Friday after Epiphany

 Lectionary: 216

“Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.” 
Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him, and said, “I do will it.  Be made clean.” 
And the leprosy left him immediately. 

 T he human being is a peculiarly naked creature. Just about every other dry land creature that I can think of has fur or scales or some kind of protection against outside threats. We're naked and have to make clothes, and then maintain them throughout our lives with frequent changes and washings, etc. 

Skin is the largest organ of the human body, and its function is critical. It's the first defense against diseases and injuries, and continually renews itself even as it heals the major and minor wounds we suffer throughout our lives. 

I think of my nonagenarian friend, Father Ambrose, who fell while trying to pull his alb over his head. He peeled a huge patch skin off one arm. This was before "urgent care" clinics appeared everywhere. I patched him up as best I could with "nuskin" (It smelled suspiciously like super glue) and took him to his dermatologist several days later. (It was a holiday weekend or something.) The doctor assured me his arm would heal, and he did just fine. When he died five years later, his skin was intact, though his time had come. 

Skin is incredibly important for its resilience, sensitivity, and adaptability. Many people have work-toughened skin on their hands and wrists. Our most important first impressions of others come through our skin-to-skin contact with our mothers and those who care for us as infants. Unlike America's habitual isolation, most human beings throughout history have lived and slept in continual skin contact with their spouses, children, siblings, and parents. We need that contact, and much communication flows through touch. 

So when our ancestors suffered some kind of communicable skin disease, they were expelled from that communion and suffered terrible isolation. Banned from the spiritual life of their people, their lives lost meaning and purpose. They suffered a form of living death with little hope of restoration or reconciliation. I remember an elderly ex-con whose grandchildren had been told he was dead. He said, "When your grandchildren think you're dead, you're dead!" I asked the head nurse to keep an eye on him lest he attempt suicide in the hospital. 

In today's gospel this poor man desperately believes that Jesus has the divine power to bring him back to life. He has a sense that Jesus is more than an ordinary street preacher/healer; and he hopes the Lord will overcome the religious scruple that insists no one should touch a leper. 

And,  of course, our good Jesus does so immediately. The translation suggests he recognizes the man's hesitation and desperation, "I do will it! Be healed!" and he touches the untouchable despite any religious prohibitions. 

The Lord's action seems as much reaction as response. Where the taboos of that time banned such contact, Jesus impulsively blew aside every hesitation and restriction, and touched him. He could hardly do otherwise, and it was the reason he'd set out on the Gospel Road in the first place. 

So long as there are human beings to populate this earth and social norms to govern them, there will be cultural prohibitions banning contact with certain arbitrarily chosen pariahs. It may be necessary in some cases, but it's often inspired more by fear than by generosity. It's what we do until the Spirit of Jesus says, "Touch this person!" 

How many of these panicked reactions have we already seen around HIV-AIDS and COVID. Some people fear to donate blood because they thought you might get AIDS from receiving blood! 

Amid the recent pandemic, I heard the Lord's reassurance through Psalm 91, and lived by it: 

You shall not fear the terror of the night

nor the arrow that flies by day,

Nor the pestilence that roams in darkness,

nor the plague that ravages at noon.

Though a thousand fall at your side,

ten thousand at your right hand,

near you it shall not come.