Fr Michael will use this passage this Sunday.
Tall, thin, about fifty-three. A pack-marked face with many scars. A missing eyebrow adds to an already hard expression. Thin, white hair, which like his clothes and skin is spotlessly clean. A deep, hoarse voice.
I WAS a leper. You needn’t pull away, I’m not a leper any more. I haven’t been for some time. I’m ‘clean’, as the priests put it. I’ve got a piece of paper from them to say that I have been examined, that I have made the proper sacrifices, such as I could afford, and that I have said the proper prayers and all the paraphernalia with the lamb’s blood and the oil and the flour and the turtledoves has been carried out, and that I’m clean. Not unclean, as before, but clean.
When the priests at last gave me the bit of paper, you’d think it was they who’d cured me. I don’t have a great deal of time for priests. Not the Jerusalem lot. Leprosy is important. Not important enough for the authorities to provide a little comfort for the lepers or a decent place for them to live in — or die in. But if you get better, which can happen, or get cured, as I was, it’s straight up to head office for all the performance and the bit of paper.
Don’t think I’m ungrateful. I thank God every night. And I say a prayer for the man who cured me. The Jerusalem lot looked after him, too. They had him killed. I blame myself a bit. I’m sort of famous. Everyone knows my story, certainly in Galilee. I was one of the first cures that Jesus ever did. Certainly the first leper. I often think to myself that I talked him into it. Convinced him, gave him confidence.
He’s been dead about a year, the Carpenter, and he worked as a preacher and a healer for about three years before they killed him. So I’ve been clean about four years. It seems less, for I was unclean for a lot longer – about thirty years! I was nearly twenty when I caught it. I’d been married about a year and a half. My wife was pregnant. I was seen by the priests, who did all the examining and tests, as it says in Leviticus, and, when it was confirmed, I was sent away to the caves. My wife was passed as clean and, when the baby came, he was
‘without blemish’, as they say. She came from the North and I sent her back home. I divorced her and never saw the baby. It was best.
There are different kinds of leprosy. Some kill you quick. Others cripple you or make you blind. Another type covers you from head to toe and changes the face of a person with bumps and swellings. It’s called lion-head, or, as we called it, ‘the ugly’.
That was my kind. I’m not pretty now, but you should have seen me four years ago. Leviticus says you must live away from others, ‘with torn clothes and bare head’. It says you must cry ‘unclean, unclean’ and wear a half-mask. The ‘caves’ where I lived served a large area of Galilee.
We supported ourselves as best we could and depended on charity. Lepers, in the main, just sit, or lie down. No energy, no strength. I was luckier than most, I was hideous but active, and I grew a little food and herbs. It was a simple life. You knew where you were. You were without hope. Simple. No problems. All in the same boat.
I heard about Jesus from a man who twice a week used to bring us some food. His daughter was one of us. He used to give us what news there was. We’d heard of John the Baptizer and his dipping people in water to make them pure again. A good joke that was, around the caves. We needed more than bloody water.
Anyway, this man told us that Jesus, who came from Nazareth, not far from us, and was a relative of the Baptizer, was getting a name for healing people. Not in Nazareth, his home town, they’d slung him out, but in other places. That bit sounded very genuine to me, so I listened carefully. This Jesus, the man said, had cured a woman of a high fever and made a man full of screaming devils sane again. With a touch, a word. For the woman’s son-in-law, he’d arranged a miraculous great catch of fish.
On his next visit, the food man told us that Jesus was on a tour of synagogues, preaching every day, and that he was going to be quite near us, in a small town about four miles away, the next day.
I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t rest. It was ridiculous, I’d long ago given up any hope. I was used to it, it was my way of life, a leper with ‘the ugly’. But I couldn’t rest.
The next morning I got up before anyone else and walked to the edge of the town. It was permitted, for begging purposes. And I waited. I didn’t beg. I was never good at it, and if I went too close, my face, even with the bit of rag over half of it, was enough to frighten people to death. I waited till past noon. The sun was full on me, and I dozed off. I woke suddenly and about fifty yards away I saw him. Don’t ask me how I knew. He was with other people and yet not with them. He was walking towards me and one or two were trying to stop him — for there was no mistaking what I was, mask or not. He put their hands away and walked on until he was no more than a yard or two away. I was riveted. No one ever came that close.
We looked at each other. His eyes were calm, and compassionate. He stood quite still. I thought he was weighing up the size of the job, so I helped him. I took off the mask. His expression didn’t change, except —and I’m not sure about this — to look a little uncertain. A sort of power was coming from him.
I knelt down. ‘Cure me,’ I said. ‘Make me clean.’
He said nothing. I was a bit dizzy in the hot sun. ‘Try!’ I said. ‘Try! I don’t ask to be whole again, or handsome Just clean! Make a sign, ask God, say a prayer. Try!’
The tiny uncertainty was still in his face. I held out my arms to him. ‘You can do it! You can make me clean!’ I told him, ‘you can! If you want to, you can!’
Then he smiled, as though remembering similar words he’d said to others. He came nearer and looked down into my eyes. Then he put his hand on my head.
‘Certainly I want to,’ he said. ‘Be clean.’ Then, very lightly, he passed his fingers over my face. I don’t know how he could bear to do it.
Then his face became serious. ‘Arrange as soon as you can to see the priests,’ he said, ‘your trial is over. By the time you go before the priests, your blood will be clean and clear of the disease. Your flesh will heal. You will pass all their tests, as written in Leviticus, and they will declare you clean. Make all the offerings and sacrifices laid down by the Law and God bless you.’
I was weeping. I couldn’t speak. I felt no different and looked no different, yet I knew I was cured.
‘One more thing,’ he said, ‘the most difficult. Don’t tell anybody, not even the priests, how you were cured.’
And then he left me. All he said would happen, did. It took time, but I had no doubts at all. I didn’t need to tell anyone, the story spread like wildfire. My cure, you must understand, was impossible. I was rotting away.
So I became a celebrity. A freak show. But I didn’t mind. And, as the story was already known — and authenticated by the priests, bless ’em — I never stopped talking about the Carpenter. As things turned out, I may have done him harm. But I think he knew he was going to die young. I know about death. And I think he knew.
with love and prayers, Fr Michael