Sunday Reflection: Leapin' Lepers!

We're a little late this week, having taken time off from our hectic schedule to bury a family member. It was a temporal work of mercy, emphasis on the work.

Welcome to Leper Sunday.

The first reading gives us a bit of Leviticus dealing with dealing with lepers. Basically, leprosy is bad news. You get it, and you're outta here. The ancient Hebrews lived 3000 years before Louis Pasteur and the germ theory, but you didn’t have to be a biologist to know that disease spreads. Getting lepers out of town was one of those cruelties that was a kindness to the non-infected. I would have wanted them out, and you would have too.

And we would not have been kind with the ones that wanted to dally. "He shall dwell apart, making his abode outside the camp,” says the levitical code. And don't let the tent flap hit you on the butt on the way out.

Then, of course, Jesus comes along to wreck the whole system.

Here's the play by play:

A leper came to Jesus (Yoikes! Back away, Jesus!)and kneeling down (Good. He's not coming any closer. Move! Move! Move!) begged him and said,
“If you wish, you can make me clean.” (Fat chance, L-man! Take a powder!) Moved with pity, (What? Not disgust or fear?) he stretched out his hand, (You mean on purpose?) touched him, (Yewwwww!!!) and said to him, I do will it. Be made clean.”

What's interesting is that the leper gets healed, and heads into town -- where he hasn't been welcome in who knows how long. Meanwhile, Jesus gets so popular that he "remained outside in deserted places."

It's hard to miss the irony of the two men -- healer and healed -- changing places, isn't it? But rather than suffering the loneliness of the leper, he turns the desert into an attraction: "and people kept coming to him from everywhere."
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Let us pray.

Poor pathetic us. We are such losers, so disliked, so misused and abandoned. But you feel pity for us and stretch yourself to meet us where we lie, squalid and covered with sores, abandoned by those who have every reason to shun us. Your touch makes whole what our families, friends and communities cannot. Even when we are turned out for the good of everyone, you are our friend. You take every risk to show us kindness.

May we show even a little of that kindness and pity to those we keep at arm's length (or worse) for whom there is no healing: the crazy and the dependent; the soul-suckers and the narcissists; the manipulators and the cowards; the bullies and the betrayers. We can’t save them, and we can’t change them and we can’t abide them.

Those we cannot heal: may we touch them
Those we cannot touch: may we reach out to them;
Those we cannot reach out to: may we pity them;
That all may feel some small measure of your love.

Amen.