VI Sunday of the Year

TOUCHED AND RESTORED TO COMMUNION

Leviticus 13:1-2, 44-46; 1 Corinthians 10:31—11:1; Mark 1:40-45

Readings for the VI Sunday of the Year

Years ago, when the speaker of the US House of Representatives Sam Rayburn heard that he had terminal cancer, he shocked everyone by announcing that he was going back to his small town in Bonham, Texas. Everyone told him: “The finest facilities are in Washington, why go back to that little town?” Rayburn said: “Because in Bonham, they know if you’re sick and they care…”

All of us need community; all of us need the care and love that comes from community. And yet today, we face an increasing isolation from one another.

Today’s readings describe one reason for isolation (leprosy) and Jesus’ response.

The first reading gives us the signs of leprosy; an arbitrary spectrum of signs but it was a case of being safe rather than sorry. A person, declared leprous, had to announce his/her uncleanness and live in isolation.

In the gospel, a leper approaches Jesus with a heart-rending and faith-filled plea: “If you will, you can make me clean.” 

Jesus, filled with deep compassion, does something very significant: he touches the leper. He, thus, makes himself ritually unclean, but expresses solidarity with the man and affirms him as a human person. The man is immediately healed.

The physical healing alone does not solve the man’s problem. He has to be reintegrated into community through an official endorsement of his healing. So, Jesus sends him to the priest who will examine him and then pronounce him fit to re-enter society. For Jesus, lepers – and sinners – are not outcasts but persons to be loved and to be restored to community and communion.

Jesus’ compassion challenges us to touch the modern “leper”. Whom do I shun and ostracise? The Lord challenges me to touch and affirm them, and to restore them to communion with myself and in society.

And what about the leper who is me? I need not shun my own disabilities, hidden or otherwise. What are the unclean aspects of my life that need the touch of the Lord? 

We ask the Lord Jesus to touch us: “If you will, you can make me clean.” May you and I hear the words of Jesus: “I will. Be clean!” May we experience communion with ourselves and within our families and communities.