The Bible – especially in the Old Testament – speaks, many times, on the problem of leprosy. When it speaks of lepers, the word means a disease of the skin that can include different types of diseases. In other cases, the same word means stains on clothes or walls, something that we could call today fungus or mold.
In the law that God gave to the Israelites, a leprous person we considered unclean. (Lv 13:2-3) The disease was scene as a plague: “At times the plague was sent by God to reprove the disobediente people.” (cf Lv 14:34)
The instructions over the leper, obviously, served to counter an infectious disease, even centuries before scientists understood how diseases spread.
But there is a second – and more important – motive to speak so on the leprosy of the Old Testament. There are, at least, two spiritual lessons on the order on leprosy:
1. The importance of obedienced. Among the last teachings given by Moses to the people of Israel are these words: “Keep yourself from the plague of leprosy and take diligent care of doing all the Levite priests taught you; as I have ordered them, you observe them carefully.” (cf Dt 24:8)
The need to distinguish between the clean and the unclean. The key to understanding this significance of leprosy appears in Leviticus 14:54-57: “This is the law on all sorts of plague of leprosy, of the leprosy of clothes, of houses, of swelling, of pustules and of spots to teach when something is clean or unclean. This is the law of leprosy.”
God used physical things – it may be diseases, questions of hygene or differences among animals – to teach spiritual principles.
When the uncleanness of leprosy was disocvered, there were not forces to free oneself from it. Leprous persons were publicly identified and removed from the congregations to not contaminate others. When the attempts to purify houses was not successful, it was necessary to fell the whole house to not allow the plague to spread. (cf. Lv 14:43-45)
The leper who drew near to Jesus asked for His purification and not for His cure. Mark stresses the human feeling of compassion that Jesus felt for the leper in his exclusion. Jesus trangresses the law, touches the leper and frees his leprousy and impurity. Sending the man, already purified, to the priest as testimony against the religious power that claimed for itself the right to purify. It characterized the action of Jesus: Liberator and Infringer of the Law.
This narrative reveals the effort of Jesus to not simply cure, but in the social inclusion of the marginalized. The leper represented the excluded and marginalized by an elitist and oppressive system, in which the exploiter humiliates the exploited to inhibit him and submit him to his exploitation.
The same law on leprosy does not apply today, but the principles that we learn from it have great importance for us.
We should be obedient to all instructions that the Lord gave us. And when the uncleanness of sin invades our life, we should act with urgency to eliminate it, even if it is necessary to take radical measures: “And if your right eye gives you scandal, take it out and cast it from yourself; for it is better that you lose one of your members than your whole body is cast into the fire. And if you right hand gives you scandal, cut it off and cast it from yourself, for it is better that you lose one of your members then all your body is cast into the fire.” (cf. Mt 5:29-30)
[This is Jesus using hyperbole and should not be taken literally.-ed.]
May we be holy for the Glory of Our Lord, who is perfect and holy. (1Pt 1:14-16; 2 Cor 6:17-18)
Father Bantu Mendonça
Fr. Bantu writes from Angola Africa
translated from Portuguese