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Willing and Able

Since my last blog post, I have been taking a look at the following few verses, again taken from Matthew’s gospel.  This is a very familiar story to most of us probably, and the verses may only be short, but when examined a bit more closely I believe they are quite profound.

Matthew 8: 1-3

1 When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you are able to make me clean.” 2 Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” 3 Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy.

The chapter begins as Jesus came down from the mountainside.  It was here that he had been boldly declaring to the large crowds of people that God's kingdom was now among them.  He had spent much time teaching them not only what it meant to be a disciple but how to fully enter into the life of this new kingdom.

But now here is Jesus, coming down into these small villages and towns around the Sea of Galilee and beginning to enter into the day-to-day life of the people there. He was now about to bring God’s kingdom in not just with words, but in his actions too and I think it is quite significant that the very first story Matthew records for us is about a man with a skin disease.  

Leprosy is discussed quite often in the Bible and whilst its definition in modern times is different from biblical times, there is no doubt that this was a terrible skin condition.

Matthew tells us that this man knelt in front of Jesus and spoke very specifically to him, “Lord if you are willing, you are able to make me clean”.   Most of us on a first reading may have heard him say, “Lord if you are able, will you make me clean?”, but this was not what he said.  He knew Jesus was totally capable.  He was absolutely convinced that Jesus could help him, but what he wasn’t quite so sure about was if he was willing to help such as him.  This is a very simple observation, but quite a remarkable one.  The man knows Jesus is powerful but what he’s not sure about is the willingness of Jesus to help him.  What the man with leprosy essentially doubted was his own worthiness.  Here was a man who had probably been banished from family and neighbours and shunned by society because of the way he looked.  

But Jesus showed him great compassion, said he was willing, put out his hand and touched him.

I think we could easily miss the significance of this moment.  The man had a skin disease, he would have looked awful, people would have thought he was contagious.  When would have been the last time someone had touched him? Possibly many years.  We know that when humans are deprived of touch from other humans it can be psychologically quite damaging.

Matthew seems to highlight the moment when Jesus ‘reaches out’ and touches the man, the man that no-one else would have wanted to touch.  This is a humane and beautiful moment and we read that the man was healed and walked away completely transformed.

This is a very simple story, a powerful one, but simple nonetheless.  If this was the first time we were reading any stories about Jesus and we knew nothing about the Old Testament or Jewish culture we could read this story and conclude that Jesus was amazing, kind, loving, powerful, all of these things.  We could leave it here, as a very simple compassionate story, which shows the character of Jesus.  However there are much deeper layers to this story if we are willing to take a closer look.

Why did Matthew put this as the first story when Jesus comes down from the hillside?  What is the significance of that?   Well for a Jewish reader who knew the Hebrew Scriptures this would be a ground-breaking story.  It’s all about one word.  Lord if you’re willing you can make me ‘CLEAN’.   We can ask ourselves then, but was he dirty?  Well, no he just had a skin disease, I’m sure he still washed.  He wasn’t actually dirty, but yet he asked to become clean so why did he use that particular word?  He could have asked to be healed.  There is a perfectly good Hebrew word for heal, but the story doesn’t use this.  And the response of Jesus?  “Be clean”.  That one word holds much significance in this short story, and I believe this is why Matthew put it here first.  If we had grown up in this culture of clean and unclean, we would maybe grasp what a powerful story this is.

So let’s look back at the Old Testament and the background to all of this.  Out of all the corrupt, rebellious nations God chose one family, the family of Abraham.  It was through them that he hoped to restore goodness and blessing to all of humanity.  However from the very beginning they also rebelled just like all the other corrupt nations.  Moses rescued them out of slavery to the Egyptians but because of their rebellion and sin they wandered around in the wilderness and had a very long journey to the promised land.  However, God didn’t give up on them and it was at the foot of a mountain that he entered into a covenant relationship with them.

In the form of a tent God then planted his own personal presence right in the midst of this family.  The tent’s curtains, and especially the thick veil, served as a separator, a dividing barrier, between God and the people.  Beyond this, a place called the tabernacle was sanctified and set apart as a holy place.

In Leviticus 11: 44-45 God talks about the significance of placing his personal presence among his people:

44 “I am the Lord your God, make yourselves holy therefore, and become holy because I am holy. And you shall not make yourselves unclean with any of the defiling things that are in the land. 45 For I am the Lord you God who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God, thus you shall be holy, for I am holy”.

The word that stands out from these few verses is ‘holy’.  God is holy and because he plants himself in the midst of the children of Israel, then they are to become holy too.  But what does it mean to be holy?  In western culture I guess we think of the word holy in terms of morality, being a good moral person.  Morality is certainly one part of the holiness spoken about in the Bible, but it’s not even the main part.  Its basic meaning is to be unique, one of a kind or to be set apart for a specific purpose but in effect we could also have the word holy set up as the opposite of unclean. HOLY (qadosh) vs UNCLEAN.

The Tabernacle was therefore holy space, and represented the tangible presence of God. Nothing unclean could defile it.  Dr Tim Mackie, founder of The Bible Project, gives us a very interesting idea of the tabernacle by using the image of a hospital operating room!  He states, “In the hospital there is a special room, which only a few of us enter, and then only under certain circumstances.  It is set apart, in a sense holy.  It’s unique.  In that room people’s quality of life is improved, and people only go there for that purpose.  Who can go into that room?  Well, only special people.  Unique, set apart people.  Surgeons, doctors, nurses. and they have to undergo a set of rituals before entering this set apart space”.  He goes on to say that all sorts of things outside this space, could threaten or contaminate it, for example you don’t go in to the operating room if you have a cold, or an infection, or muddy shoes.  You can’t defile this special place.

This is an interesting analogy and maybe it helps in understanding a little more about the rituals, the set apart nature and holiness of the tabernacle.  We see the very clear distinction between holy sacred space, and that which could contaminate it.

As God’s presence was now amongst them, God’s people were to be holy, to be clean also, and if you were an Israelite there were very clear rules if you were found to be unclean. One of these rules was this:

Numbers 5: 2-3

2 Then God spoke to Moses: “Command the People of Israel to ban from the camp anyone who has an infectious skin disease”. 3 Send them outside the camp so they will not defile the camp where I dwell among them”.

So, there is something about a skin disease that made a person unclean (yes we’ve heard this somewhere before!)  If we were to read on we would discover that many other things are mentioned too that would contaminate and defile the holy space, and would mean that a person had to leave the camp.  These things were just not allowed near the very holy presence of God.

In our modern world, these parts of the Bible may seem rather archaic and primitive, but we have to appreciate that what seems like weird, foreign, even backward parts of the Bible to us, were perfectly normal things to the Israelites.  And the concept of becoming unclean in some way was not wrong, it was not a sin.  It was generally just a temporary thing, and usually after 7 days they would be clean again and could come back into the camp.

If we fast forward about 500 years from Moses, we find a very significant story in the book of Isaiah which develops this whole idea in a completely new direction. The prophet Isaiah has a dream in which he finds himself in the holy temple, in the very presence of the holy God of Israel.

Isaiah 6:1,2,5,6,7

1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

Was Isaiah pleased to find himself in the temple, in the very presence of God? No, he was absolutely terrified.

5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

His eyes had seen the King, in the holy temple!  This was a place he would never have had access to.  In his state of uncleanness, he couldn’t possibly be found in such a holy place.  Yet here he is, standing in the holy temple in front of the Lord Almighty.  He was a man of unclean lips, and we get the image of his uncleanness that was much deeper than his body.  It was in his words, and in his mouth, in his mind, in all his thoughts.  In that moment he saw himself just as he truly was, and he saw that the society in which he lived was a culture of selfishness and sin.  Yet here he was, in the presence of the most holy God.  He was surely finished!

Then this happened.

6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar.

This is very strange.  But not good at all.  A seraphim coming at him with a hot coal!  Surely this was his punishment and he would be incinerated on the spot for defiling and contaminating the holy place.  But as the seraphim touched Isaiah’s mouth with the burning hot coal, the very opposite happened.

7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

Instead of incinerating him, it cleansed him and purified him.  His guilt and sin were taken away. God’s holiness in the form of the burning coal came out to Isaiah and made him clean, burned his sin away and purified him.  It was now God’s holiness that became contagious.

This story communicates a profound truth.  Humankind is broken and marked by sin and death.  But this story, prophesied by Isaiah, is moving towards the idea of God’s holiness becoming contagious and infecting the world rather than mankind’s uncleanness defiling God’s space.

It’s 700 years from Isaiah's vision that we read the story of the leper in Matthew’s gospel.  And here we have Jesus, who at his birth was called Emmanuel - God with us.  Jesus, who was God’s very holy, pure presence right here embodied in human form, coming down from the hillside and entering into the hustle and bustle of daily life, bringing with him the kingdom of God, invading normal people’s lives.  And the very first person we are told that Jesus encounters is an unclean man. This is a powerful and groundbreaking story as we see Jesus extending his arm and touching this man with the skin disease.  So groundbreaking in fact that, instead of the man’s impurity making Jesus unclean, the man is cleansed and made whole.

The book of Leviticus was not the end of the story, here is the new way the one that God always intended, the new covenant.  Isaiah’s vision has become reality.  Jesus came into our world, and people’s sin, uncleanness and corruption are not threatening to him.  He came with power and authority, into people’s lives and cultures that were riddled with selfishness and sin, corruption and unclean lips.  And he reached out his hand and said I am willing, this is what I came to do.  

This is the story of the gospel.  That God is not intimidated or threatened by people's selfishness and sin, by our unclean lives, by the corruption all around us.  We can sometimes believe that God wants nothing to do with us because of our failure but this story tells us that we couldn’t be more wrong.  

I will leave you with the thought that this same Jesus, who reached out his hand to the leper, cleansed and transformed him, is the same Jesus who can reach out his hand and transform us still today.  Whatever our situation, whatever our brokenness, wherever we are at in our lives.  He is willing and he is abundantly able.

Tracy Pease (inspired by the Bible Project)