The best comparison to sin is leprosy. This skin disease, at its best, discolored your skin and hair while exiling you from your community. So, no family and no worship in the Temple or Synagogue. So, if you’re a Jew, you are cut off from your people and your God. At its worst, it exiled you while also wasting you away to death. Your skin becomes lumpy and scarred. Your fingers and toes begin to fall off. Eventually, you die from this disease and there is nothing you can do to prevent it. In St. Luke’s account of Jesus healing a man with leprosy, the man is described as being “covered in leprosy,” and so we know that his disease is both a bad case and advanced.
He takes a great risk in coming to Jesus. He isn’t allowed to do it. But his situation is so dire, that he is willing to risk it all and come anyway. And when he does, he begs for mercy. “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” Jesus is, and Jesus does. Jesus touches this unclean man, and that touch makes him clean.
We also hear in 2 Kings 5 about a pagan who is struck with leprosy. This man is a commander of the army of Syria, an enemy of Israel. A child he took from her home tells him of a man who could heal him, so he goes. He expects a show and brings costly gifts to pay for his healing.
Yet he is disappointed when there is no show. In fact, he doesn’t even get an audience with the prophet. It is a servant who goes and tells him to, “Go and wash in the Jordan….” He is angry he wasn’t told to do some great thing or to wash in one of the nicer rivers of his land. But his own servants remind him of the good news: Has he actually said to you, “Wash and be clean?” And so Naaman goes to the Jordan, washes as instructed, and is made clean. He is cleansed of his leprosy. And not only cleansed, but his skin is restored like that of a child. It is made better than it was when he contracted the disease.
Naaman sees he is clean and has an epiphany. He realizes that this cleansing, through such simple means as water from the Jordan, was the work of God. The text goes on to tell how the gifts he brought were refused, for miracles and healings are not to be purchased. It goes on to tell that Naaman knows he continues to need forgiveness; continues to need absolution as he serves his king. When all is said and done, Naaman is clean and goes in peace.
We confess with King David that we are conceived in iniquity. This means that since the Fall, we all have a spiritual leprosy like Naaman and the man who came to Jesus, from our very beginning. It is eternally fatal. There is no human cure. We are by nature exiled from our God. We need mercy. We need a Savior.
And in the Lord Jesus Christ, mercy is given as he comes to stand in our place. To touch us and take away our leprosy and make us bright and shiny and new. He takes on our flesh to be our savior and substitute. Instead of suffering the eternal agony and punishment that we deserve for our leprous condition, he is lifted up on the cross, suffers and dies in our stead.
In this, he has already suffered for our leprosy. He has already been condemned by the condemnation we are owed. He has taken away all our sin and shame. And in our baptism, he makes us new. In our baptism, he promises to cleanse us, give us new life, and forgive us all our sins. In our baptism, Jesus shows us mercy. He says, “I will; be clean.”
The promises attached to simple water brings forth life from dead sinners. Sin is forgiven. Deliverance from death and the devil is delivered. And just like it wasn’t the words of the prophet or his messenger that accomplished the miracle, it wasn’t the words or hands of a pastor that did it either. It is the word and work and promise of God.
Rev. Brent Keller
Peace Lutheran Church
Alcester, SD
©2020 Brent Keller. All rights reserved. Permission granted to copy, share and display freely for non-commercial purposes. Direct all other rights and permissions inquiries to cosmithb@gmail.com.
BEautifully described!!!
Thank you. I’m glad it was useful!