SIXTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR
‘Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him’
A recent television documentary on the heroic men and women who are working on the front line in our hospitals in the battle against Covid-19 revealed in a striking way that compassion costs. It always does. In today’s Gospel Jesus reaches out in tender compassion to touch a leper. In doing what He did, He was crossing a significant boundary and breaking every law, taboo and convention of His day. The leper was the most miserable outcast in Jewish society. He/she had to live away from the community, wear a bell and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean’. To touch a leper made oneself unclean. The judgement of Jesus does not follow society’s standards, however. He understood how it felt to be rejected, to feel unwanted, to find no room at the inn and so, an untouchable one is touched, an outsider is brought in, an excluded one is made to feel welcome, a suffering human being is healed in body and spirit. No life, however broken or rejected is beyond God’s reach. Today, as in every generation, there are ‘untouchables’ in our world, people on the edge, the least, the lost, the last. The leper represents those whom society considers to be flawed. Our challenge is to do as Jesus did; to notice and be courageous enough to step out to bring inclusion where there is exclusion so that no brother or sister has to carry the cross alone. Jesus’ ministry of compassion cost Him. It will cost us too.
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