Friday, August 2: Numbers 5–…

Verse 3 stunned me. I knew people with infectious skin diseases (what we might call lepers) were forced to live outside the community. Because of their disease they were labeled unclean. In Jesus’ day, when lepers traveled, they were required to cry “unclean, unclean” if in their journey they came across other people. How humiliating that must have been.

I also can understand hygienic reasons for the above. Leprosy is an easily transmitted disease, so community safety was at stake. But I also understand the cruel nature of humanity and how we can take a hygienic reason and attach ‘unclean’ human emotional significance to it as we exclude others.

In Israel the community exclusion also meant that access to the tabernacle and temple was denied. In a faith where sacrifices and pilgrim gathering-feasts were required, lepers were excluded from God as well. They were outcasts!

It is precisely here were I was stunned! Look back at verse three. If you are like me,you missed something significant. I have read this verse at least yearly since 1975 and I don’t recall ever seeing the last 5 words of the verse.  Send away male and female alike; send them outside the camp so they will not defile their camp, where I dwell among them.

God was protecting the healthy when He sent them away from the camp. God had not abandoned them. God himself would go to them and live with them! What an incredible picture of love… love for the diseased and love for the healthy. Sadly the healthy attached a God-hating stigma to those with skin diseases, something that must have broken the heart of the Lord!

As I thought about this gift of God, I thought about medical and loving missionaries who put themselves at risk serving people with certain diseases… AIDS and leprosy come to mind. I think of Mother Teresa walking the street of Calcutta creating the order of the Sisters of Charity.

Then I thought about Jesus. In His incarnation Jesus came to dwell among the spiritually unclean, showing us the way back to the Father through faith in Jesus. And while Jesus walked this earth, He personally crossed barriers of uncleanness in order to touch, heal and reach out to physically unclean, modeling the heart God has for people with these conditions. Jesus put into human form what God spoke in Numbers 5:3.

Wow, think about this…

Oh, Jesus, Father, Spirit where would you have me go? Whom would you have me touch for the sake of the Gospel, for the sake of love…??? Amen.