Something Else.

But there’s another reason that we need to take the Bible at least somewhat seriously.  If you’re not a Christian, this will not apply to you as much, and you have my permission to skip this entry.  This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, and I want to share it here, because I think it changes some things.

The Gospel accounts are filled with people being healed, with seeing miracles, with interacting with Jesus nearly continuously.  (See my last entry for how this may give more creedence to the Gospel accounts.)  After 2000 years, it’s easy to gloss over the stories, to miss the deeply human aspects ingrained in them.  But those aspects are there.  I want to deal with one instance specifically, because it’s both gripping and poignant, at least to me.  If you have a Bible, go to Luke 5:12-26.  If you don’t have a Bible, hit CTRL + N to get yourself a new window, then click here.

Alright folks.  First, the man with leprosy.  It’s important to note here the same note that the Bible does on 5:12–the man had a skin disorder, not necessarily the same as what we call leprosy today.  More than likely, it was something closely akin to ecxema.  I’m not sure if any of your have ecxema, but I do.  It’s terrible.  The itching, the cracking, the bleeding, the scratching.  It’s a constant bother, and it’s kind of gross, your skin just kind of falls off…not like whole appendages, just something like what happens when you get a sunburn and peel…only constantly and more like a rash.  I tell you that to tell you this:  This man who got healed went through what I’m describing and more.  Not only would he have been stuck with this disease, but society would have banished him for it.  Under Jewish ceremonial law, anyone who had a skin disorder of this type was characterized as ‘unclean.’  That meant that they couldn’t go to the temple and worship, or hold a job, or relate to anyone other than those who had the disease as well.  They were literally outcasts.  When walking through the towns and villages, they would have carried some kind of a percussion instrument they constantly played to alert people to their presence and been forced to yell, “UNCLEAN!!” all around so that no one would touch them and themselves become unclean.  No physical contact.  No touching. No interaction from anyone, save maybe and occasional family member coming to see if you’d died.  Lepers lived outside the towns, because they were not allowed inside.  Children probably made fun of them and threw rocks at them.  The adults weren’t much better.  And this man lived with this everyday.

Look at verse 13.  Jesus reached out and touched the man.  He touched him!  No one ever touched this man.  No one.  To do so would have been going against thousands of years of social custom, and subjecting yourself to the same degradation.  Yet Jesus touched the man.  In verse 12, we see the man fall before Jesus, asking him, essentially, to be willing to heal him.  In other words, the man is asking not only for healing, but to be simply acknowledged as a person by Jesus.  Jesus, we see in verse 13, not only acknowledges the man, but touches him and heals him, then commands him to rejoin the culture he’d been ostracized from for so long–an all this while telling the man to keep it to himself.  Jesus has no desire to see himself be glorified…he only wanted to help the man.

I go through all of that because I want to get to this.  Was this day just a story for the man with leprosy?  If he were still alive today, would he just gloss over this story?  I’ll bet not.  This was fiercely personal for the man who received healing.  He would have been plainly visible to all who saw him that something incredible had happened in his life, and in fact, Jesus tells the man to go and be cleansed by same law that condemned him, as a testimony to them.   It’s no wonder that Jesus’ following continued to grow.  If you were his brother or sister, and your outcast brother came back and showed you his healing, what would do?  Yawn and go back to work?  No!  You’d be amazed.  You’d want the whole story.  I think sometimes people miss how intensely personal the stories in the Gospels are.  Jesus dealt with real people, with real problems, in a real setting, in a real way.  Do we do as well?  Do we even grasp the completeness and the lifechanging power of this kind of story?  The story in Luke I’ve just expounded takes all of five verses…but it changed a man’s life, and likely more than just his.  It’s important that we remember this when we pick up our Bibles.  The people in those stories are real–just as real as you or I.  We should take them as such, because the people to whom the Gospels were written would have been able to go and talk to them about the stories, just like you or I go to our parents or grandparents to hear how things were…things they actually saw. 

Goodnight everyone, it’s sleepy time.

(If you want extra credit, read the story after it, and try to imagine yourself as the paralytic.  It might change the story for you some.)  Blessings.