“This leper…I imagine him tired of accepting the debilitating disease which afflicts him day after day. [In Luke’s gospel it says] he is ‘full of leprosy’ — covered with leprosy. There is no reversing this. He is beyond the point of healing, but not beyond God’s healing. I imagine he must have caught word of who Jesus is and the mighty works he was doing. We don’t know how long he knew about Jesus, but the remote possibility of being healed must have occurred to him. He must have pondered it and turned it over in his heart. ‘I’m tired of just accepting that I am beyond repair.’ Some initial faith moved him towards the Lord—out of isolation and alienation and into the city he was forbid to enter. He took a great risk of being ridiculed and rebuked by others to come near to Jesus.”
“Reflecting more on the backstory of this leper. His sickness has become an obstacle to him communing with God in public worship (and therefore with others). He is truly an outcast, separated from society. I imagine he thought back on his childhood years before he was sick when he got to go to the synagogue and to the temple. Hearing about the Jesus who can heal, he must have doubted at first—thinking he was a lost cause. But, over time, and we don’t know how long, that doubt turned into an initial faith and a faint hope. Maybe he would one day enter the city in spite of all of this with the hopes of running into Jesus. And this is exactly what happened eventually in one great act of courageous vulnerability. The very thing that kept this man (Jewish in his roots) from communing with God brings him face to face with the God-man, Jesus Christ.”
“‘Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.’ That’s nice, but is it too good to be true for me? Is God that good when I am that unworthy to receive it? His shame does not stifle his prayer. He shows his wound and brings it to the One who can heal. Christ touches the leper because He does not fear our contagion or pollution, but has power over it.”
“He is beyond healing, beyond a cure; He is helpless in his debilitating sickness. He heart about Jesus, the one who heals, yet he must have doubted for some time until something in him started hoping for a little healing. His stumbling about in his pitiful state must have brought him to the desperation that is ripe for God’s workings. The beginnings of faith awakened in him a desire to go to Jesus and the window of opportunity came. He takes a great risk by stepping out of his isolation from others by going into town to seek Jesus; others will ridicule him for it, but he is driven by faith in the One he has begun to believe can heal. He sees Jesus and Jesus sees him; he falls on face—an act of worship followed by an honest desperation as he begs Jesus to heal him and make him clean again. All is now on the line, but he has moved Jesus by his heartfelt faith and his pitiful plea, and our Lord has compassion on him. The very thing that kept this leper from community and public worship has now brought him face to Face with the living God who wants and wills that he be clean, and the Lord grants him what he desires for his vulnerability and ardent faith.”
