From today’s reading of Matthew 4, Luke 4-5 and John 1:15-51

Today’s reading had a lot of action: the temptation in the wilderness (where satan attempted, among other things, to counterfeit the “God can bring _________ out of these stones” declaration of John as part of his temptation – see yesterday’s post), literal cliff hangers, beautiful prophetic fulfillments, first callings of his disciples, and the most insightful early declaration of who Jesus is, among many other things.

But I want to focus on one of those close-in, intimate moments that are sprinkled throughout the gospels.

While he was in one of the cities, there came a man full of leprosy. And when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and begged him, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately the leprosy left him. – Luke 5:12-13

There is so much about the character of our Lord packed into each of the clauses of this passage.

Jesus was busy. He was on a ministry tour, stopping off in “one of the cities”. The man who came to him wasn’t just a leper, but he was “full of leprosy”. People with skin diseases were unclean and touching them was forbidden, as the person doing the touching immediately became ceremonially unclean himself. Here was a man full of leprosy falling at Jesus feet and begging for healing.

Jesus healed some people without touching them; he even healed from long distance. But he makes the point here of touching the man. He touched a man who had gone a long time without human contact. He gave time and attention to a man who was used to having people run away from him.

You can almost hear the smile of kindness on Jesus face as he replies to the man “I will; be clean”. Immediately the man was cleansed of his disease.

The scene is simple. If you’ve been in church any time at all you’ve heard a sermon on this. You already know about the restrictions on contact with skin-diseased people. You already know that Jesus is a healer. None of this is new to you or me.

But hopefully, in another respect, these episodes in Jesus’ life and ministry are new every day. Every day he answers the desperate prayer of a desperately unclean person: “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean”. And he touches them and makes them clean! That simply doesn’t get old. The problem many of us have is that we don’t see it very often: either we have surrounded ourselves with those who are already (or who already appear to be) clean, or we have isolated ourselves to just the company of . . . ourselves.

There is an entire world out there of people who are longing to be healed. They desperately need the touch of the One who won’t himself become unclean by touching them, but who transfers his cleanliness to them, healing them of their disease.

Even as believers in Jesus, healed of our sin-sickness and no longer slaves to it, we need that daily (hourly, minutely) touch of the great Healer. And we need to, ourselves, carry his healing touch into the world, among the people no one else wants to be around, and – Lord willing – be astonished and joyful witnesses over and over to the work of the Healer.

“Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.”

“I will; be clean.”