Chapter 7 - The Untouchables

The human touch

 In 1987 Princess Diana was photographed holding hands with an AIDS patient.  This stunned the world.  It was shocking.  How could someone do this?  In 1987, people were scared of AIDS, some believing that it could be transmitted by casual contact.  And here, not just anyone, but Princess Diana, possibly the next Queen, was holding the hand of a man with AIDS.

 She said, “HIV does not make people dangerous to know, so you can shake their hands and give them a hug.  Heaven knows they need it.”

 The world was changed that day.  Attitudes to the disease changed.  Awareness was raised.  But I suspect the biggest change happened in that man.  For the first time in a while, he might have felt accepted, loved, special.  In a culture of fear, suspicion, even hate, of people like him, with AIDS, for someone to reach out to him in compassion like this must have been life-changing.  Especially when that someone was Princess Diana.

 In the Indian Hindu caste system, there’s a group of people known as Untouchables, they’re at the bottom of the social ladder, and they have little or no chance of climbing higher.  They have generally only ever been given the jobs that are considered beneath everyone else – in the days before sanitation, it was their job to clean up people’s mess…  Mother Teresa of Calcutta saw the untouchables as human beings, when many saw them as less than animals.  As she worked among the slums, the poorest of India’s poor, she touched the untouchables, serving them as she would anyone else.

U can’t touch this

 In Jesus’ day, lepers were the untouchables.  But it stems from the Old Testament, from the Levitical laws.  In Leviticus chapters 13 and 14, there are detailed regulations, describing varieties and symptoms of leprosy, and there’s the protocol for how to deal with it.  Of course, the word leprosy in the Bible doesn’t equate to what we know as leprosy – Hansen’s disease – but it was an umbrella term for various skin conditions, like psoriasis, dermatitis, eczema… These were considered ‘defiling’ skin diseases, which made people unclean to take part in worship.  But the fear was that they might be contagious, and disqualify others from worship too.  Let’s remember, this was in the days before doctors and medicine as we know it.

 So the risk had to be managed.  They couldn’t have it spreading through the camp.  The symptomatic individual would be assessed by the priest.  If it is thought to be a defiling skin disease, they’re excluded or isolated for seven days, and then reassessed.  It seems to me, reading Leviticus, that the hope was for the individual to be reintegrated, and that’s the direction that the legislation heads in.  That wouldn’t always be possible, but I believe that the aim was not primarily to cast people out of the community, the camp, but to protect the camp, the purity and safety of the community – hopefully with as little exclusion as possible.

Out of touch

 Yet, it seems that by the time of Jesus, in an age where certain groups were obsessive about ritual purity, that exclusion became the norm for people with such skin conditions.  And it seems that they were put out of the way, and forgotten about.

 They were very much untouchable.  They were unable to lead normal lives in Jewish society.  They were unemployed and unemployable.  They were excluded from normal family life and on the margins of communities.  If you’ve seen the film Ben Hur, you’ll get a picture of leper colonies, sort of ‘ghettoes’ outside of towns or villages.  The story of the ten lepers in Luke 17 paints a similar picture: how else would Jesus be confronted by ten lepers at once as he enters a village?

 The lepers were put out of sight and out of touch.

Clean

 And then Jesus comes along.  There’s a story in Luke chapter 5, the first leper cleansing reported in the gospels.  It’s found in Matthew, Mark and Luke.  But they each draw out slightly different points, so we’re mainly concentrating on Luke’s version.

 The first thing I want to think about is that the leper says to Jesus, “If you are willing, you can make me clean…”

 I think this is really telling.  First of all, he believes that Jesus can make him clean.  Maybe he’s heard about what Jesus has been doing throughout Galilee, all the miraculous healings…  But as a leper, he’s probably out of the loop, and might not know any of that stuff.  Maybe he just sees that there’s something about Jesus.  Or maybe he thinks that Jesus is a rabbi, and perhaps a rabbi’s word is enough.  After all, the guy doesn’t ask to be healed.  He asks to be made clean.  And I wonder if there’s a difference?  In Leviticus, the priest didn’t heal, he wasn’t expected to.  He was only expected to declare the leper clean or otherwise.  In actual fact, the Greek term used here in Luke, is the same one that the Greek translators of the Old Testament used in Leviticus.  And so perhaps this leper is asking Jesus to say he’s ok.  To tell him, it’s fine, you’re not excluded anymore.  Come back… 

Touched by the hand of God

 Perhaps we’ll never know about that.  But what is really interesting is that Jesus goes far beyond what this leper might have expected.  It makes me think of Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3, about the God who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine…

 Jesus gives him physical healing, and much, much more, as we’ll see.  So if the leper had only been looking for ritual purity, to be declared clean and able to come back to society, he gets more than that.  He’s healed.  In many ways.

What is also really interesting is that the leper says, “If you are willing…”

 Why does he say this?  It suggests to me that he assumes Jesus might not be willing to help him.  And I think this assumption is probably based on his experience, that no one else has been willing.  People just wouldn’t stop.  He’s an untouchable.

  But Jesus stops.  At this point, I’m going to mention a little detail from Mark’s version of this story: it says there that Jesus was moved with pity, or even anger.  I’ve often wondered about this anger thing.  Is Jesus angry at being pestered?  I don’t think so.  I wonder if he’s angry at the assumption that he might not be willing.  I wonder if He’s saying, “Of course I’m willing, why would you even ask?”  Maybe his anger is at a world in which someone has to ask this, a world in which someone is untouchable…

 To return to Luke’s account, the most amazing part of the story is that Jesus stretches out his hand and touches the man, and says, “I am willing.  Be clean.”  And immediately the leprosy is gone.

 This is amazing because in Luke’s gospel, this is the third detailed report of a healing or cleansing miracle.  And yet, in the previous two, Jesus didn’t touch the people who were healed.  He simply said the word, and they were made well.  Because His word is enough.  He’s the God who created the Universe by His word.  He only needs to say it and it happens.  Jesus didn’t need to touch the leper to heal him of his leprosy.  That happens when Jesus gives the word.  But the real transformation probably happened when Jesus touched him.  This is an untouchable.  And Jesus touches him.  This might be the first human touch the man has had for a long time.  For the first time in a long time, he is human.

 In a sense, it probably didn’t matter whether Jesus healed the man of his leprosy or not.  What mattered most is that he touched him.  And in doing that, he not only said to the man, you’re human, you’re part of society – he also said it to everyone else.  Because for Jesus, there are no untouchables.  While the man still had leprosy, Jesus touched him.

 Jesus sees that the leper can change his spots.  Jesus sees that this man is a person, and should be included.  In Jesus’ day that meant he needed to be healed.  But sometimes, it’s everyone else that needs to be healed – changed, challenged, to see past the spots.  Leprosy is only skin deep.  And whatever people’s leprosy might be, Jesus will touch them.  Whatever it is that society thinks makes people untouchable, for Jesus, there are no untouchables.

 There’s a word that is used a lot today: stigma.  The word actually comes from Latin, it means a brand, like the one used on cattle, to mark them.  When someone is stigmatised, they are branded, given a mark.  That’s the key point here: they are given a mark.  It’s put on them by others.  Cows don’t brand themselves.  And people are stigmatised by society, by others.

 Maybe we can think of some untouchables.  Who do we think we can’t go near?  Who do we think is at the bottom of the barrel?  Who are the most excluded from society?  Maybe we need to follow Jesus, and touch them.  In touching, embracing those that no one else will, we can share the love and message of Jesus.

Chapter 6 - To the family of Jesus all God's children may belong

In the family

 I love The Salvation Army.  I grew up in it, it was like my extended family from birth to adulthood.  But what I have found about The Salvation Army is that you very often bump into people outside of it who know someone who is or has been in it.  They say that you’re never more than six feet away from a rat.  It seems that you’re never very far away from a Salvationist, ex-Salvationist, or someone who knows one.

 What I’ve also found is that a large proportion of Salvationists marry other Salvationists.  And so we have a situation where lots of Salvationists know lots of other Salvationists.  It’s a small world in The Salvation Army, and an even smaller gene pool, I like to say.

 So, joking aside, The Salvation Army is – or at least, can be, at its best – one big happy family.  And you might be surprised at who is related to whom, and how, within the family.

 Families can surprise us, by their size, their complexity, and their members.  Have you ever found yourself amazed that two particular people are related?  Have you ever seen one of those documentaries, such as “Fifteen kids and counting”?  If we think that’s a lot, let’s think about rats again for a moment.  A rat can have up to ten or twelve babies in a litter.  And then, a few months later, maybe, they can do it all again.  The greeting cards industry would be much more lucrative in the animal kingdom, I imagine.

A day in the life…

 In Mark chapter 3, we see a day in the life of Jesus.  First of all, this might be the Sabbath, and Jesus may have just healed on the Sabbath – in the synagogue, no less… So a bit of early drama.  Then, maybe the same day, maybe not, he goes off to the lake with the disciples – that’ll be lake Galilee – and he’s followed by huge crowds from Galilee – and beyond, actually.  They come because they’ve heard about what he’s been doing, the healings and so on.  They want to press right in against him, so they can touch him and be healed, whether it’s blindness, demon-possession, or whatever ailment it may be, they all want a piece of Jesus.  These people are limping through life, for some reason or other, and they want to be whole, free, well…

 So Jesus manages to get away from the crowd for a bit, and goes up a mountainside, and he calls out the names of the twelve men he chooses and appoints as his disciples – his students – and apostles – those he will send… We’ll come back to these guys later.

 Then Jesus goes home.  And still he doesn’t get a minute, because the crowd comes together again, “so that they could not even eat…”  No time or room to even eat.  That’s busy.  And so Jesus’ family, hearing about this, go to try and stop this, because people are saying he’s nuts, or as other versions suggest, the family themselves were saying he’s nuts…

 And then we come to the scribes.  These guys are often seen as like pantomime villains in the gospels.  That might be a bit unfair, because they think they’re doing the right thing.  They’re called scribes because they made copies of the scriptures, they wrote them out.  They loved the Hebrew bible, they learned it, they wrote it, they wanted to make sure that others could learn it and live by it like they did.  They’re kind of like police, because, like the Pharisees, they want to make sure that people obey the Law.  But they’re not like the police, in that they didn’t have any real power.

 So they crash this party, to check what’s going on.  And when they see Jesus casting out demons, they conclude that he’s doing this by a demon.  And Jesus pulls them up on this.

 In an earlier chapter, we thought about assumptions.  Well, here the scribes are making assumptions.  They are so arrogant, so presumptuous, that they think the Holy Spirit must be an unclean spirit, because He’s not doing what they expect.  ‘How can this be a God thing?’ they say, ‘because God didn’t tell us He was going to do this…’  And Jesus lets them know that they’re not as close to God as they might think…

All God’s children

 And this is brilliantly juxtaposed with the little bit about the family.  When Jesus’ mother and brothers try to get in the house to see Jesus, someone passes the message to Jesus: “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you”.  And Jesus says, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And he looks at the people around him, and says, “Here are my mother and my brothers!  Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother…”

 Who are they?  Well, who’s in the crowd?  First of all, this is the same crowd, or a similar one, as the one from earlier: the sick, the poor, the broken, the excluded, among others.

 So Jesus looks at this crowd and says these guys are my mother and brothers and sisters…

 I used to think this was really harsh on Jesus’ mother and siblings.  How can he say that these people, and not his own relatives, are his family?  But that’s just it – he doesn’t.  At no point here does Jesus actually disown his family.  He doesn’t say, “They’re not my family, these are!”  He just says, “These are my family…”  Although Jesus maybe does have cause to fall out with his family, if they did call him nuts – he doesn’t.  He’s not having a cheap shot to get back at them.

 I think what he’s doing is telling a kind of parable.  He’s using an illustration.  Someone has said to him, Jesus, you’re family are outside.  And Jesus says, wait: my family is here.  You’re all my family.  They are too, but for me, family goes far beyond flesh and blood, or law.  He’s not excluding anyone, but he’s including everyone… As John Gowans has put it in one of my favourite songs, “To the family of Jesus, all God’s children may belong”…

 Jesus looks at that crowd, and he says, ‘You’re all God’s children.  That makes us family…’ That’s an interesting idea.  That the poor and sick and broken, the lost, already are God’s children.  So maybe it’s not just when people decide to follow Jesus that they become God’s children…

Will

 But some will point out, rightly, that Jesus adds the qualification: “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother…”  They may also note that Matthew’s account of this story has Jesus referring specifically to his disciples, not just the crowds…  To be part of Jesus’ family means doing the will of God.

 So what’s that?  What does that look like?  For the scribes, this meant following the hundreds of rules laid out in the Law.  And we could tie ourselves in knots trying to work out God’s will.  But maybe this will help:  Micah 6 verse 8 says, “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

 In a nutshell, you could say that’s God’s will.  That’s what he wants from people.  Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with God.  Briefly, let’s explore that.  Justice, that’s about doing the right thing, being fair, honest and so on, in all our dealings.  To love kindness means to love being kind, to commit to being kind and generous to people in the same way we commit to anything or anyone we love.  And to walk humbly with God… that’s the thing.  That’s what it’s really about.

 To walk humbly with God means, first of all, we walk with God: we follow Him, we live with Him and for Him.  But to do this humbly means we recognise who he is and who we are.  We recognise that He is God, the Creator, Preserver and Governor of all things.  And we’re not.  We’re sinful, we don’t have a leg to stand on before Him – but He invites us to come anyway.  Come as we are.

 Jesus said in Matthew 11:28, “Come to me all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens…”  Come as you are.  Whoever you are, don’t worry about it.  Come, and walk humbly with your God.

 There’s some surprises in Jesus’ family, all right.  In fact, Jesus tells some scribes and religious types, in Matthew 21, that “the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you…”  Harsh, but true.  Because these people who are messed up know that they’re messed up, and they come humbly to God, as they are.

 To go back to those disciples, the 12, they’re actually a bit surprising themselves.  If we think of the in-groups and out-groups, as the scribes might see it, the 12 includes some classic ‘outies’.  There’s a tax collector (Matthew).  There’s at least 4 ‘uneducated’ fishermen (they’re called uneducated in Acts 4:13).  There’s even a potential terrorist (Simon the Zealot).  At the end of the day, it’s not about what we are.  It’s about whose we are, and who He is.

 So the invitation to us all is: Come.  And walk humbly with your God, alongside all these other surprising people…  Look at your brothers and sisters in the family of Jesus.