our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.
— Isaiah 53:4–5
In the ancient world, leprosy was a deadly and terrifying disease. Besides the disfiguring sores, the oozing pus, and the shame of being considered accursed by God, lepers were social outcasts. They were required by the law of Moses to live apart from human society, and wherever they went they had to rend their garments and shout, “Unclean, unclean” (Lev 13:45). Because their condition caused ritual impurity, they were even barred from participating in the high point of Jewish life: the worship of God in his holy temple in Jerusalem.
As Jesus was traveling from village to village in Galilee, a leper approached him with surprising boldness. This man must have heard the rumors about Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth who was healing the sick, and in his desperation he resolved to act. Braving the disapproval and disgust of others, he came and knelt before Jesus and voiced his plea: “If you will, you can make me clean” (Mark 1:40).
Seeing the man’s wretched condition, Jesus was “moved with compassion.” The Greek word means physically churned up or stirred with gut-wrenching emotion. It was the deeply human reaction of the Son of God. Jesus never looked upon afflicted people with detachment or indifference, but always with the empathy that comes from knowing the human condition from within. We can imagine the love in his eyes as he replied, “I do will it. Be made clean.” Does he will to make a man whole, to undo the ravages of the fall? This is what he came for!
According to the law of Moses, any contact with a leper would render a person unclean. The crowd standing nearby must have gasped in astonishment as they watched Jesus deliberately reach out and touch the man. And before their eyes, the leprosy disappeared. The Old Testament rules of ritual purity had been turned on their head! Instead of the unclean contaminating the clean, the clean had triumphed, as was indisputably proven by the fact that the man was no longer a leper. Jesus’ holiness is invincible. No defilement can contaminate him; rather, he removes defilement from whoever approaches him in faith. It is a powerful message for those who feel unworthy even to approach him.
Jesus instructed the healed man to keep quiet about his healing, to show himself to a priest, and to offer the sacrifice prescribed in the law of Moses for the cleansing of skin disease. The prescribed rite was to take two birds, one to be sacrificed and the other, dipped in the blood of the first, to fly away free (Lev 14:3–7). If the man obeyed these instructions, before his eyes was a vivid symbolic image of what Jesus had just done for him. One is sacrificed; another is set free. Although he could not have understood it then, this man had been set free from leprosy at the cost of Christ’s own blood, soon to be shed on the cross.
Unable to contain his joy, the newly healed man began to spread far and wide the news of what Jesus had done for him — that is, he began to evangelize. The Greek text literally says “he began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news” (Mark 1:45), wording that is clearly suggestive of the Christian proclamation of the gospel after Pentecost.
As a result of this undesired publicity, Jesus was now so mobbed by crowds that he could no longer enter a village. Ironically, the Lord had traded places with the leper. The once-outcast man was now free to enter society, and Jesus had become the outcast. This reversal is another sign of the fact that all Jesus’ healings took place at a cost to himself — ultimately, the cost of his own life. The healing of the leper foreshadows the cross, the source from which all Christ’s works of healing flow.
This healing is thus a kind of real-life parable, an image of what Christ has done for us. Who is the leper? I am. We all are. All have been deformed and debilitated by the devastating consequences of sin — spiritually, emotionally, and often physically. We all experience to some degree the inner shame that comes from sin, the alienation from God and others that it causes. God was moved with such compassion for us that he sent his only Son to become man, to take upon himself sin and all its consequences and bear them in his own body on the cross.
Often people in need of healing are troubled by an underlying doubt: “I’m not worthy to be healed.” But whoever has that thought can settle it easily. It is in fact true: in ourselves we are not worthy. “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof,” as the centurion said to Jesus (Matt 8:8), and we say before receiving him in the Eucharist. But Jesus has made us worthy by shedding his blood for us. As the letter to the Hebrews says, “we have confidence … by the blood of Jesus”; “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb 10:19; 4:16). As the leper’s confidence in approaching Jesus was richly rewarded, so will ours be. Jesus wants to take our place — to take away our sickness, our shame, our sin — and restore us to the fullness of life. He will even be the outcast if need be.
Anointed by the Spirit to Heal
The cleansing of the leper, near the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, presaged the prominent role healings would play in his mission. Many people tend to think of healings as secondary to Jesus’ real purpose, to save souls. But the Gospels tell us otherwise. In the biblical understanding, the human person is an inseparable unity of body and soul. Christ came not just to “save souls” but to save human beings — to raise us up, body and soul, to the fullness of divine life in communion with God and all the redeemed forever. The body therefore has inestimable significance in God’s plan. It will one day be radiant with divine life (1 Cor 15:42–49). Jesus’ healings of bodily sickness and infirmity are a foreshadowing of the glorious destiny of the human body.
Twenty-one percent of the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ public ministry is devoted to reports of his physical healings and exorcisms — a striking percentage when one considers the length and importance of his teachings, not to mention other miracles such as the multiplication of loaves and the calming of the storm. Clearly, Jesus’ healings are not a minor element or peripheral to his real purpose.
When the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) summarize Jesus’ activity during his public ministry, they invariably mention healings.
He went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every infirmity among the people. (Matt 4:23)
He healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons. (Mark 1:34)
A great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon … came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came forth from him and healed them all. (Luke 6:17–19)
Why such an emphasis on healing? The explanation is provided by Jesus himself in his first sermon, delivered in his hometown of Nazareth soon after his baptism (Luke 4:16–21). The Gospel of Luke highlights this sermon as providing the interpretive key to Jesus’ whole mission:
He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and he went to the synagogue, as was his custom, on the sabbath day. And he stood up to read; and there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and found the place where it was written,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
And he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
The sense of anticipation in this scene is palpable. The synagogue attendees seem aware that Jesus is about to say something of immense significance, and indeed