|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The Law in Leviticus 13:45-46 required that people with “leprosy” must wear torn clothing, live outside the camp, leave their hair unkept, cover the lower part of their face and cry our “Unclean! Unclean”.
This treatment hasn’t yet made its way into the Holy See’s documents oppressing the faithful who desire the Traditional Latin Mass. Time will tell.
The word in Hebrew for what is commonly translated as “leprosy”, tsara’ath, can mean a variety of things, skin diseases certainly, but also even mildew on the wall, mold on something. As far as skin diseases are concerned, it could mean conditions people recover from such as contact dermatitis or shingles. Hence, there were laws governing how people who did recover from tsara’ath could be ritually purified and returned to the community. Those in the ancient world with true leprosy, Hanson’s Disease, generally didn’t recover. Hence, their being cured was instantly recognizable as miraculous.
Lepers were decidedly unpopular in ancient times. Contact with people with tsara’ath, made others ritually impure, “unclean”. This was generally not a moral category. It had to do with being able properly to fulfill some religious obligations. The unclean were forced to live apart, and usually in groups or colonies. And they couldn’t advertise Masses in the Vetus Ordo in the parish bulletin, either.
The state of uncleanness, or tumah in Hebrew, the absence of holiness, was perceived as flowing out of the person. Hence, it was like a contagion. Contact with dead animals or with human corpses was the worst form of uncleaness, avi avot hatumah, “the father of the father of uncleanness”. Other sources, like excretions of some kind, saliva, a running sore or menses, were just avot hatumah (“father of uncleanness”). They, too, pass along the tumah. This is probably because fluid that comes out of people was associated with loss of life, they were un-life, as it were. Each time tumah was passed along by contact, it was less severe, but it could still make you even temporarily ritually impure. For example, if a man with an abnormal discharge of some kind sat on a chair or used a cup, those items could pass the tumah to others who used them. Being in the physical or moral presence of a corpse, such as being under the same roof or being over or under a nearby corpse would make everything in the house or tent impure. The laws governing the degrees and transmission of tumah and the return to the state of cleanliness, taharah, are astonishingly complicated. People and most items would remain ritually impure until they were subjected to a purification ritual. These purifications typically involved submersion in a mikveh, a water bath, spring or cistern into which water has accumulated naturally (by natural pressure or by gravity and not poured or pumped in by human agency) and the container cannot be susceptible to becoming itself impure. Please note that snow or ice can be shoveled into mikveh, because it melts and changes state. You can see how changes of state of bodies and items are central to the idea of tumah.
Consider how shocking it would have been for Jews to see Jesus use saliva when healing. In John 9 He heals a man born blind by making mud with His saliva. Making mud was also a kind of “work”, which was forbidden on the sabbath. In Mark 8 the Lord healed another blind man putting saliva on his eyes.
This merely scratches the surface of tumah, uncleanness, in ancient Jewish Levitical Law. So we come to our Gospel reading for the 13th Sunday after Pentecost from Luke 17. Last week we had the fictional Good Samaritan figure in a parable in Luke 10. You will recall how the Samaritans and Jews were at odds, to say the least. This week a flesh and blood Samaritan comes along. He is a leper along with nine other Jews who were leprous and ritually impure, each one being a threat of tumah to everyone present and therefore massive life-interrupting inconvenience.
Our geographical context for the Gospel comes from the Gospel itself, as the Lord’s destination:
On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Samar′ia and Galilee. And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices and said, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” When he saw them he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went they were cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. Then said Jesus, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” And he said to him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”
You see herein the elements from Leviticus. Remember that the Lord came to fulfill the Law. Therefore, after He healed the lepers, He sent them to the priests for examination according to the Law. Samaritans read only the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament Scriptures, which included Leviticus with its prescriptions about ritual purity. While the Jews would have been going to their Jewish priests, the Samaritan would have had to go to one of his own. The lepers were unified in their wretchedness and impure state as a group having leprosy in common. Once cured, once taken out of the dead-state of impurity, the Jews went on their way leaving their former companion. Alone, the Samaritan returned to the source of life, the source of ultimate anti-tumah, perfect and divine taharah.
By the way, our Lord called this Samaritan, a “foreigner” or “stranger”, in Greek allogenés. This word appears only once in the New Testament. However, the word appears in an inscription on two stone plaques surviving from the Second Temple in Jerusalem, which Jesus would have seen many times. It is the “Soreg Inscription”, in Greek and Latin which would have been on the balustrade outside the Temple’s sanctuary. This was a warning to non-Jews, not to pass into the sanctuary on pain of death. The text is almost word for word what the 1st c. Jewish historian Josephus described.
Let no foreigner [ΑΛΛΟΓΕΝΗΕΙΣ] enter within the parapet and the partition which surrounds the Temple precincts. Anyone caught [violating] will be held accountable for his ensuing death.
You might recall that the Lord was angry and overturned tables in the Temple’s Courtyard of the Gentiles, the only place non-Jews could go to worship God. The prohibition of Gentiles in the sanctuary precinct was taken very seriously. In Acts 21:27-29, the Jews are outraged with Paul because they thought he brought in an uncircumcised Gentile. He hadn’t, but the charge got the all of Jerusalem riled up. Paul was in danger of being killed but he was saved by Roman soldiers while the crowds were beating him. It’s massively dramatic.
In any event, in calling the Samaritan “allogenés” and in saying that his faith saved him, we see that Christ’s mission as not to the Jews merely, but to all peoples. A Samaritan is like “all peoples” in this event in Luke 17, just as the Samaritan in the parable was like all true believers regardless of their heritage.
Can we call the Samaritan the first “backwardist”? The otherwise doubly-reviled, still ritually impure Samaritan, was the one who went back in order properly to worship from his whole mind and heart and strength. How did he do it? He “doxázon theón… glorified God”, “megáles phonês… with a loud voice”. He did it “prósopon parà toùs pódas”, his “face at the feet” of Jesus. He did it “eucharistôn… giving thanks” (v.16). There is a whiff of liturgy in this moment, isn’t there? Right after the Samaritan’s “eucharistic” moment in which he is saved, Christ says “Rise and go your way” (v. 19). Often in the confessional, after giving absolution, Father often says, “Go in peace”.
I suppose the moral point to take away is “be a loud, kneeling, praising, God worshipping humble backwardist”.
Finally, last comments about the lepers. Contrary to ancient notions about Hanson’s Disease, it is not severely contagious. Also, today, it is relatively easy to treat and cure. Modern medicine aside, we can take the Gospel lepers as apt symbols for souls in the state of mortal sin. Leprosy causes a recession and disintegration of the body. Its most dangerous symptom is numbness. Leprosy doesn’t usually kill outright, the numbness it brings about does due to lack of sensitivity to wounds, etc. Leprosy causes one to lose physical feeling. Sin causes one to lose spiritual awareness. Habitual sins result in numb consciences and hardness of heart, carelessness about the terrible wounds one self-inflicts.
Also, a point to take away is that cleansing of sin is a greater miracle than the miraculous healing of leprosy. You can die a leper and be in the state of grace bound for Heaven. No matter how physically healthy you are, you cannot die in mortal sin and be other than damned.