'When He was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed
Him. 1. And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped Him, saying,
Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean. 3. And Jesus put
forth His hand, and touched him, saying, I will; he thou clean. And
immediately his leprosy was cleansed. 4. And Jesus saith unto him,
See thou tell no man; but go thy way, shew thyself to the priest,
and offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a testimony unto
them.'--MATT. viii. 14.
THE great collection of Jesus' sayings, which we call the Sermon on the
Mount, is followed by a similar collection of Jesus' doings, which we
call miracles. It is significant that Matthew puts the words first and
the works second, as if to teach us the relative importance of the two.
Some one has said that miracles are 'the bell rung before the sermon,'
but Matthew thinks that the sermon comes first. He masses together nine
miracles (the raising of Jairus' daughter and the healing of the woman
with the bloody issue being so closely connected that they may be
regarded as one) which are divided into three groups of three each, and
are separated by three sections of more general character, like three
landings in a broad flight of stairs, or three breaks in a procession
(ch. viii. 18-22; ix. 9-17, 35-38).
The first triplet comprises miracles of bodily healing, and shows Jesus
as the great physician, curing leprosy, palsy, and fever, three types of
disease which have their analogues in the moral world. The cure of the
leper comes first, apparently not from chronological reasons, but
because leprosy had been made by the Old Testament legislation the
symbol of sin. The story is found in all the Synoptic Gospels, with
slight variations, which make more impressive their verbal identity in
reporting the leper's appeal and the Lord's answer.
A leper had to keep apart from men and was shunned by them, but this one
ventured to mingle with the 'great multitudes' that 'followed' Jesus,
till he reached His side. He must have known something of Christ to have
approached Him with a flicker of long-absent hope in his heart. No doubt
he had heard of some of the earlier miracles; and no doubt the crowd
recoiled from him so that he could easily reach Jesus. When he got there
he worshipped, or, as Luke puts it, 'fell on his face,' and made his
appeal. It would be all the more piteous, because it was spoken in that
feeble, hoarse voice characteristic of leprosy, and it was in itself
most pathetic. The poor creature has won his way to a surprising
confidence, dashed with a yet more surprising diffidence and doubt. He
is sure of the power, but not of the willingness, of this wonderful
healer. 'Thou canst,' does not make him confident, because it is
weakened by 'If Thou wilt.' Faith, desire, humility, and submissiveness
are beautifully smelted together in the wistful words, which are all the
more prevalent a prayer, because they do not venture to take the form of
prayer. To tell Jesus that His will was all that was needed to heal him
was, as it were, to throw the responsibility for this continued misery
on Him who could so easily deliver, if He only willed to do it. But the
hope which gleamed before his poor eyes was only a gleam, obscured by
his ignorance of Jesus' disposition towards him. The lowly acquiescence,
with which he leaves Jesus to decide whether he is to be freed from his
horrible, living death, is very beautiful, and speaks of a patient,
disciplined spirit, as well as of a profound insight into our Lord's
authority. The leper does cling to the hope that Jesus does will to heal
him, but he will not rebel if he is left shut up in his prison-house.
Surely in such a blending of trust, yearning, and acceptance of that
Will, whatever it involved, there was the germ of discipleship. Surely
there was, at least, the beginning of a living union with Jesus, which
would heal more than the leprosy of the flesh.
Mark gives the precious addition to the narrative, of a glimpse into the
heart of Jesus, when he tells us that, 'moved with compassion,' He 'put
forth His hand and touched him.' Swift and, we may almost say,
instinctive was the outgoing of pity from the heart, which was so
pitiful because it was so pure, and laid on itself every man's sorrow
because it carried no burden of its own sin or self-regard. That touch
had deep meaning, but it was not done for the sake of a meaning. It was
the spontaneous expression of love, and revealed the delicate quickness
of perception of another's feelings which flows from love only. The
leper had almost forgotten what the touch of a hand felt like. He had
lived, ever since his disease was manifest, apart from others, had
perhaps lost the embraces of wife and children, had walked alone in
crowds, and had a heart-chilling circle cleared round him everywhere.
But now this Man stretches His hand across the dreary gulf, and lets him
feel once more the sweetness of a warm and gentle touch. It was half
the cure; it was the complete clearing away of the last film of the
cloud of doubt as to the will of Jesus. It answered the 'if' by
something that spoke louder than any word. And, though it was not meant
for anything but the silent voice of pity and love, we do not rob it of
its beautiful spontaneity when we see, in the touch of that pure hand on
the rotting feculence of leprosy, a parable of the Incarnation, in which
He lays hold on our flesh of sin and is yet without sin--contracts no
defilement by contact, but by touching cleanses the foulness on which He
lays His white fingers. By that touch He proclaimed Himself the priest,
to whom the Law gave the office of laying his hand on the leper.
But the great word accompanying the touch is majestic in its brevity and
absolute claim to absolute power. Jesus accepts the leper's lofty
conception of His omnipotent will, as He always accepted the highest
conceptions that any formed of His person or authority. The sovereign
utterance, 'I will,' claims possession of the divine prerogative of
affecting dead matter by the mere outgoing of His volition. Not only is
it true of Him that 'He spake and it was done,' but He willed and it was
done; and these are the hall-marks of divine power. Neither the touch of
His hand nor the word of His lips cleansed the leper, but simply the
exercise of His will, of which word and touch were but audible and
visible tokens for sense to grasp. The form of the poor husky croak for
help determined the form of the answer, and the correspondence is marked
by all the evangelists as a striking instance of Christ's loving way of
echoing our petitions in His replies, and moulding His gifts to match
our desires. Thunder in heaven wakes echoes on earth, but more wonderful
is it that the thin voice of our supplications, when we scarcely dare to
shape them into prayers, should wake a voice from the throne, which,
though it is mighty as 'the voice of many waters' and sweet as that of
'harpers harping with their harps,' deigns to echo our poor cries.
The prohibition to speak of the cure till the priests had pronounced it
real and complete is more stringent in Mark, who also tells how utterly
it was disregarded. Its reason was obviously the wish to comply with the
law, and also the wish to get the official seal to the cure. Jesus did
desire the miracle to be known, but not till it was authoritatively
certified by the priest whose business it was to pronounce a sufferer
clean. It was for the leper's advantage, too, that he should have the
official certificate, since he would not be restored to society without
it. One does not wonder that the prohibition was disregarded in the
uncontrollable delight and wonder at such an experience. The leper was
eloquent, as we all can be, when our hearts are engaged, and his
blessing refused to be hid. Alas, how many of us, who profess to have
been cleansed from a worse defilement, find no such impulse to speak
welling up in ourselves! Alas, how superfluous is the injunction to
hundreds of Christ's disciples: 'See thou say nothing to any man'!