He Touched Me!
A Contextual Reflection on Luke 5:12-14

And it came to pass that while He was in one of the cities, behold, a man full of leprosy. And having seen Jesus, having fallen on his face, he begged Him, saying, Sir, if you have the desire in our heart, you are able to cleanse me. And having stretched forth His hand, He touched him, saying at the same time, My heart desires it. Be cleansed at once. And instantly the leprosy left him. And He himself ordered him to tell not even one person, but: having gone off, exhibit yourself as evidence to the priest, and offer a sacrifice in recognition of your cleansing as Moses appointed before, for a testimony to them.

Luke 5:12-14 The New Testament: An Expanded Translation, Kenneth Wuest

Immediately after selecting His first disciples, Luke records that Jesus encountered a leper. Why did the Holy Spirit prompt Luke to record this in his narrative as the first encounter that Jesus exposes His new disciples to? As Philip Jenkins says in his new book The New Faces of Christianity, “Reading the Bible through fresh eyes constantly reminds us of the depths that still remain to be discovered there.” With the help of Alfred Edersheim and others, let's revisit this remarkable encounter with fresh eyes through the lens of first-century religious and cultural context.

In biblical times, the term “leprosy” covered a variety of skin-related diseases, some temporal and some chronic, with certain severe forms becoming progressively debilitating over time. When Dr. Luke informs us through his medically trained eye that this leper was covered with leprosy (the only Gospel writer who provides us with this detail), he is telling us that this particular leper is a very severe case. Some commentators have speculated that this may be Luke's way of telling us that the man's leprosy is terminal.

From the perspective of observant Judaism, being a leper in the First Century constituted both a physical and a moral judgment from God. There were rabbis who taught that there were only two conditions by which you could not say that God was disciplining you with your malady because He loves you – leprosy and childlessness (think of Elizabeth and Zechariah in Luke 1). Thus, if God doesn't like you, so they reasoned, we are certainly not going to like you either! One rabbi proudly taught that he always carried stones in the pocket of his tunic so he could throw them at any leper he saw to force him or her to flee. Because of such teaching, no leper ever wanted to get near a rabbi .

While it is true that in Leviticus there are provisions and prohibitions regarding lepers which required separating lepers from the community for health reasons, God did not intend that this separation should carry a moral judgment. That condemnation of lepers was the creation of the Pharisees which put them at cross-purposes with God's heart of mercy and compassion for the unfortunate.

As if things were not bad enough for lepers, the religious system of Jesus' day mandated that a leper could never wash his or her face (a constant reminder that they were always unclean) and he or she was required to always hold a cloth under the nose to cover the bottom part of the face. These afflicted people were also required to loudly declare themselves “unclean, unclean” whenever non-lepers were nearby. This was to avoid any inadvertent contact since this disease was assumed to be transmitted by contact. Because of that concern, there was a six-foot prohibition which meant that if any non-leprous person got within six feet of a leper, they were considered to be ritually impure. That would mandate the non-leprous person having to go to the ritual purification baths to be “cleansed” from this impurity. Obviously no one in his or her right mind would ever entertain the thought of deliberately physically contacting a leper.

Lepers were also forbidden from going to the Temple. This was significant in this culture because it was only by going to the Temple and participating in the required sacrifices and offerings there that one became “right with God.” Thus, a leper could never get right with God and, as a result, had no hope. What must it have been like to walk around every day feeling in your soul that God does not like you; and, furthermore, being convinced there is nothing you can do about that?

The painful reality was that lepers were abandoned, anonymous, faceless people condemned to live under perpetual rejection by a heartless religious culture. They was considered to be the “living dead” in the eyes of this culture and were expected to always exhibit the countenance of a mourner in public. No one ever welcomed them, shook their hand or embraced them. And all this was being done to “honor” God! Another reason Jesus had to come!

As further context for this encounter, Luke begins his narrative of Jesus' Ministry by telling us that when Jesus returned to Nazareth one Sabbath, He read from the Isaiah scroll as part of His “Rescue Manifesto” (Luke 4:18-19). Right after that reading, Jesus provoked his hometown audience of friends and family by deliberately reminding them of Naaman, the hated Gentile Syrian general whom Elisha healed from his leprosy (Luke 4:27). In harkening back to God's merciful healing of this enemy of Israel (2 Kings 5), Jesus was setting the stage (in part) for His upcoming encounter with this leper. Since some rabbis taught that the healing of a leper was as difficult as bringing someone back from the dead, the healing of lepers was viewed as an extraordinary miracle from God and a sure sign that the Messianic Age had arrived.

With this context in place, notice in this story how remarkable it is that this leper even wants to approach Rabbi Jesus. As previously observed, rabbis were considered to be the nemesis of a leper. Somehow, this leper must have concluded that this Rabbi Jesus ( Yeshua ) was a very different (and therefore approachable) rabbi. How might he have come to that conclusion? Most likely he overheard someone talking about Jesus in the marketplace or on the highways and byways of the Galilean district – a very effective way to spread the Good News to desperate people!

As this leper approaches Jesus, he prostrates himself before Jesus, seemingly a sign of recognizing Deity. Does this leper truly recognize the Deity in Jesus? We're not sure, but like all who came to Jesus in the Gospels, he does not fully comprehend who Jesus is. Yet one thing he seems to be convinced about: Jesus has the power to make a difference in his life... you are able to cleanse me . That conviction gives the leper enough courage to approach this rabbi, even if it meant defying the social/religious prohibition of getting within six feet of a non-leprous person. Therein rests his “faith.” And that was enough faith for Jesus to respond to the longings of his soul.

Note the leper's request as he prostrates himself before Jesus. It was not to be healed but to be cleansed. Admittedly, healing and cleansing travel closely together in this culture, but it is the moral judgment aspect of his disease that he brings to Jesus. What would walking around for years declaring yourself “unclean, unclean” do to a person's psyche and soul? What is it like to live day after day with absolutely no hope of ever getting right with God? After years of declaring himself “unclean,” there might well have been a deep and desperate longing within this leper's soul for a day when he could wash his face, throw the facial cloth away, go to Temple and get right with God, and be “clean” for the rest of his days. And yes, finally able to be touched, maybe even hugged, by another human being.

In response to this leper's brazen (and desperate) request, Jesus does the unthinkable – He touches the leper and in so doing brings God's intended compassion and mercy to bear saying I am willing…be clean. The six-foot no-encroachment zone has been breached. Furthermore, it has been intentionally breached. Jesus' newly chosen disciples cannot believe what has just happened. You just don't touch lepers! Everybody knows that! And He even did it deliberately! And then it would have quickly become apparent to them that the leprosy was now gone from the leper. Where did the leprosy go? Oh no! Might that leprosy have been transmitted to Jesus? What a tragic end that would be to a remarkable ministry just getting started. Such conflicted thoughts might well have flooded these new disciples' hearts and minds as they viewed this shocking, paradigm-pulverizing scene in their new-disciples-in-training state.

Having now miraculously healed this new ex-leper, Jesus gives him a directive – go to the Temple and present yourself to the priests. Get certified as “clean” so you can once again 1) be restored to fellowship in your community, 2) participate in Temple worship and liturgy, and by implication 3) deliver a message to Temple Leadership that people covered with leprosy are being healed. The Messianic Age has come!

Note that with Jesus, healing is always a tactic; complete restoration is always the objective. Jesus not only wants to set this leper free from the physical malady that has so debilitated him, but also wants him to be free from the moral and spiritual judgment that has been wrongfully projected onto him. And so He commands him to go straight to the Temple to be inspected by the priests and to be certified by the religious “establishment” to be free of this physically and socially debilitating disease. This insight can help shape the way we pray for others. Pray not just for the immediacy of healing in others, but for the total restoration of that person in all aspects of his or her life as well.

At this point, it may be helpful for Western evangelicals to reflect on what Jesus did not do after choosing these first disciples. From Luke's record, there is no evidence that Jesus gave them a comprehensive lecture series about why they should now suddenly change their thinking about everything their religious culture has taught them to be “right” and “true” about lepers. Nor did He take them off on a weekend retreat to teach them three principles of why they should now love lepers. In Jesus' consummate wisdom, He knew He could teach every day for three years, “You disciples need to be merciful to lepers,” but even then they would not wake up one morning and beg Jesus, “Please, can we touch lepers today?”

From Luke's perspective, Jesus' disciple-making methodology was “do and teach” (Acts 1:1). It was not a heavy reliance on the “teach and maybe do” approach (the difference in sequence is profound) that we so often see practiced in the West where we tend to teach too much and do (experience) too little. For this kind of loving-lepers paradigm shift, Jesus knew these newly chosen disciples first needed a radical behavioral experience which would start to smash their entrenched religious paradigms before any teaching could start to effectively sink in. So He gave them no choice in the matter with His watch-Me-touch-a-leper-we'll-talk-about-it-later discipling boot camp approach. (Western evangelicalism still has much to learn from Jesus' “do and teach” disciplemaking pedagogy.)

Let's look at what's been happening in the short span of these four verses. Jesus is simultaneously

Rescuing and Restoring Prisoners and inviting them into the Kingdom of God. His name is Yeshua , the Semitic meaning of which is the Lord Rescues . Jesus is implementing the “Rescue Manifesto” that He bravely and boldly announced to His family and friends that Sabbath morning in Nazareth (Luke 4).
Restoring God's Mercy and compassion to those who have been deprived of it and for whom God always intended to be recipients of it.
Redefining Purity from Heaven's perspective. The ritual purity system of Jesus' day decreed that when an unclean person makes contact with a clean person, the clean person becomes unclean. Jesus inverts all of that by showing that when a Perfectly Clean person touches an unclean person, the unclean person becomes clean and the Divine stays clean.
Remaking His Disciples by “do and teach” shock therapy. Disciples are those people who are having all their religious and cultural paradigms torn down, deconstructed and pulverized so they can more fully see, understand and then radically embrace the compassionate and merciful nature of the Kingdom of God .
Readying the Cross by pointing ahead to what will happen at Calvary. It is there that Jesus will take upon Himself all the sin of people who are likewise the “living dead” covered with a terminal leprous-like condition brought on by issues of sin, guilt, shame and moral judgment, leaving them eternally cleansed as He absorbs the infinite wrath of God for them by dying in their place.
Announcing in yet another way that the Messianic Age has come.

It is important to identify with this leper. We need to see him as the prototypical person – he is us. We too were once the “living dead” on our inevitable way to becoming the “dead dead.” Even though we could not discern our condition in our blindness and deafness, from a Holy Heaven's perspective that is who we were. And then one day we too met Jesus on the pathway of our life and He reached out and touched us. In that moment, we became cleansed in the eyes of His Father as we were set free from the judgment of the debilitating sin that had so covered us and weighted us down. As a result, we can now joyfully proclaim, “He touched me! Praise God Almighty. Now I am clean!”

Observations

The Bible is always revealing who God is to us and how He does things. We learn in this passage that:

God is unpredictable and certainly not uncontrollable by His disciples.
He responds to those who want to be cleansed and who seek Him out to become clean.
God's heart is full to overflowing with mercy and compassion for those who have been marginalized.
Jehovah is personal even to His touch, and His touch is sufficient!
One of His ways of (re)making disciples is to radically confront those paradigms that need to be changed in their lives so that they can be freed up to embrace God's Kingdom way of doing things. Note that Jesus does not give His disciples any choice in the matter. He knows it has to be done, but given their new-disciples-in-training inclinations, changing their paradigms would never happen if left up to them.

As regards God's Eternal Plan of Rescue and Restoration, note that

It is centered in the person and power of Jesus Christ.
It involves communicating the “Good News” of Jesus Christ to those around us.
It starts with rescue (healing) but always ends in total restoration.
God uses disciples in His Plan, but first they need to be remade – have their faulty paradigms stripped away. “ Do and Teach ” is a very effective way of accomplishing that to make Kingdom disciples.

In Closing

When it comes to “lepers,” is your heart aligned with God's Heart? Does your heart beat in harmony with His? Where does your will and your way need to be changed/remade/pulverized to be more like His?
How is your Gratitude Index these days? Are you still thrilled and overwhelmed that one day Jesus entered your life and set you free by touching you? Do you still see yourself as a saved-by-Grace ex-leper? Or are you laboring under the illusion that somehow God is indeed fortunate to have you in His Kingdom?
Are you being overheard in the marketplace? When you know others are listening, are you mostly talking about Jesus or about things that really don't matter all that much?
Where do you still need to be touched today? Is there some area of your life, what the Puritans called a “besetting sin,” that is still causing you to slowly die in that aspect of your life? Bring that “leprosy” to Jesus and let Him touch you there so that you can be completely, not just partially, free to live for Him.
Who are the lepers in our “church” world today? That's a corporate question and begs the question of what are we doing either for them or to them? Are we being helpful or are we being a benign hindrance?
Who are the lepers in your world today? That's a personal question. In your sphere of influence, I would suspect there are a significant number of lepers. Many of them may be inadvertent “lepers” – people you may not even be conscious about or even see as “lepers.”

Perhaps a personal example might be helpful:

Some time ago when our 13-year old daughter was running out the door of our house one Saturday morning for what seemed like her 100th birthday party, my wife and I sadly looked at each other with tears in our eyes. At that moment we suddenly realized that no one had ever invited our 15-year-old son David with special needs (cerebral palsy, autism, mental disabilities) to anyone's birthday party.

We were living in a wonderful community of faith at that time. It wasn't that people were being deliberately non-inclusive; it's just that they were not thinking in a more expansive, inclusive way that brought our son David to mind as a “friend” when it came to birthday parties for their children. In a sense, David was invisible to their way of thinking and seeing things. It's that kind of out-of-sight-out-of-mind blindness that gives rise to a challenging question: Do we create defacto social lepers today just because we don't view the world with the same inclusive and compassionate eyes like our Father does? How is your church doing in welcoming and ministering to people with disabilities?

Faith in Action: How would God have you be a part of touching one of those obvious or not so obvious “lepers” in your life this week with His mercy? What might your role as His ambassador be in bringing His compassionate touch into these people's lives?

Ponder: During this summer season, set aside some time in solitude and silence to ponder Jesus' encounter with this leper. Be sure to put yourself in this scene because it will cause you to savor our Savior yet again. Let this scene both stir and soothe your soul as you let the Spirit speak to you and touch you in fresh and new ways.

Doing what we do because biblical context always matters. Shalom

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