The disease of leprosy

They really didn’t understand it. But, of course, they really had no means to. How could they have possibly known that it was contagious only after long periods of very close contact? The only thing they knew about it was what it looked like and what it did to a person in the advanced stages. That they knew well. They understood how it maimed and disfigured. And that was enough for fear to take over.

I’m talking about the disease of leprosy. In a world and a time in which the disease has all but been eradicated except in small pockets, we perhaps cannot appreciate the fear that accompanied the word in the ancient world of Jesus. It was a red flag word. It brought about the same responses as the word Plague did in the 1200s, or Small Pox in the 1700s, or Aids in the 1900s. It frightened them. They felt largely helpless against it, as indeed they were.

What happens when fear takes over is that people do not act, they react. And the reaction to leprosy was both swift and cruel. Oftentimes the person would be put to death by his own family. It seems incredible to us today, but on the edge of every large city in the ancient world huge pits were dug, and in those pits lived the lepers of the community.

And if, by some remote possibility, they did get away from this hovel and venture out into the streets, they would be quickly greeted with shouts of “leper,” accompanied by stones and rocks to make them keep their distance. In Jesus day a leper by law could not get within fifty yards of a clean person. So this was the heart of the matter. Not only did these wretched poor people have to endure the trials of an incurable affliction, they also were isolated from society and kept from the community of faith. The horror of disease, a lifestyle of loneliness, isolation and hopelessness, where could they find hope? The only friend a leper had was God himself. In this life they were doomed. It was walking death.