15 February 2015 - be made clean

“The one who bears the sore of leprosy
shall keep his garments rent and his head bare,
and shall muffle his beard;
he shall cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean!’

On our own this is all we can do with our faults. We cannot fix them but we must acknowledge them. We must keep ourselves separated. We can never really be united. We dwell "outside the camp". The leprosy of sin is indeed infectious. It does indeed cause pain and suffering as it spreads. On our own all we can do is to minimize the damage. We quarantine ourselves even as our hearts long for relationship.

But we are not on our own. Jesus comes to set us free. We get so used to this life of minimizing the damage of our faults that we have a hard time believing it. We are so used to living in such a way that we hurt as few as possible yet remaining unchanged that we can scarcely believe that such change can happen. But in Jesus it can happen. Jesus wants it to happen.

"If you wish, you can make me clean."
Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand, 
touched him, and said to him, 
"I do will it. Be made clean."

We are transformed by Jesus. We no longer live to minimize the damage. Instead, "whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God." We do try to avoid giving offense to anyone. We do try to please everyone just as Paul says. This is very different from how we are without Jesus. Rather than trying to hurt the fewest number of people by isolating ourselves we are trying to spread the glory of God to the benefit of the many, "that they may be saved." Rather than a concern that we infect people with the leprosy of sin we now seek to spread the good news. We can say with Paul, "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ." We have a new infection worth spreading!

When we experience this healing from sin that Jesus offers we know the blessing of the LORD:

Blessed is he whose fault is taken away,
whose sin is covered.
Blessed the man to whom the LORD imputes not guilt,
in whose spirit there is no guile.

Like the man with leprosy in the gospel reading we can't help but be "Glad in the LORD and rejoice".

The man went away and began to publicize the whole matter.
He spread the report abroad

How wonderful it is. And so we remember simple secret of the leper: "I turn to you, Lord, in time of trouble, and you fill me with the joy of salvation."