Stop And Thank

Imagine what it might have been like, back in Jesus’ day, to be a leper. Leprosy is basically just a bacterial skin infection, and nowadays it can be treated quite easily. But not back then. Back in those days it was incurable. And it was the most feared disease imaginable. First of all, it was pretty ugly. In the early stages, a principal symptom is just a few numb patches of light-colored skin. But as it progresses, ridges and folds of skin might form on your face - sort of like the Elephant Man, if you ever saw that movie. Your nose might collapse. Your ears might rot away. Because you can’t feel anything on the numb parts, you don’t notice burns or cuts and they may get infected. You might go blind. Leprosy is a slow-acting disease, though, and all this might take quite a while. With proper care and treatment, you could probably live a pretty normal life for a long time.

But that didn’t happen. To a first-century Jew, having leprosy was even worse than ugly and disgusting and incurable. It was proof that you were the vilest kind of sinner. God must be punishing you for something really bad. There were elaborate instructions in Scriptures for diagnosing the disease, and once you were identified as a leper there was no appeal.

"The priest shall examine him; if ... he is leprous, he is unclean. The priest shall pronounce him unclean; the disease is on his head. The person who has the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp." [Lev 13:43-46]

It was better to be dead than to be a leper. It was a life-time sentence of poverty and exile. You may remember in the old movie Ben Hur – I don’t know if the new version has it - how when his mother and sister contracted leprosy they went to live in a secluded valley with other lepers; they didn’t want him even to know they were alive. In Europe during the Middle Ages people with leprosy were declared dead and were banished after witnessing their own funeral and symbolic burial. Think for a moment what it must have been like to be pushed outside the community. Shunned, isolated, humiliated. What would it be like to never be touched? Never. To see little children run away at the sight of you. No hugs, no kisses, no hand-shakes, no quick smile at an unexpected meeting with a friend, because the only friendships you had were others like you, who - every time you looked at them reminded you of the horror of your own condition. And because the disease progresses so slowly, and is rarely fatal, you couldn’t even hope for a quick death.

How would you feel, if you lived back then and were diagnosed with leprosy? At some point - after you were done with the shock and the denial, the tears and farewells, whether you went off to live in a leper colony or begged along the roadside, you’d have a lot of time to brood. You would really have to do some serious thinking about your life - and in strongly religious societies like first century Jewish Palestine or tenth century Catholic Europe, you would struggle with God, with the meaning of life, with sin and repentance and all the other questions that we have so little time for in our fast-moving world. There would be anger, and despair, perhaps thoughts of suicide. I imagine many of them bargained with God, hoping either for a mis-diagnosis or a miraculous remission or even a quick death. How many lepers, do you suppose, told God that if, he would only heal them, they’d dedicate their lives to charity, or go on a pilgrimage, or make some kind of spectacular offering - perhaps endow a synagogue?

Times of crisis often turn us to a renewed awareness of God. At the saying goes, there are no atheists in foxholes. But how long does it last? If, as time goes on, the fear and tension do not let up, if your faith is not deeply rooted, it is likely to turn to anger at God or total rejection of him. What do we know, if anything, about the faith of these ten lepers?

On that sunny spring day 2000 years ago, ten lepers, ten dying, decaying, stinking wretches met Jesus and cried, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” [v.13] Maybe they wanted alms, maybe they needed food. It’s even possible they knew that Jesus was a healer - after all, his reputation had spread pretty far and wide - and were reaching out in faith, believing that Jesus would heal them, as he had so many others. Whatever their motivation, they knew their place. They cried out for mercy, but they didn’t dare come near.