Friends,
our Gospel for today has to do with Jesus’ healing of a leper. Leprosy
frightened people in ancient times—as contagious and mysterious diseases
frightened people up until modern times. But more than this, it
rendered someone unclean and therefore incapable of engaging in the act
of worship. It is not accidental that the person who should do the
examining of the patient in ancient Israel should be the priest.
The
man who knelt before Jesus and begged for a cure was not simply
concerned about his medical condition; he was an Israelite in exile from
the temple—and hence he was a very apt symbol of the general condition
of scattered, exiled, wandering Israel. In curing him, Jesus was,
symbolically speaking, gathering the tribes and bringing them back to
the worship of the true God.
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