the fourth lesson we can learn from the example of Jesus in his dealing with the leper.
Jesus deflected the glory to the Father.
In verse 4, Jesus says -
"See that you don’t tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them."
Jesus didn’t heal the guy and shout, "Hey, everybody! Look what I just did! I just healed a guy! And not just of a bad case of acne, but LEPROSY! Did you catch that?"
Rather, Jesus said, "Hey you know what? Just head over to the priest and give the offering for being clean, okay?"
Why do you think he did this? Well, I think part of the reason is that Jesus wasn’t seeking glory for himself, but rather for the Father.
If you’ve been here very long, you know that I’ve told you a number of times that Jesus had two main priorities: expanding the kingdom of God and bringing glory to the Father.
When the man went to the priests, what do you think the priests would say? "Thank you for this wonderful man named Jesus who brought this healing."
Nope, they would offer their prayers to the heavenly Father, Adonai Roph’ekha, the God who heals. The Father would get the glory, because they would recognize this healing as being from the hand of God Almighty.
So in helping someone, how can we deflect the glory to God rather than bask in it for ourselves?
In giving an answer, I’d like us to look at James 1:17 -
Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.
Here’s an action step to help us. Simply say: "Give thanks to the Father who is the source of all good things."
And mean it. Deflect any glory you might receive to the Father.
Oh and by the way, to take this last action step, you actually have to do something to help someone. Just talking about it won’t cut it. Do something, and when thanks come your way, suggest that they thank the Father.
But be careful with this. If you make it a habit, you just might find yourself looking for ways to help others so you can glorify the Father. Bummer, huh?
Conclusion
Today, leprosy is curable, thanks to the hard work of scientists who are using their God-given brains and talents to battle this scourge.
It’s not as prevalent as it used to be. Less people are coming down with the disease, partly because we know what’s causing it, and like any disease, it’s easier to avoid than cure.
Medical technology can help with the physical disease of leprosy. But it takes Jesus living in and through us to help with the "social" lepers around us.
In the beginning of the message, I asked you to think of someone you either avoided in the past or are avoiding now.
Think of that person again and ask yourself this question, "Is this how Jesus would respond to that person?"
And you already know the answer, don’t you? So now the issue becomes doing what you think Jesus would do with that person.
I’ve given you four action steps you can take in the lives of those "outcasts" you know: physically putting your hand on their shoulder; verbalizing the compassion of God and demonstrating it tangibly, praying that God would help you see that person through his eyes, and then as you’re helping someone, deflect the glory for it to God.
Take a moment and think for a moment about how you can make just one of these action steps happen in the life of someone this week.
Not next month or next year. This week. A phone call or letter. A ride somewhere. A visit. A commitment to pray over the third action step everyday this week.
But do something. Anything that communicates to that person that they have value in the eyes of God and in your eyes as well. Be the hands and voice of Jesus to someone this week. And let God be honored and glorified through it.
Let’s pray.
