This coming Sunday is the 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Thomas Wright points out one element of human nature that might be in play. Some people just can’t keep a secret. Jesus had his reasons for the man to follow the proscriptions of Leviticus. For a person who is blind or lame, their healing is quickly evident to us. For someone burdened with leprosy, most of the affected areas of the skin are not visible to the public – people might be rightly skeptical. But if the person had gone to Jerusalem, received the declaration of healing, and followed the purification ritual, and then returned. All doubt would be removed. But some people just can’t keep a secret.

On another note, if a meta-narrative of all of Scripture is the desire of God to call all people to holiness and into his presence, then the story of the people of God is also one of restoration to a saving knowledge of God. When you read the second part of the Book of Joshua and throughout the Book of Judges you will often encounter the phrase that concludes the current generation had no knowledge of God. That same theme continues throughout the books of Samuel, Kings, Chronicles and in the testimony of the prophets. In each generation this is a need to restore people to the believing people.

In both the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law and the healing of the leper, people are restored from disease (which some believed was the word of the evil one) and restored to the proper place among the people of God. Both stories recount tales of isolation; both healings are accounts of reintegration into family and society – all begun with a touch.

A touch which technically makes Jesus ritually impure. A healing done “outside the line” of the official religion, which if the man skips the Jerusalem presentation, would likely raise more concern and ire within official Jerusalem leadership. No doubt the stories of the synagogue events had already been reported and this event will soon reach their ears.

This healing account serves to terminate the preaching tour of the Galilean villages and provides an entree into five accounts of controversy (Ch. 2:1–3:6). The story also establishes the surpassing nature of the salvation which Jesus brings, for while the Law of Moses provided for the ritual purification of a leper it was powerless to actually purge a man of the disease. In all of the OT only twice is it recorded that God had healed a leper (Num. 12:10 ff.; 2 Kings 5:1 ff.), and the rabbis affirmed that it was as difficult to heal the leper as to raise the dead. The cleansing of the leper indicates the new character of God’s action in bringing Jesus among men. Salvation transcends cultic and ritual regulations, which were powerless to arrest the hold that death had upon the living, and issues in radical healing.

Image credit: 12th-13th century Mosaic | Cathedral of the Assumption, Monreale, Sicily | PS-US