The disease most dreaded by
the Jews of old was leprosy. It was an infectious plague which struck fear and
horror into its victims because there was no hope of a cure.
The fate of the leper was
truly pathetic. As soon as the first signs of the disease appeared, the
afflicted person was debarred from all social life and forced to withdraw from
society. This meant bidding farewell to his family, leaving behind his way of
life, his trade, everything and everybody he had ever known and loved.
It was a farewell as final as
death. In theory anyone could live alone by hunting or cultivating some small
patch of ground away from everyone else. That’s the theory, but the loneliness
must have been crushing. Not only that, but the effects of leprosy meant that
they could not manage to use even simple farm implements or weapons for
hunting. It meant that they often died from starvation besides the dreadful
effects of depression.
The mental anguish and
heartbreak of being completely banished from the local community, was utterly
devastating. In every sense the leper was an outcast, with no hope of enjoying
human companionship or receiving love. The victim was reduced to the status of
a non-person, scavenging for food on the town dump, with a warning bell slung
around his neck.
Leprosy is a good analogy for
sin because it is a dreadful disease that causes separation from the community.
However, sin is even more dreadful because it not just causes separation from
the community but, even worse, it causes separation from God. However, it is
not God or the community that pushes the sinner away; it is the sinner who does
this to himself by his sin.
There was a flurry in the
newspapers some years ago when Pope John Paul gave a series of sermons on hell.
The newspapers sensationalised the fact that the Pope didn’t speak about the
fires of hell and asked if he had abolished them. But what the Pope strongly
underlined was that hell was quite simply nothing other than a state of
separation from God—exactly what today’s readings tell us.
Through sin we voluntarily
withdraw ourselves from God. Through sin we do violence to the bonds of
community. Through sin we destroy our own integrity as human beings.
Hell is definitely still
there; but I’m not sure that thinking of it as a burning fire is very helpful;
it is a state of being but without God. It is the opposite of heaven, which is
the state of blessed union with God for all eternity.
However, there is sin and
sin. Not all sin is at the same level. Although all sin causes hurt not all sin
has the same degree of seriousness.
That sounds like good news
and so it is up to a point; but it isn’t real Good News with a capital G and a
capital N. Just because there are big sins and small sins it doesn’t mean that
we can do whatever we like as long as the sins we indulge in don’t fall into
the major category.
Sin is a slippery slope, and
it is easy to get drawn in. It is easy to enjoy its transitory pleasures and then
wake up to find that you have become habituated to a sinful way of life.
The real good news is that
there is always a way back. Just as the leper was cured of his sickness through
his encounter with Jesus, we too can become cured from our sinfulness through
turning back to him.
Like the leper on his knees
pleading with Jesus to heal him we too from time to time need to get down on
our knees before the living God and ask for forgiveness of our sins. We then
will experience the healing touch of our Saviour and be lifted up whole again.
Through the sacrament of
reconciliation we can experience this powerful action of God; we can receive
forgiveness and be restored to the state of union with him and our brothers and
sisters in the Christian community.
To go back to the Gospel, it
is worth looking at this leper. He says to Jesus, ‘You can cure me if you want
to.’ That’s an odd thing to say. Not, ‘You can cure me,’ but, ‘You can cure me
if you want to.’ The inference is that Jesus might not want to cure him. He
sounds like one of those nasty persistent kind of beggars that you occasionally
come across who are ungrateful no matter how much you do for them.
Jesus says, ‘Of course, I
want to’ and reaches out to heal him. But then he sternly tells the beggar not
to tell anyone about it. One can only suppose that Jesus told him not to tell
anyone because he knew that he would be swamped with others wanting healing and
indeed as you will see in next Sunday’s Gospel that’s exactly what happened.
But we can hardly ascribe
such a base motive to Jesus. We do know that these healings weren’t the most
important part of his ministry; he also came to teach and he surely knew that
the most important thing of all would be his death and resurrection.
But I wonder if here we can
uncover a case of Jesus’ sense of humour which is so often hidden under the
dusty layers of history.
Here is this loquacious and
awkward leper who asks for healing in a rather barbed sort of way. Jesus goes
ahead and heals him but then very deliberately tells him to keep quiet about it
knowing full well that this was something quite impossible for him to do. Then
this awkward character, who had probably been sour enough before he became a
leper, runs around waving his hands proclaiming his healing. Jesus must surely
have had a broad smile across his face.
I’m also pretty certain that
those who heard him complaining bitterly over the years were laughing behind
their hands at this change of tune. But they would also have stopped to think
about this Jesus, this extraordinary man who had reached out to heal this leper
who so little deserved it.
Of course, everything I am
saying is pure conjecture and I haven’t a shred of evidence for any of it. Only
to say, that I think that when we read the Gospels we often fail to take into
account Jesus’ sense of humour. But more importantly, I think that we need to
look below the surface more frequently and use our intuition to work out what
it is that Jesus would actually do in any given set of circumstances.
Most importantly of all, of
course, we have to work out what he is saying to us in our particular
circumstances right this minute.
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