The Galilean Ministry at Various Cities, 5.12-16

With four disciples in tow, Jesus set out to visit various towns and villages sprinkled around Galilee. He began his mission by revealing his identity to the people of Nazareth and from that moment forward he has traveled around the region to teach and heal others. It seems every time he finds a few moments alone the crowds find him, and still he receives every person with grace and treats them with dignity and love. Today we find Jesus in a town so small and unimportant Luke doesn’t even bother to name it. The leper Jesus meets there, however, is about to become a part of Biblical history.

It’s only a few verses long and I can’t say I’ve ever heard a sermon preached on it. The town is so unremarkable that Luke doesn’t even name it. It is somewhere in the region of Galilee, a region mostly home to farmers, fishermen and craftsmen. It is thought that many from the region would travel to larger cities to work on Roman building projects, returning home on weekends to spend time with the family. The people are hard-working and the communities close knit. Word, i.e. gossip, spread quickly. For all these reasons it was the perfect place for Jesus to start his ministry.

The region, the unnamed city and even the miracle itself appears to lack anything sensational. A man with a skin disease came to Jesus for help. The Bible refers to this as leprosy and some have incorrectly equated this with modern day Hansen’s Disease. While similar, there are characteristics that do not align and Biblical leprosy (which thankfully is unknown in the world today). In the Bible, leprosy can turn a person’s hair white and can sometimes clear up on its own, conditions not seen in Hansen’s disease. Also, Hansen’s disease causes numbness in the affected area, a symptom never mentioned in Scripture. While this is a natural disease not associated with a particular sin of judgment, it made the person ceremonially unclean and the afflicted were commanded to live apart to keep others from getting infected (Leviticus 13.45-48). So the very fact this man approaches Jesus is a violation of religious law. Jesus makes no mention of this, nor does he condemn the man because the leper came to him in faith.

The faith of leper is never mentioned but is on display for all to see. He carefully approaches Jesus and bows down before him, touching his face to the ground. This is a gesture many would use when coming before a king and reveals that the leper believes Jesus to be the Messiah. The man makes no demands nor does he presume that Jesus will be heal him even though he has obviously heard of Jesus’ abilities. Notice the man’s plea: “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean” (emphasis mine). Jesus is willing and with the spoken word the man’s disease is gone. Truly Jesus’ authority extends over all things!

The nameless leper from a nameless town found healing because of his faith in Jesus, and it is this faith that Jesus is most concerned with. His desire is for all people everywhere to have this kind of faith. For this reason, he tells the leper to tell no one of how he was healed and instead to follow the ceremonial cleansing ritual at the nearest synagogue. As far as we know, the man did everything Jesus asked but the witnesses were far from silent.

What did Jesus’ instruction to the leper involve? First an inspection by a priest must be made of the man’s body outside of town. Then a sacrifice involving a bird and sprinkling of blood and water from a hyssop branch. The man must bath and cut off all his hair and not re-enter his tent for seven days (presumably to keep from being re-infected). On the eighth day he was to shave all his body hair, including his eye brows and make a second sacrifice involving two lambs. For a complete description of the ceremony see Leviticus 14.1-35.

We know that when Jesus heals someone of their affliction that the healing is complete, so why bother with the old ritual? For two reasons. The first was to prove to the townspeople the man was healed. A known leper cannot simply enter back into the community without the priest’s blessing. The second reason is that even God does not negate God’s own law. Until Jesus had completed his mission the law was still in effect, meaning that Jesus commanded the faithful man to obedience and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.