In the beginning of Chapter 5 of Luke Gospel, Jesus has been teaching the crowds on the shore of the Lake of Gennesaret (this is just an alternate name for the Sea of Galilee.) He has been using Simon’s boat as his cathedra, sitting down and teaching and when he has finished speaking he enables Simon and his fellow fisherman to make a miraculous catch of fish. Simon tells Jesus to depart from him for he sees a wide abyss of holiness between his sinfulness and Jesus’ magnificence. Jesus tells him that he should basically get used to it because from now on he will be catching just as many men.
12 While he was in one of the cities, there came a man full of leprosy; and when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and besought him, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.”
Whilst Jesus is doing ministry in one of cities surrounding the Sea of Galilee a man stricken with leprosy comes to him seeking healing. Leprosy was a considered a curse from God for sins and the Mosaic Law required particular treatment of these individuals and for their own way of living. They are not to live within the confines of the covenant community, they are to wear torn clothing and have their hair hang loosely, this is to mark them out physically as lepers to protect others from contracting the disease.
Leprosy was considered such a horrific condition that only God could relieve someone from it, in the Old Testament God strikes Miriam with leprosy and then heals her, Moses is given a leprous hand and then God changes it back. Other incidents from the Old Testament have God’s prophets being the intermediary between lepers and God, healing them with God’s power. Basically if you have leprosy, God is your only hope. So why does a leper think Jesus can help?
Luke records the leper calling Jesus “Lord” kyrios in Greek which in the Septuagint is the term used to fill in for God’s name. When you see LORD in bold for example, the word used in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures used kyrios. Luke is telling us that the leper knows, like everyone else, that only God can cure leprosy and he perceives Jesus to be at the very least, a representative of God on Earth. The New Testament writers were Septuagint enjoyers, the Masoretic texts used in Protestant bibles won’t be copied out for another 700-1000 years.
13 And he stretched out his hand, and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately the leprosy left him.
Jesus stretches out to touch the leper, this is an insane thing to do, touching what is unclean would make a normal person unclean. Since Jesus is not a normal person but a divine being, he can touch the leper. Not all healing stories of lepers require physical touch, in another place, Jesus cures multiple lepers by thought alone. The method in which Jesus choose to administer healings seems to depend on the disposition of the individual. This is how it works in our own times, particular devotions or pious practices appeal to different people in different ways, all leading back to Jesus himself.
Jesus states that he will make the leper clean, and simply orders, by fiat, the leper to “be clean”. Immediately the leprosy vanishes from the man. This is a miraculous cure and not a medicine mans gradual treatment of an ailment. This reflects the way God makes leprosy appear and disappear with Miriam and Moses. Only God can do this.
14 And he charged him to tell no one; but “go and show yourself to the priest, and make an offering for your cleansing, as Moses commanded, for a proof to the people.”
After the leper is healed, Jesus orders him to tell no one and simply show himself to the priest and make an offering for his cleansing as Moses instructs in the book of the Law. This would be from the writing in Leviticus. The priest is to inspect a leper that has been cured since as we pointed out earlier, a leper is considered out of the covenant community, in order to be allowed back in, the priest who is in charge of liturgical worship has to give the “O.K”. He is to make a thanksgiving offering in the Temple in response to his healing of leprosy and all of this will also serve a proof to the people that he is no longer leprous and can be part of the covenant community again.
Many people have implied Jesus’ charge of not telling people as a sign of reverse psychology and that he really wants his miracles to spread as far as possible but this is unlikely and has no evidence backing it. Jesus times every meticulously, as his “hour” is to occur at a very specific time. The way he charges the leper tempers his broadcast just enough that it would not change the timeline of events of Jesus’ ministry.
15 But so much the more the report went abroad concerning him; and great multitudes gathered to hear and to be healed of their infirmities.
The healed leper appears to ignore the charge given to him by Jesus and the report goes abroad concerning his miraculous healing abilities causing great multitudes to gather, hear and be healed themselves. But the effect of the charge might not be as surface level as people perceive, we do not know how this would have gone down if Jesus hadn’t given it. Maybe it would have spread even more, maybe the story would have been more believable to people causing a wider contingency of individuals to turn up and receive healings. We don’t know but I really do not think that “reverse psychology” is what Jesus was doing.
16 But he withdrew to the wilderness and prayed.
In response to these multitudes Jesus withdraws back into the wilderness and prays. The wilderness is the land that was perceived by Second Temple Jews as the dominion of evil spirits like Lillits, night demons but Jesus has already conquered the wilderness by rejecting the temptations of the devil there. So now, it is a place of peace and rest in which he can withdraw and pray to his Father in Heaven.
Leave a Reply