2,3 Mar -- The Power of Touch
The readings for Fri 2 and Sat 3 March are -- Gen 19:23-21:21; Ps 7:1-8; Prov 1:28-31; Mt 7:13-8:4.
The leper was only supposed to mix with other similarly unclean people. He was supposed to stay right away from healthy people. That was not just custom, or the polite thing to do. That was law. Yet as crowds followed Jesus, this leper "came up" to Jesus. He was desperate. And full of faith. Jesus said: "Be made clean." And he was. But Jesus also touched him as he spoke those words. Touched a filthy leper. Not only diseased, but unclean. He didn't have to. His words alone were powerful enough. We'll see that tomorrow when Jesus heals the centurion's servant who wasn't even present. But he touched the unclean leper. He did so, I believe, precisely because he was unclean. Not only diseased, but also declared unclean. Jesus was confronted with more than just a physical disease. He didn't say "Be healed" but "Be made clean". The man had been rocked to his core. He was damaged and hurting inwardly too, in his heart and soul and mind. Jesus' compassionate touch changed all that too.
Jesus could have also brought inner healing by a word. But the touch spoke even more loudly to the leper. And to the watching crowd as well. It said so much about Jesus and his character. And it said so much about the character he was looking for in his followers. Who can you minister to with a compassionate and healing touch today?
Labels: law
posted by Ps John @ 12:08 AM
7 Comments
7 Comments:
I'm actually reading Leviticus at the moment, and I keep wondering why on earth God made all those laws about being unclean in the first place. It's no wonder that ppl segregated other ppl when God said a person is unclean if he *insert condition here*, and anyone who touches that person or anything that person has touched is unclean too.
But then you have Jesus come along and say things like it's more important to act out of love than bother about rules of uncleanliness.
Reminds me of all the times that, for example, my dad will tell me to go do something, and then later on in the day I will get in big trouble from my mom for doing it ...
You're way ahead of us Lisa! Leviticus is certainly a tough book to get through. Lots of those rules (eg about unclean food, unclean practices and unclean people) were for the protection of the people. Particularly necessary in the often unhygenic conditions. But others more about ritual or symbolic cleanness (ie holiness). That Jesus sometimes contravened the rules indicates God's unfolding progressive revelation and that God was doing something in Jesus. Interesting though that he tells the leper: "go, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded..." (Have you come across Leviticus 14:3,4,10 yet?) You can see why the Jews who loved the Law (including the Pharisees) were totally confused and threatened. Jesus and God seemed to be saying different things. But they weren't, being totally one. Unlike our earthly parents who often make mistakes (and I'm speaking as a parent) our heavenly parent is perfect. Great to know, eh!
Thanx John.
I can see that those laws were for their own good, and I can see that Jesus wasn't telling everyone to go and start doing the opposite, but I can totally understand why the Pharisees reacted how they did. I mean, even though they were mostly only following the Law to show off, I can still imagine them saying "God made all these laws and often struck us dead for not following them, and now you're telling us off for following them?!". Their frustration is understandable.
And yes, I read that part in Leviticus about presenting yourself to the priest to be ddeclared unclean. Though one thing I've noticed is that whenever Jesus made an example of following the Law, often noone knew about it (e.g. in that example, he told the leper not to tell anyone but the priest), but every time he "went against" the Law, there was a huge multitude of ppl to witness it. No wonder He was known as the Jew who went against the Law.
I've been waiting for someone else to comment on this first. I assume Selwyn is making some helpful suggestions about Leviticus? I suppose we can revisit it in a few months when we all read it.
As John says, the Jewish laws have multiple purposes. There is also a further distinction between small l law and big L Law (the former being all the extra rules the pharisees had made up, the latter being the law given in the books of Moses (including Leviticus) so we need to think about which law is being referred to.
Romans (of course) and Galatians have a few other things to say about the purpose of the law too. In Romans 7, "I would not have known sin except through the law". Jesus (and Paul in Romans) distill the true commandments down to only 2 instructions: love God; love others.
As John said above, some laws were for their own health, safety or societal good; some were about holiness. As in Romans 7, the law explains how high God's standards of righteousness are. This is the fundamental argument that builds through the first 7 chapters of Romans, climaxing with the realisation that we are stuffed because we can't attain that righteousness that God demands (and lucky we don't have to). So part of it is about explanation.
Another part of it is about demonstration. The Israelites were supposed to be a light to nations around them. Keeping the law would have been part of that. They were showing that they feared (good fear) God.
I think the Pharisees' mistake was that they were eager to follow the letter of the law, but they did it without love, which were the important ones.
Think about today. We have those 2 overriding commandments. We have God's spirit in us who helps us know right from wrong, so we are less dependent on written rules perhaps? But we have a lot of rules in our society and in our churches. Which ones of those are expressions of the core two, and which ones are necessary because they demonstrate some sort of "holiness" to the outside world? And which ones have no function whatsoever (and may be of our own invention) but we just follow like the Pharisees?
I don't think Hughs said anything about Leviticus; I was just commenting in response to the leper story you guys were reading, which relates back to Leviticus.
I was mainly talking about capital-L Law, i.e. all the stuff in Leviticus saying "The Lord said to Moses 'Tell the Isrealites ...'"
And actually, I've changed my mind since yesterday, having looked back at Leviticus again. I agree that SOME of those rules were for their own protection, but with others I fail to see how they are helpful at all. Take Leviticus 11 for example: you can eat lamb, but not rabbit; you can eat scaled fish, but not shellfish; and if you eat those forbidden things, you are unclean for the rest of the day and no one is allowed to have contact with you. And that is apparently a rule from God, not from other Jews. I fail to see how eating rabbit or shellfish would make one either hygenically or spiritually unclean, or how it would help the Jews identify sin.
So, after all of that. I'm still back to my original problem with the Law (N.B. I have no problem with any of the post-Jesus stuff in regards to this): why make such specific rules, that God must have known would just lead to everyone segregating each other, when Jesus was just gonna come along anyway and give us two overriding commandments?
That's what I said here:
Another part of it is about demonstration. The Israelites were supposed to be a light to nations around them. Keeping the law would have been part of that. They were showing that they feared (good fear) God.
Perhaps I wasn't that clear, but what I meant was that the rules in this case weren't for protection or because of right/wrongness, but simply to demonstrate that the Jews were God's people, I suppose like circumcision in that it was a sign (not sure who exactly was checking out that particular sign, but anyway). You can argue that keeping a set of random commandments doesn't make a lot of sense, but remember this needs to be taken in context of the whole of God's providence for Israel.
The law is meant to be unattainable. My opinion (I didn't read this in a commentary so take with a grain of salt, although I worked this stuff out when reading through Romans the first time) is that some of the laws are arbitrary, simply meant to set apart the Jews as different (remember holy = set apart). I agree - I don't think you can explain all of them away by saying it was for their health, etc, and that's my explanation of it.
I wish these comment boxes were bigger.
Oh right ... so you're saying that God didn't really mean much out of some of them, e.g. he could have said Jews must stand on their heads and spin around 5 times while drinking through a straw and that would have just been to set them apart from the other nations. Ok, that's fair enough - we've got a pretty whack God. Though if that was all the point was to THOSE rules, why not just stick with the circumcision one? That already set them apart and made them God-fearing, etc.
(And I agree with the comment boxes. The page itself should actually be wider too; it's a long way to scroll just to read through 6 comments ... )
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