Luke 5:10-14

He huddled against the shaded wall of sundried brick, and peered through the dense green of the Terebrinth tree, watching the road Messiah must travel as he left the village, and thought about his funeral, all those years ago.  The sound of his mother’s weeping still echoed in his dreams.  How strong his step had been then, when he lost his life, left his home and joined the company of the leprous dead.  How unlike the shuffle now on his rotting feet, that brought him back to the village, to this hiding place in the shadow.

A band of men, late to their work in the olive groves, hurried past and he cowered deeper into the corner, hidden by the drooping branches.  He should not have been there, at the edge of town, wearing his disease and uncleanness like a garment of gray ash.  He was a man of the wasteland, of places inhabited only by wild beasts and lepers, a man of wasted life and wasting flesh.  Already his fingers were reduced to stubs, with a great open sore on one hand where his knuckles should have been.  He had not seen himself in many years, avoiding all reflections, but he knew he had grown grotesque, his nose absorbed into his face and gone, his face now a mass of lumps and nodules.  One eye had grown glassy and blind and rolled uselessly upward.  With his remaining eye, he peered down the road, waiting for the Messiah.

The leper heard them before he saw them, talking and laughing the way friends do when traveling.  A band of twenty men were leaving the village, with that many more, men and women, walking them to the edge of town.  As they drew near, he pressed against the wall, his heart pounding.  He was unclean and contagious.  His presence in the village was a crime.  His appearance was ghastly and inhumanly disfigured.  The law demanded that he show himself from a distance and cry out, “unclean, unclean.”  The penalty for failure was stoning.  Long years of decay, of isolation from the community, long years of crying “unclean” left him nearly unable to show himself.  To approach the group was inviting death.

But he was dead already, just waiting for the disease to finish its work.  And the tales of healing passed among the lepers brought hope and more than hope for this man.  As a child, his mother had told him stories of the coming Messiah and the wonders that would accompany him and he was convinced this man, whom he had neither heard nor seen, was that Messiah.  Nothing would be too difficult for the Holy One of God.  He hobbled into the road – the men were close enough to touch – and fell to his knees, with his face to the ground.

The crowd recoiled before him.  “Leper!” someone cried, as if they had encountered a snake in the road, “unclean!”

Someone cursed.  “He is full of leprosy,” he shouted, “get away from him!”

The man lifted his face to see the crowd, crowding backward, pressing against the walls of the houses that lined the road.  He saw their faces contorted with fear and disgust, and some, twisted in unreasoning hatred.  One already had a stone in hand and the leper winced in anticipation.

Save one face.  One man had not backed away.  When the others had retreated, he had walked forward and now stood immediately before the leper, between the leper and the stones.  His gaze was fixed upon the man and his face was calm.  There was no fear in his eyes, though leprosy was a terrible and terminal curse; no loathing, though the leper was a loathsome creature, a mass of raw flesh in the dust of the road;  no judgment, though the man on his knees before him was now lawless and surely bore the curse of some grievous sin.  There was peace in his eyes and great gentleness.  He looked like a man near weeping, as if he had suffered some great loss.  Surely, this must be the Messiah.

“If you are willing,” the leper rasped.  He voice was thick with fear and as a consequence of the disease.  “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”

Jesus knelt in the road before the man and reached out his hand.  “No!” came a voice from behind, “You cannot touch him!”

Jesus seemed not to hear.  “I am willing,” Jesus said and he touched the leper.  He took the scarred and broken stumps of hands into his own and fingers appeared.  Skin grew over the open wounds and strength grew in the muscle.  Jesus touched his face, smoothed it with his fingers, and it grew smooth.  Ropey lumps and twisted growths the size of grapes melted under the new skin.  His eye flickered into place and opened unto sight.  The gray stench of disease faded like morning mist around him and he was made new.  “I am willing,” said the Messiah, “Be clean.”