Deep and Wide: Matthew 8:2-3

(from Spring Clean: Devotions for Lent, Day 24)

A man with leprosy came to [Jesus] and bowed down before Him and said, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.”

Jesus reached out with His hand and touched him, saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.” And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. Matthew 8:2-3

By the time Jesus began His ministry in Judea, the Jewish people had been living for about 1300 years under the Law. This included over 600 commandments in the Written Law plus an unspecified number of Oral Laws, which supplemented how to live out the Written Law. The average citizen would not have had the time or access to commit such extensive rules to memory, so the people relied on the Sadducees, Pharisees, scribes, and priests to interpret the laws for them. Instead of fulfilling their obligations to teach and care for the people and build a society united in faith, the religious leaders wielded the Law as a cruel force of elitism, elevating their own comforts over the wellbeing of those they were supposed to serve. In Jesus’s day, the practice of purity laws not only physically separated lepers, but also encouraged socially reviling them. As a symbol of sin and judgment, leprosy was presumed to be deserved by the afflicted, to the point that even (or especially) rabbis of that time actively derided and expressed disgust in the presence of a leper.¹

It becomes particularly noteworthy, then, that the first of Jesus’s healing miracles recorded in the New Testament is the encounter in today’s passage with a leper. For one thing, while leprosy was a well known condition, being fully healed of it―even among God’s people―was still practically unheard of. Yet somehow, this man in today’s passage knew Jesus could do it; his only question was whether Jesus would. He had faith in Jesus’s power, but no certainty of Jesus’s concern and attention, or perhaps doubt in his own value to receive it. Jesus, of course, did not hesitate to assure the man of both, and his choice of words here feels significant: “I am willing,” an affirmation of Jesus’s heart, combined with “be cleansed,” an invitation to participation by the leper himself. Jesus didn’t say “I cleanse you” (though it was true) or “you are cleansed” (a passive statement of emerging fact). Rather, he empowered the leper to choose healing, to embrace it, and to exist in it from that moment forward.

Not only that, but as Jesus imparted these words of restoration, he actually touched the man―a clear violation of the purity laws, and an unnecessary one. He could have healed him in any of a myriad of ways. We see throughout the gospels that, besides touching, Jesus also healed via spoken word (Matthew 9:6-7, Mark 10:52), indirect contact (Matthew 9:20-22, 14:35-36), his own spit (Mark 7:30-35, 8:22-25, John 9:6), and even in absentia (Matthew 8:13, 15:28). His power came not from any particular method or ritual but from himself, and he worked his power in ways which would be meaningful to those receiving it. Therefore, simply put, Jesus healed the leper with a touch because that was what the leper needed.³ Love took precedence over law.

Earlier in Matthew, during the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told the people, “Do not presume that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill” (5:17). The Law provided a paradigm for living according to God’s precepts of love, justice, and community; it was an expression of the covenant relationship, but it remained incomplete until Jesus came. God’s love had provided within the Law rites of healing for our incurable condition; Jesus embodied the cure and made it an accessible reality―good news for the ill, the afflicted, the trapped, the separated, the imprisoned, the unseen, the hopeless, the poor…for us all.

Like the leper, we may find it easier to believe in and accept the miracles of God’s power than the miracle of God’s love and grace. Water into wine, loaves and fishes, calming storms at sea…such dramatic stories of power on display are inspirational and exciting, but they don’t require much of us inwardly. Bringing God our pain, loneliness, and undesirability, fully exposing to God and ourselves the worst and grossest parts of us, we expect to be met with revulsion, correction, lecture, chastisement, and punishment. We may have been taught to believe we deserve it. Instead, God lifts our head, meets our eyes, embraces us fully, and gives us not only healing we barely dared to hope for, but proof of a love beyond our wildest dreams. We are clean and whole.

It’s a miracle!

Featured image by Ann Lukesh

Footnotes

1. Guzik, D. “Study Guide for Matthew 8 by David Guzik.” Blue Letter Bible. Last Modified 6/2022. https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/guzik_david/study-guide/matthew/matthew-8.cfm ↩︎
2. Guzik, D. “Study Guide for Matthew 8 by David Guzik.” ↩︎