Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Mark 1, 40-45

I remember seeing a cat with a little bell on her neck and it really annoyed the cat. However, the owner told me that because she has other pets, she placed a bell on it so that it would warn the others of the cat’s presence.

If you’re a leper in Palestine during the time of Christ, things would be a little bit worse than what the cat experienced. Leprosy was so disfiguring and was so feared by the Jews that Moses even made laws for people who contacted this disease, as laid down in Leviticus chapters 13 and 14. A leper, from the moment of obvious symptoms of the disease, should leave his or her family and move to the outskirts of town. A leper couldn’t go to a synagogue or to the Temple. A leper should wear a bell on his or her neck as a warning for others. A leper was not allowed to touch or be touched by a non-leper. If that’s not bad enough, he or she should shout “Unclean…unclean” to warn others of his or her presence.

However, in the gospel for today both Jesus and the leper violated all the local conventions on how to deal with people with leprosy. We have a leper who instead of shouting “unclean…unclean!” as Jesus was approaching, actually approached Jesus and kneeled in front of him. Then this leper begged to be healed. Jesus, on his part, also broke the law when, instead of avoiding the leper, he did the unthinkable, and he TOUCHED him. He healed the leper by touching him. Jesus risked being unclean by touching him but at the same time, he cleaned the leper by touching him. Then after that, to comply with the Law proving that the leper is healed, Jesus asked him to go to the priest so that he could be formally admitted back to the society.

At first reading of this miracle, we would think that this is just a simple healing of a man with leprosy. If we know Jesus in the gospels, Jesus must have done more spectacular miracles than just healing lepers. However, there is more to this than just bringing a man to full health. If you’re a leper, aside from complying with Mosaic Law for lepers, which in itself could be so traumatising and humiliating, just imagine being separated from your family because of leprosy. For weeks, months or even years, you are not allowed to see or be seen by your own family. And worse, if the leper is a father who needs to support his family, his family would suffer most and the family would rely on alms that would be given hopefully by their relatives, friends and neighbours, which is often not the case. So the mother would go on begging in order to sustain her children. And because you have to stay at the outskirts of the community, you can’t go to the market, no access to other essential needs to be able to live decently. If these people were observant Jews, they would have no access to their synagogue and their Temple to pray. Aside from those, people will treat them with scorn because the thinking during that time was that because you contacted leprosy, it must be a punishment from God because of some awful sin that you had committed.

Jesus, in healing this person, has not only brought this person to health but also restored a former leper back to his position in society. Not only that, but the former leper is allowed to come back to his or her family, and walk freely along the neighbourhood. The former leper could go back to the synagogue and the Temple and most importantly the former leper’s dignity is restored.

Sadly, even if leprosy is now treatable and lepers are not treated as badly two thousand years ago, yet we still live in a society where a lot of people are thrown to the margins and have lost their dignity.

In some cultures, people with HIV/AIDS are still shunned by their very own families. Old people who are living in rest homes suffer loneliness because they are not visited by their families and other members of society. There are still people who are being prejudiced because of their belief or because of the colour of their skin. As Christians, we should take the lead in being inclusive of other people. We should fight prejudice and discrimination. We should reach out to people who are being left out by society: the old, the sick, the prisoners, the poor, etc.

Jesus restored the health of the leper not only physically but also emotionally, socially and spiritually. We all have this task to heal people and bring everybody back to the loving embrace of God’s family and to God himself.