Mar 30 2008
touched
We began a new series today at Mountain. We are unpacking the great mystery of grace in a four week series called Grace Anatomy. This week was Dermatology, and we examined the story of the leper from Luke 5:12-16. It is in many ways an unremarkable healing story. But Luke offers a detail that reminds us of Christ’s singular compassion. Jesus heals with a touch. Ignoring the rules of his culture and the demands of good hygiene and health, Jesus touches the leprous man, and the man is made clean.
Judaism in that day had complicated laws relating to cleanliness (both ritual and hygienic). Most of these laws made pretty good sense and all were based on two simple principles. The first principle was that touching something unclean, made you unclean. The second was that only time and serious washing could make you clean again. This is the logic of dirt and germs. Touching dirt makes you dirty and then touching something else makes that thing dirty as well. I think this is why my wife hates it when I wipe my hands on the dishtowel after I have been cutting up raw chicken.
But Christ’s touch does not follow the logic of cleanliness. Christ’s touch (and consequently Christian touch) follows the logic of light. When light shines onto darkness, the light is not diminished. Rather the darkness is illuminated. The light may be to weak to drive away all darkness, and it may be blocked or hidden, but darkness cannot corrupt the light (as my salmonella covered hands corrupt a clean towel).
This is how Christ’s touch works. The encounter that should have left him unclean instead cleanses the leprous man. Instead of maintaining purity my withdrawal from all that is unclean (as the logic of uncleanness would dictate) Jesus spreads purity, he enacts purity, he creates purity, just as a lamp creates a glow throughout the room.
I confess that too often I have lived my life by the logic of dirt. To stay clean (whatever I imagined that meant) I have stayed separate. I have neglected my calling to serve the least and lost, the dirty and despised because I worried that by my presence with them I would be made dirty. Christian touch is Christ’s touch and thus it follows the logic of light. There is a place for caution that we do not fall into temptation, but there is no place for pride, or self-righteous separation. People in white pants should fear mud-puddles, but people with flashlights need not fear caves.
If you have been enlightened by the light of Christ’s life, you are now called to be light, even in the darkest of places. Just as Christ touched the leper, now all people are declared touchable for those who have been touched by Christ.
on the walk
-Ethan
