The God Who Is Willing

Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean.

40 Now a leper came to Him, imploring Him, kneeling down to Him and saying to Him, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.” 

41 Then Jesus, moved with compassion, stretched out His hand and touched him, and said to him, “I am willing; be cleansed.”

   
 Alfred Edersheim, in his classic The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah Vol 1, Book III goes to some length in explaining how Jesus' response was so anti-typical of the prevailing Rabbinism:

Once declared leprous, the sufferer was soon made to feel the utter heartlessness of Rabbinism. To banish him outside walled towns may have been a necessity, which, perhaps, required to be enforced by the threatened penalty of forty stripes save one.

Rabbinism placed a great deal of emphasis on the connection between the physical and the psychical as well as the connection between the “sins of the fathers” and their descendants, especially their immediate family (“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”) There was a very strong case laid out, at least for the former connection, in the traditions of the Old Testament itself.  But as religion is wont to do, this was greatly added to in the Mishna:

     The Old Testament, in its rites and institutions, laid the greatest stress on ‘clean and unclean’...The Old Testament mentioned eleven principal kinds of defilement. These, as being capable of communicating further defilement, were designated Abhoth hattumeoth—‘fathers of defilements’—the defilement which they produced being either itself an Abh hattumeah, or else a ‘Child,’ or a ‘Child’s Child of defilement’.  We find in Scripture thirty-two Abhoth hattumeoth, as they are called.

To this Rabbinic tradition added other twenty-nine. Again, according to Scripture, these ‘fathers of defilements’ affected only in two degrees; the direct effect produced by them being designated ‘the beginning’ or ‘the first,’ and that further propagated, ‘the second’ degree. But Rabbinic ordinances added a third, fourth, and even fifth degree of defilement. From this, as well as the equally intricate arrangements about purification, the Mishnic section about ‘clean and unclean’ is at the same time the largest and most intricate in the Rabbinic code, while its provisions touched and interfered, more than any others, with every department of life.

Leprosy was a chastisement and in the elaborate code of defilements…foremost among them

In the elaborate code of defilements leprosy was not only one of ‘the fathers of uncleanness,’ but, next to defilement from the dead, stood foremost amongst them. Not merely actual contact with the leper, but even his entrance defiled a habitation, and everything in it, to the beams of the roof.  But beyond this, Rabbinic harshness or fear carried its provisions to the utmost sequences of an unbending logic. It is, indeed, true that, as in general so especially in this instance, Rabbinism loved to trace disease to moral causes. ‘No death without sin, and no pain without transgression’;  ‘the sick is not healed, till all his sins are forgiven him. These are oft repeated sayings; but, when closely examined, they are not quite so spiritual as they sound. For, first, they represent a reaction against the doctrine of original sin, in the sense that it is not the Fall of man, but one’s actual transgression, to which disease and death are to be traced, according to the saying: ‘Not the serpent kills, but sin. But their real unspirituality appears most clearly, when we remember how special diseases were traced to particular sins. Thus, childlessness and leprosy are described as chastisements... And in regard to leprosy, tradition had it that, as leprosy attached to the house, the dress, or the person, these were to be regarded as always heavier strokes, following as each successive warning had been neglected, and a reference to this was seen in Prov. 19:29. Eleven sins are mentioned which bring leprosy, among them pre-eminently those of which the tongue is the organ.

Wrapped in mourner’s garb the leper passed by, his cry ‘Unclean!’ was to incite others to pray for him—but also to avoid him.

Still, if such had been the real views of Rabbinism, one might have expected that Divine compassion would have been extended to those, who bore such heavy burden of their sins. Instead of this, their burdens were needlessly increased. True, as wrapped in mourner’s garb the leper passed by, his cry ‘Unclean!’ was to incite others to pray for him—but also to avoid him.  No one was even to salute him; his bed was to be low, inclining towards the ground.  If he even put his head into a place, it became unclean. No less a distance than four cubits (six feet) must be kept from a leper; or, if the wind came from that direction, a hundred were scarcely sufficient. Rabbi Meir would not eat an egg purchased in a street where there was a leper. Another Rabbi boasted, that he always threw stones at them to keep them far off, while others hid themselves or ran away. To such extent did Rabbinism carry its inhuman logic in considering the leper as a mourner, that it even forbade him to wash his face.

We can now in some measure appreciate the contrast between Jesus and His contemporaries in His bearing towards the leper. Or, conversely, we can judge by the healing of this leper of the impression which the Saviour had made upon the people. He would have fled from a Rabbi; he came in lowliest attitude of entreaty to Jesus... There was no Old Testament precedent for it: not in the case of Moses, nor even in that of Elisha, and there was no Jewish expectancy of it. But to have heard Him teach, to have seen or known Him as healing all manner of disease, must have carried to the heart the conviction of His absolute power. And so one can understand this lowly reverence of approach, this cry which has so often since been wrung from those who have despaired of all other help: ‘If Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean. It is not a prayer, but the ground-tone of all prayer—faith in His Power, and absolute committal to Him of our helpless, hopeless need.And Jesus, touched with compassion, willed it.

"You can make me clean". The leper believed, but was Jesus willing? This was the only remaining doubt he brought.  What relief he must have felt to hear so quickly and emphatically that Jesus did indeed will it.  But to see Him reach out His hand and touch him, right there...in front of everyone.  To feel the the unexpected acceptance after years of bitter isolation and shame (He is unclean, and he shall dwell alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp), years of hopelessness and disappointment, must have been somewhat overwhelming.  God did, after all, still love him.

But to encounter such eager willingness.  Knowing that Jesus was entirely capable of granting his request and was just about to do so would have been overwhelming enough, but to hear it so eagerly and straightaway - to ask and at once know the quick affirmation, feel the hand of blessing and be touched by immediate healing - must have unleashed a tidal wave of emotion in this man.  He must have been undone.  What relief! What joy!

Where this revelation of the character and heart of God gets me most is not in its application to physical healing.  When I read this I'm struck by the image of the sinner who throws himself at the feet of God pleading for mercy and wholeness, for freedom from years of isolation while he watched himself slowly come apart.  I am also undone by the revelation of Jesus' lovingkindness and such eager, empahtic mercy - His immediate "I am willing."  It is such assuring evidence of His unfailing love - this willingness to reach out and touch the loathsome - for couldn't He have just as easily pronounced him clean from afar?  I love that He does this in the face of all the ceremonial and legal restrictions (Le 5:3 Le 13:46).  Edersheim goes on to say that, "It almost seems as if it were in the very exuberance of power that Jesus, acting in so direct contravention of Jewish usage, touched the leper."

This early act in Jesus' ministry establishes many things up-front, but the greatest thing is how it declares so early on, and so powerfully, how eager our Lord is to impart His mercy, and all that means, to the self-loathing, sin-consumed castaway who is willing to come out of his isolation and throw himself at Jesus' feet.

Thank God for Jesus.