“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.” Leo Buscagli
Emil Nolde, 1926
A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” Jesus was indignant. He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed. Mark 1:40-42
"Jesus always seeks to restore the social wholeness denied to the sick/impure by the symbolic order. That is why his healing of the sick/impure is virtually interchangeable with his social intercourse with them." Ched Myers
Turning a life around
The shocking approach by the leper is topped by the even more shocking touch of him by Jesus. It rendered him contaminated. In Walter Wink's words Jesus regarded 'holiness/wholeness as contagious'. Jesus crosses a dark and menacing threshold. His indignation is directed at the social exclusion meted out by society and by extension through the religious laws and authorities to God himself. His systematic inclusion of the sick and the impure is almost exhaustive; the lame, the blind, the deaf and dumb, women, tax collectors and prostitutes. He recognises both the depth of self-doubt and guilt perpetrated and the sheer weight of corporate, community and societal pressure.
I have seen what you want;
it is there, a Beloved of infinite tenderness.- Saint Catherine of Siena
Jesus gets to work and heals. His cradling of the figure's head underlines the ongoing nature of his care, of his inclusion, and of changing people's perceptions of God.
In what context do I feel an outcast, don't fit? Where has that gone for me? What would Jesus's movement towards me be?