He
was a man who had leprosy and there was no cure in Bible days. The story begins in Mark 1:40. It simply says, “Now a leper came to Him…”
The society in which Jesus lived went
to great lengths to separate the clean from the unclean. There were
clear-cut boundaries between the two. The leper dressed like a mourner going to a burial service -- his own
burial service. And he had to constantly cry out, “Unclean! Unclean!”
lest anyone get too close. And people did keep their distance. In his
book, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Alfred Edersheim reports
the standard practice of the day. He writes, “No one was to salute a
leper... no less than a distance of six feet must be kept from a leper or
if the wind came from that direction, a hundred were scarcely
sufficient.”
And so, you can imagine that as this leper walked
down the street, he was shunned. Now a leper came to Him, imploring Him, kneeling down to Him and saying
to Him, ‘If You are willing, You can make me clean.’” (Mark 1:40)
Notice
that Jesus doesn’t come to the leper -- the leper comes to Jesus.
Remember that this was a violation of the rules and regulations
concerning lepers. He was supposed to shout, "Unclean!" to keep Jesus
away! But instead he runs to Jesus. And Jesus does not run away like all
the rest. Like a mother welcoming her crying, mud-covered son, Jesus
allows the leper to approach Him.
“Then Jesus, moved with compassion, stretched out His hand and touched
him, and said to him, ‘I am willing; be cleansed.’ As soon as He had
spoken, immediately the leprosy left him, and he was cleansed.” (Mark
1:41)
The word “compassion” suggests a depth of feeling. In fact, the word “compassion” literally means “to feel with. And Jesus touched him. Imagine not feeling a human touch for years and then to experience the gentle touch of the Son of God.
We can come away from this story about the leper with the realization that Jesus still has the power to cleanse when we come to Him and allow Him to touch us with compassion.
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