besquared.org Blog

Today’s Text
For the sake of textual clarity it is worth commenting on the instructions to go to the priest. I once taught a student who ws convinced that this instruction to show himself to the priest was designed to broadcast Jesus ability and to mock the inability of the priests. AS he put it, “This was Jesus way to say, ‘In your face!’ to the priests.” I think that this is very likely not the case.

Much more likely is that we see Jesus here encouraging the man to do what was necessary and customary to demonstrate to the community that he was clean. Leviticus offer detailed instructions for demonstrating freedom from leprosy and other skin diseases. As N.T. Wright comments in “Luke for Everyone,” if he had just gone home and said, “Don’t worry everybody I met a traveling preacher and he says that I am all better now,” he would not have been believed. Instead he goes through the official channels and offers the right sacrifices both to give glory to God and demonstrate to the community that he has been healed.

What I am more excited by is the overturning of the basic theory of cleanliness (both ritual and hygenic) that this healing demonstrates. In the kitchen the basic rule of cleanliness is this, if something dirty touches something clean then both things are now dirty. This is how ritual cleanliness works as well. If you touch a corpse you are unclean until you have done the right things to get clean again. If you touch someone who is unclean then you are unclean. (It is worth noting that all the stuff they did for ritual cleanliness pales in comparison with what we do just for basic hygiene in the modern world.)

This concept grew beyond ritual cleanliness in powerful and socially significant ways. There is a saying, “Bad company corrupts good morals.” And it is a saying because it is at least partly true. This is a moral and social expansion of the theory of cleanliness. If someone hangs around immoral people they must be immoral. The Pharisees were well known and admired for their adherence to not only the ritual laws of cleanliness, but also these broader social implications of this whole theory of keeping clean. To stay nice and clean they not only didn’t touch dirty things, they did not socialize with dirty or immoral people.

Luke wants us to know in ways that are obvious and blunt that Jesus has overturned this entire theory of cleanliness. For Jesus and consequently for Christians a new law is at work. Now when clean meets unclean, the clean stays clean and the unclean gets cleaned. The old arithmetic is undone. Now obviously in the kitchen the rules are the same but everywhere else things are changed. Jesus touches lepers and not only is he not made unclean, the leper is cleansed. Jesus associates with notorious sinners and not only is he not sullied, they are reformed. Somehow the power of Christ is neither diluted or corrupted as it contacts the dirt and disease and immorality around it.

Purity was once maintained by a strategy of separation, but no there is a new strategy. We stay pure by staying connected, to one another and most especially to the source of all purity, Jesus. And once we are connected we can confidently venture out into a unclean world knowing that a new arithmetic is at work. Our clothes cannot be stained by the blood of the world for they are washed in a blood that is stronger still.

The church always lives in danger of falling back to the old laws of cleanliness. We always are tempted to maintain purity through self-imposed ghettos. But when we do this we belie the power of Christ.

I will offer one very very important comment about how we embody this reality. Each community and each person must be very honest about the areas of their life that are not yet clean or that have been dirty in the past. Basically I mean what Paul says when he advises, “if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted.” I certainly don’t want to advise any of us to run off into a situation where we will fall to temptation.

But nevertheless, I think that in general the church today is too timid to engage the unclean world in love. We are too ready to build fort when we should be building a mission post. If we are connected to one another, and connected to the source of purity, then we do not need to fear touching the lepers. For Chist’s purity is meant for all people. Even an unclean man like me.

-Ethan