Some of Tim's Sermons

In late 2019 we began to hear news of a new virus that had begun to spread in China. In mild cases it gave people a cough and flu like symptoms. Within six months we were in lockdown. Most people were confined to their houses apart from essential trips out. We were advised to keep our distance from each other. We were shut out of our places of worship. We were advised to wear face coverings to protect others in case we were contagious. A testing system was set up, we had to go to a special place, and have a test, and would then be told whether or not we were infected. In time, we could do some of those tests ourselves. Those of us who tested positive were told we had to separate ourselves from others. For some months there was no effective treatment for this virus.

I do hesitate to draw a parallel with the experience of those who have contracted leprosy over the centuries. Covid vaccines and treatments were developed relatively quickly. Most families were able to stay together, at least to some extent. People infected with Covid weren’t forced out of their communities for their whole lives. Nevertheless, I wonder if the experience of living through the Covid pandemic, might open a little bit of a window onto what a leprosy diagnosis might have meant in the centuries we read about in the Bible, and still for people around the world today.

Before we go any further, I do want to acknowledge that the words translated from Hebrew and Greek into “leprosy” do cover a range of skin diseases. A glance at the footnotes in most modern translations will tell you this. To a certain extent, to the people affected, this didn’t make much difference. What ever skin disease they had, once it had been identified as “leprosy” the exclusion began. So, the people we are reading about today may or may not have actually had leprosy, but they were all declared unclean, and cast out of the community.

So, let’s dive into the Bible and see what we can discover about this idea of things and people being clean or unclean.

The first thing to note is that the man asked Jesus to make him clean. In fact, in all the accounts of interactions between Jesus and people with leprosy recorded in the gospels, none of them ask him to heal them. They all ask him to cleanse them. Even when Jesus is talking about his ministry among those with leprosy, he talks about them being cleansed. This emphasis echoes the story of Namaan in the Old Testament, recorded in 2 Kings 5.

In the time of Elisha, the prophet, Namaan, a commander in the army of the King of Aram contracted leprosy. A Jewish servant girl (who had been taken captive during an Aramean raid on Israel) told his wife about Elisha, and said, ““If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.”

So, Namaan went off to Samaria, with a letter to the King of Israel from the King of Aram asking that he arrange for Namaan to be cured. The King of Israel thinks that the King of Aram is just picking a fight, how could he possibly cure someone of leprosy? But Elisha hears about this, and sends a message to Namaan, saying, ““Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.”

Namaan takes offence at this, saying that the rivers of Damascus are much nicer, why couldn’t he go for a swim there? One of his servants talks him down, pointing out that if Elisha had asked him to do something difficult, he would have done it. So, Namaan did as Elisha had said, and his flesh was restored and became clean.

Namaan did come looking for a cure, but the prophet of God offered a cleansing.

So, what is the importance of being clean, what is behind this idea?

The first appearance in the Bible of the distinction between things that are clean and unclean is in Genesis chapter 7 in the account of Noah and the flood. God had seen that humanity had rebelled, almost completely, against him, and so God resolved to start over. He commanded Noah to build an ark for him, his family, and representatives of all the animals of earth.

In chapter 7, verse 2, God says to Noah, “Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate”

Now, this is a slightly frustrating verse, because it doesn’t actually explain what the difference is between clean and unclean animals, and what makes them clean or unclean. We have to wait until later in the Bible to find this out. The thing is, it implies that Noah knew, even if we don’t. Noah doesn’t turn round and say, “What do you mean, clean and unclean”. He knew, which suggests that the idea of some animals being acceptable for people to eat, and for use in sacrifices, was familiar to Noah. These concepts of clean and unclean run very deep in the human psyche, and have been part of human culture since there have been humans.

The understanding of the concepts of clean and unclean are laid out in a lot of detail in the books of law, and particularly in Leviticus. The context for this is that the people of God have been rescued from slavery in Egypt, and are in the desert between Egypt and the promised land. On that journey God is laying out the principles by which they are to live when they get there, ways which will keep them close to God and so in a position to receive all the blessings that God has prepared for them.

As part of this system, God appoints priests who will help the people understand what is clean and what is not clean, and will supervise the sacrifices that will cleanse those things that can be cleansed. In Leviticus 10:8-10 we read this,

“Then the Lord said to Aaron, “You and your sons are not to drink wine or other fermented drink whenever you go into the tent of meeting, or you will die. This is a lasting ordinance for the generations to come, so that you can distinguish between the holy and the common, between the unclean and the clean, and so you can teach the Israelites all the decrees the Lord has given them through Moses.”

In his commentary on Leviticus, John Hartley explains this distinction like this.

“The distinction between the “clean” and the “unclean” refers to matters of ritual purity. The unclean is something that has become ritually contaminated and may not be brought into the area of the sanctuary. The common, by contrast, is neutral. It is not by nature unclean. Rather it is simply that which is outside the area of the sanctuary. But whatever becomes unclean must be disposed of or else go through a process of purification in order to be pronounced clean. The unclean must never enter an area that is holy, lest it be consumed. Thus a person who is in a state of ritual impurity must be careful not to approach the sanctuary, but outside of that he suffers no harm. The dominant requirement placed on him is that he purify himself ritually so that he can worship at the sanctuary. A person who is ritually clean is free to worship Yahweh.”

That last bit is really crucial to our theological understanding of what it means to be clean. “A person who is ritually clean is free to worship Yahweh.” By implication, then, someone who is unclean is not free to worship God.

As Leviticus goes on it details many things that make people clean or unclean, and what needs to be done to make them clean again – sometimes an amount of time that has to pass, sometimes a sacrifice that needs to be made.

Then we get to the section on skin diseases, of which we read a sample this evening.

As we read through this, we discover that there are different types of skin disease, with different ways of diagnosing them, with varying quarantine periods, and types of washing that might be needed. In the end, though, if it is decided that the person has an ongoing defiling skin disease then they are isolated, excluded from the community, excluded from worship, and must cry, “unclean, unclean” wherever they go. It sounds brutal, but without a treatment the risk to the community of a contagious disease running through the camp was too high for any other course of action.

So, from Leviticus we get this idea that being clean or unclean was connected with being able to have access to God in worship, and gain an understanding of the gatekeepers of that access – the priests. We also see the roots of the exclusion of those with skin diseases from the community.

As we read on in the Old Testament we begin to find another theological usage of the language of being clean.

In 2 Samuel 22, we find a song that David wrote when God delivered him from the hands of his enemies. This song includes this line:

“The Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness,
according to my cleanness in his sight.”

On another occasion, following his sin in committing adultery with Bathsheba, he wrote a humbler song, Psalm 55. This includes the lines:

“Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.
Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.”

Here we see David using the language of cleanliness to describe his rightness with God, or his sinfulness. This idea is found in Job 33:9

“‘I am pure, I have done no wrong; I am clean and free from sin.”

And in Isaiah 1:16

“Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong.”

The prophet Ezekiel uses both ideas in his messages from God. In chapter 22, verse 26, he accuses the priests of sinning and of failing to do what God had commanded them to do in Leviticus. He writes of Israel,

“Her priests do violence to my law and profane my holy things; they do not distinguish between the holy and the common; they teach that there is no difference between the unclean and the clean; and they shut their eyes to the keeping of my Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them.”

This is the reason that the whole people of God are sent into exile, their sinfulness has made them unclean, they are not able to come to God in worship, because they don’t even know that they are unclean, and so they are all excluded from the place of presence, they are sent into exile in Babylon. But, this is not the end of the story, there is hope, a hope of the cleansing that David asked for, in Ezekiel 36:25, God promises, “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols.”

As we get into the New Testament, we find that Jesus draws deeply on these traditions and understandings of clean / unclean but he also applies them in new ways.

This is seen most clearly in some of his interactions with the religious leaders – the teachers of the law and the Pharisees. On one occasion, recorded in Mark 7, Jesus was sitting down to eat with his friends and followers, his disciples, and some Pharisees who were there objected to the fact that some of the disciples hadn’t washed their hands. Their concern was not so much about hygiene, but about the traditional ritual hand washing before eating that the Pharisees practised and taught.

Jesus’ response was direct:

“He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:

“‘These people honour me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.’

You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.””

After giving some examples of this, Jesus continued,

“Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.”

After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. “Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.)

He went on:

“What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.””

In this conversation we hear Jesus building on that emphasis from the Old Testament that it is sin that makes people unclean in God’s eyes, and starting to unwind some of the emphasis on things or people being made ritually unclean by external factors. This change of emphasis is reinforced by the account in Acts 10 in Peter’s vision of a cloth being lowered from heaven, filled with unclean animals and him hearing the command to kill and eat. Peter refuses – he won’t eat unclean animals, not even in a dream. But God insists, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean”.

We are now clear that our sinfulness makes us unclean, rather than external factors. But we are still in the position that our uncleanliness excludes us from the presence of God, and makes us unfit to live in community. So, how do we now become clean, so that we can enjoy God’s presence, and live well in community together?

We are in church, and more often than not, the answer to questions asked in church is Jesus. And so it is in this case.

The cleansing of the people with leprosy is a sign of this. Yes, Jesus came to cleanse those with leprosy, and that was great for those people, but more than this, it is a sign of his power and authority to cleanse us from all the things that pollute us.

For some of us who live with chronic illness, or have loved ones who do, stories of healing can be difficult to read. Especially when the person asking for help says, “If you are willing….” And Jesus says to them, “I am willing….” Does this mean that God is sometimes willing to heal and sometimes not? I don’t know the answer to this. It seems that sometimes Jesus was willing to heal but was prevented from doing so by a lack of faith amongst the people, as in Mark 6. Paul wrote about a thorn in the flesh that God told him was not going to be healed. The best I can say is that sometimes God heals miraculously and sometimes he doesn’t. Either way all earthly physical healing is temporary. Until Jesus returns we all die of something.

What am sure about, though, is that every healing is a sign of God’s goodness and saving power. And in this case, as well as a blessing to the person who was cleansed, it is a sign of Jesus’ power and authority to cleanse us, and he is always willing to do that for us. We can all go to God and say, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” and be confident that he will say to us, “I am willing, be clean.”

Why can we be confident of this? Well, in addition to all the times that Jesus forgave people, and told his friends and followers, his disciples, that he had made them clean, and told them to go and tell people about the good news of forgiveness for sins that was available through him, we also have the writer of Hebrews, how connects together all the ideas that we’ve spoken of tonight. In chapter 9 of Hebrews we read this,

“The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!”

All the sacrifices of the Old Testament, all the ideas of clean / unclean were a foreshadowing of what Jesus was to do on the cross. Through his blood shed as he offered himself for our sake, we can be made clean, not merely of the externals of ritual uncleanness, but of the deep pollution of our own sinfulness. All our shame and guilt can be dealt with. All our dirty little secrets washed away. We can be thoroughly cleansed so that we are free to be in and enjoy the presence of God, free to worship him, free to live in community without damaging or polluting each other. We no longer have human priests who are the gatekeepers to this, we have a great high priest in heaven, who is both gatekeeper and gateway, as it says in Hebrews 4:

“Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”