Gloria Dei Lutheran Church | Urbandale, Iowa

Lenten Worship: Hands of the Savior: Hands that Heal

Pastor Phillips’ Sermon

Lent Service, March 5, 2009

Tonight we tell the story from the bible of a person who lived on the outskirts of society, a social outcast who lived apart from the vibrant hustle and bustle of everyday life. We don’t know his name but he bears a label that clearly identifies him. He is called a leper.

Sometimes it reminds me of the people in our society who live between the cracks of our culture. We don’t know their names but we have some label that identifies them very clearly, the homeless.

Let’s take a look tonight and see how Jesus interacts with this person living on the fringe of society. It’s interesting to see His behavior and to examine the actions of the person who came to Him. Jesus had been traveling throughout the region of Galilee, “preaching the Good News,” it says in the bible. He’s preaching the Good News of the kingdom of God and calling people to repent because the kingdom of heaven is near, repent and believe the Good News. Wouldn’t it have been great to be there with Him, to listen to His voice as He preached and proclaimed those wonderful words that set people free?

I often try to imagine what it would have been like to walk with Jesus and to be there when different things happened, like this occasion. He’d been preaching in Galilee and, along with that preaching, He’d been casting out demons and healing the sick. Both of those signs or miracles were signs that identified Him as the Messiah, the anointed one of God. And as He is traveling about, a man approaches him. This man was afflicted with a terrible disease described in the bible as leprosy. Now leprosy can be any infectious skin disease but the ravages of this disease were horrible. Now we’ve seen the biblical movies where they show lepers and things like that and it’s just a terrible thing. Their fingers are melting away with illness. Their limbs could barely function. And just imagine the stench that accompanied them as they went about their daily routines. This man approaches Jesus and he’s walking towards Jesus. I can just imagine him having difficulty moving around. He’s walking towards Jesus and he falls down on those aching knees before Jesus because his condition is so desperate and so hopeless that he is humbled to his core. And from his knees, he calls out, “Jesus, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”

Leprosy was a terrible affliction that went far beyond the physical problems. In the bible, Leviticus 13 and 14, it talks about skin diseases and leprosy and it talks about the fact that the outward illness is a symbol of inward sin. And a person who manifested an outward skin disease like leprosy was unclean and defiled. So they were not allowed to come into the community of God’s people. They were not allowed to participate in worship at the synagogue or at the temple. They were not allowed to interact with their friends and family and their loved ones. In fact, they were cut off from the family and forced to live in communities of people with similar conditions like their own.

The bible says that if this person comes near you and touches you, now you’re defiled. Now you’re unclean. And so that’s why society pushed them away. It kept them away from the community. It kept them away from children and the elderly.

Here comes this man, outcast by everyone, told day after day that he’s worthless and hopeless, treated as if he’s less than human and he presents himself before Jesus and I wonder what was it in his heart of hearts that disagreed with what everybody else was saying and said, “I’m not hopeless. I’m not worthless. And maybe this Jesus can help me.”

It’s remarkable, isn’t it? With all those Levitical prohibitions to keep him away from people, to keep him away from God, with all of those things, he still came. It didn’t matter what the religious leaders said. It didn’t matter what his family and friends said. He came and he knew that if Jesus was willing, he could be healed. And so he presents himself before Jesus. I can’t imagine the pain just getting down on those knees. He presents himself before Jesus. And imagine how all the disciples around were reacting when they saw this wretch coming toward Jesus. They didn’t want to be unclean. They didn’t want to be defiled so they fell back. But Jesus didn’t. He stood firm and when He saw the man and He heard his cry for help, He was moved, moved deep in His soul with compassion. And instead of turning away and telling the man to get away from Him, He reached out and touched him. He touched the untouchable. And He said, “Be clean.” Katharistheti in Greek. Be clean. It wasn’t a passive kind of thing. It was a command with authority. Jesus said, “Be clean.” And the scripture says, “Immediately, the leprosy left him.” The disease had no choice but to yield to the authority and power of Jesus to heal.

Jesus had the man stand up and he warned him, “Don’t go tell anyone.” Of course, that’s like reverse psychology, isn’t it? He’s going to go tell everyone he sees. An incredible thing has happened in his life. The disease was life changing and the cure was even more transforming. Now he knew who Jesus was. He knew what God could do for him. He knew that God was willing to help him in his wretched condition. It didn’t matter if everyone else turned their back on him. It didn’t matter because Jesus stood firm and touched him with His healing hand.

Now we can make a lot of applications from that story, can’t we? To our own lives, self examination. That’s what Lent is all about, right? In the season of Lent, we think about the sufferings of Christ, the cost that was paid for our sins and, as we think about His sufferings and that it was for our sins, we start to reflect on our sins and think about them and feel bad about them. There’s something beautiful, though, about godly sorrow. The sorrow of the man with leprosy, there’s something beautiful about that broken-ness before Jesus. The bible says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” It worked for the leper, didn’t it? He fell on those aching knees, humbly before Jesus and Jesus blessed him. God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.

And as we think about the season of Lent and our sins and things like that, we know that our sin is a terrible disease, just like leprosy. Our sin damages us in our relationship with God. It brings all kind of pain and suffering into our lives and into the lives of people around us. And just as this leper was humiliated by his condition and by the people around him who said, “Stay away. You live over there,” our sin humiliates us when we get real with God about it. We think about those things that we think, say and do. We’re ashamed. And we see that we have a lot in common with somebody with leprosy. And because of our sin, we’re untouchable, we are wretched and we desperately need Jesus.

The great news is that, just like the leper approaching Jesus with that desperate question, “If you are willing, you can make me whole, you can clean me, you can save me,” when we are humble before God and confess those things that we’ve been hiding in our hearts, hoping no one would notice, hoping we could kind of fake our way through life, when we confess those things to God, He reaches out to us like Jesus did to that leper. And He says, “I am willing. Be clean.” Because of what Jesus did on the cross, “I am willing. Be clean.” Amen.