Friends
Peace be with you.
To prepare for this homily, I read over all of Chapters thirteen and fourteen in the Book of Leviticus. If, like me, you don’t have the order of the Books of the Bible memorized, Leviticus is the third book, after Genesis and Exodus and before Numbers and Deuteronomy. Leviticus is named after the priestly Tribe of Levi because much of it concerns actions of the priests and remaining ritually clean. Chapters thirteen and fourteen, in particular, deal with a set of skin disorders identified as Leprosy. Ever since the fourth century before Christ, Leprosy is almost exclusively identified with Hansen’s disease, which is actually a bacterial infection affecting the skin that is transmitted via prolonged exposure to a person’s viral load. Today, Hansen’s disease is relatively easily treatable but, until the present time, it was a very confusing, deadly, and frightening disease. But, as I said, that form of leprosy was not what they were talking about in the first reading for today.
The way it’s described in the Old Testament is a wound or sore with hair discoloration that penetrates the skin into the body. It not only affects the body but it can affect your clothing and your home. If it’s superficial or does not have the association with hair discoloration, a priest is told that it’s not leprosy so the person can be told they’re clean but they need to check back to make sure it doesn’t get worse. In typical Old Testament mythology, they wait one week and then check it again. If nothing has changed, wait another week and so forth. What I find interesting is that a person labeled unclean with leprosy had a similar prognosis. They were to do the five things we heard about in the first reading: Rend their garments, keep their head bare, cover their beard and mustache, cry out “unclean unclean” wherever they went, and dwell outside the camp. But, after seven days, they could ask a priest to go outside the camp and check them out to see if they were getting better. If so, there was a process of returning to society involving sacrificing a big animal for a rich cured leper and a small one for a poor cured leper.
One of the big differences between being clean or unclean, therefore, was whether you could be a member of society. A leper was to remain outside of society and make it clear to the rest of society that he was infected. He had to show his torso and head so people would see any pustules and shout out “unclean unclean” so people would stay away. He even had to wear a kind of face mask that would cover his facial hair. I guess we’ve been wearing face masks longer than we even knew about.
We’re tempted to view this in modern terms of transmission of viral loads and concerns about cross contamination. These measures, interestingly, may have had the affect of stopping that but that was not exactly the intent of the Bible writers. The priest isn’t told to recommend a treatment. His job appears to be entirely diagnostic rather than medicinal in nature. He is told how to recognize leprosy and the person who has leprosy is told how to behave. But, it does sort of prompt the question in me as to what was the point of this. If it wasn’t public health, even if it had that as a side effect, then what was the point of these two chapters?
Much of the time, Christians comment on this they’ll say something like “At the time, it was believed that you got leprosy as a punishment from God for sinful acts but Jesus changed all that that in the gospel.” The problem is that seeing leprosy as divine punishment is not explicitly mentioned in the Bible. Though, if you are cured, you have to give thanks to God and offer a sacrifice, so I could see how that would be a part of it. But, what if we look at this in a slightly different, I would suggest possibly more in line with the Old Testament, way?
Let’s assume that we all know we’re going to die. I know, that’s a real bummer and, as a Christian, each day I hope for the coming of Jesus taking me to a place where there is no more sin, no more sorrow, no more face masks, no more social distancing, and no more hand sanitizer. But, before we get there, we’re all probably going to die. What if disease was not a curse but a marker that it was likely coming? What if leprosy was seen as something that meant we needed to get ready because it’s probably coming sooner rather than later? The rent garments and bare head are the marks of a person preparing to be in the tomb. The isolation is meant to mirror that isolation and give us the space to prepare for it. And the face mask isn’t meant, as they are for us, to control droplets that spread an infectious disease, but a precursor to the burial shroud.
In just a few days, we may decide to have someone put ashes on our head. I understand that some of you are going to elect not to do that this year, which is perfectly fine. Actually, one of the concerns I share with our Archbishop is that we’ve allowed the wearing of ashes to turn into either a mark of pride or a statement of belonging to something exclusive. I’ve seen shirts advertised with a black cross meant to look like ashes with cute phrases like “Lent is coming, get your ash to church”. It reminded me of when I learned that there was a competition in Ames between kids of the various churches of which denomination’s shirts were more represented in a bar. The students wearing the ones with more people wearing a particular church’s clothing would win a free drink purchased from the students wearing another church’s clothing. Needless to say, that was not why we started making those shirts and I was at least a little ashamed to learn that’s what some of the students were using them for.
In a similar way, ashes are meant to remind us that, like so many before us, we will probably follow Jesus to the grave. How prepared are we for that? Perhaps, it’s okay to miss out on ashes this year if they’ve lost that meaning for us. Maybe we could focus, instead, on what acts of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving we want to undergo. Maybe, instead of thinking that we are somehow better than the leper, we could learn something from him. We all end up in the same place. We all hope for eternal life with God in heaven. How should our preparation for heaven set us apart from the the rest of the world to be better prepared?
