The Healing. A Story Of A Man With Leprosy. Mark 1:40-45

Good Morning

Stand with me and lift your bible and repeat after me.

This is my Bible.

I am what it says I am.

I can do what it says I can do.

I am going to learn how to be what it says I can be.

Today I will learn more of the word of God.

The indestructible, never ending, living word Of God.

I will never be the same.

I will never be the same.

In Jesus Name

Amen?

Today I am going to do something a little different. I am going to share a story with you that I saw many years ago when I entered the ministry. I don’t know who originally wrote it and I have seen it in different ways. Max Lucado shared his version in one of his many books also. I going to share a story with you from the view of a man that is a leper in the time when Jesus walked among us. It is based upon the lepers that Jesus touched and healed in Mark 1:40-45.

Open your Bibles to Mark chapter 1 and say, ‘Amen” when you are there. Let us read together.

Jesus healed those that needed healing and still does. It may be physical or other needs, but we also need to wait and have faith.

Here is the story:

The Healing

For five years no one has touched me. No one.

Not one person.

Not my wife.

Not my child.

Not my friends. No one has touched me.

They saw me.

They have spoken to me. I even sensed the love in their voices.

But I saw concern in their faces as they talked to me.

And there was no touch. Not once. No one has touched me.

What is common to you, I want.

A handshake. A warm hug. A tap on the shoulder. A kiss on the lips.

Such moments have been taken from my world.

No one touched me. No one bumped into me. What I would have given to have been bumped into, to be caught in the crowd.

For my shoulder to brush against someone else.

But for five years it has not happened. How could it?

With my disease I am not allowed on the streets of any town. I am not even permitted in my own synagogue. I am not even welcome in my own home.

I had become an untouchable, A leper.

And no one has touched me since.

How did this happen?

Why?

Five years ago, during the harvest, my grip on the scythe seemed weak.

The tips of my fingers numbed.

First one finger. Then another.

Within a short time, I could grip the tool but not feel it.

By the end of the harvest season, I felt nothing at all.

I said nothing to my wife, but I knew she suspected something. How could she not.

I carried this hand against my body like a wounded bird.

One afternoon I had put my hands in the wash basin to wash my face.

The water turned red. My finger was bleeding. I didn't know I was wounded. Had I cut myself? With a knife?

Did my hand slide across the sharp edge and me not feel it? It must have, but I didn't feel anything.

"It's on your clothes, too, " my wife said softly.

Before looking at her, I looked down and saw my clothes. Blood.

I knew my life was forever altered.

"Shall I go with you to tell the rabbi?" she said.

"No, I'll go alone."

I turned and looked into her eyes. She had started crying.

Standing next to her was our beautiful little girl.

I squatted down and touched her cheek.

I stood up and with my good hand I touched my wife. It would be our final touch.

Five years have since passed and no one has touched me.

The rabbi didn't touch me. He looked at my hand, now wrapped in cloth. He looked in my face. I never faulted him for what he said. He was just doing his job.

He extended his hand, palm forward and said, "You are unclean. You must go."

With one sentence he made me know that I had lost everything.

My family, my farm, my future, and my friends.

My wife met me at the city gates with a sack of clothing and bread and coins. She didn't speak. My friends had gathered.

What I saw in their eyes is what I have seen since. Pity.

As I stepped out, they stepped back.

PAUSE

Oh, how I have repulsed those who have seen me.

Five years of leprosy had left my hands gnarled and the tips of my fingers were missing as were portions of my nose and left ear.