Metzorah - The Healing from Leprosy
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Big Idea: Compassion/love says or does what is necessary and works out the consequences later.
Ha-Foke-Bah Hebrew
Ha-Foke-Bah Engliehs
We are in part 5 of our series through Leviticus. I am tracking right along with this idea that “Even after the storm of (…..fill in the blank) God still wants to co-create the world with us because of His unrelenting love. I want to emphasize this again. God wants to co-create the world not because of our law-keeping but because of His unrelenting love.
Slide showing all the tragedy.
Listen, if God was doing all of this based on our law keeping this thing ends at the golden-calf, it definitely ends at the strange-fire and for sure it ends with not picking Aaron the one day gold calf maker the next day slayer of golden calf worshipers. This is a system where God is prioritizing everything around his love not law keeping. This is even more highlighted by the continual sacrifices coming into the tabernacle as both expressions of “I am sorry” to “I am so happy.”
These sacrifices were a witness to the priest about what God was doing outside of the Tabernacle outside of the soil-bound-tent where the One God dwelt on the mercy seat.
There is one kind of sacrifice that required the Priest to go outside the camp for the Metzora cleansed of leprosy (the leper Lev 13:45-46; Lev 14:2). The priest were to inspect for “a healing” to have occurred in the metzora (Lev 14:3). Yet, “To the rabbis the cure of a leper was as difficult as raising a person from the dead” (Marshall, 208, referring to Str-B IV.2.745–63). As a result, Lepers were victims of far more than the disease itself. The disease robbed them of health, name, occupation, family, fellowship, and a worshiping community.
Other illness had to be healed, this required healing and cleaning. It was not just physical, it was deeply spiritual. As time went on the commandments about isolating and staying far from a leper took precedence over compassion for lepers. By Yeshua’s time, rabbinical teaching had made matters even worse. If a leper even stuck his head inside a house, it was pronounced unclean. It was illegal to even greet a leper. Lepers had to remain at least 100 cubits away if they were upwind, and four cubits if downwind. Josephus, the famous Jewish historian, summarized by saying that lepers were treated “as if they were, in effect, dead men.”
This was not just commandments over compassion.
This was social taboo over compassion.
This always involves re-naming and re-making a person to be “not you” or “not your group.” You re-name the person from Larry to Leper, you re-make him from neighbor, friend, buddy, co-worker to unclean, hideous, outcast.
Have you ever seen a situation or been in a situation where religious commandments took precedents over compassion? Where people were re-named and re-made. Have you seen this? Maybe, been the victim of it? You know where sacred people with a sacred text use that sacred text to with-hold compassion. Have you ever seen this? Ever been on the receiving side of this?
Have you ever been guilty of doing that? I can tell you that I have done this. As a young seminarian-pharisee, at Moody Bible Institute and Dallas Theological Seminary I got so focused on the text that I lost site of who the text was for. I lost site of the fact of the “why” it was written and forgot about the “who.” Started looking at the speck in everyone else’s eye and did not see the oak tree in my own. I realized reading the Gospels that Yeshua did not like people like me very much. That kind of sucks when you realize Yeshua might not like you very much.
I found that easy legalism always involves prioritizing commandments over compassion and labels over love. Re-naming and re-making people so they are excluded.
Yeshua always prioritizing compassion over commandments and love over labels, his mission was always to re-name and re-make. People called her a “sinful woman” a “hooker” he re-named her Martha, disciple. They re-made her unclean, unholy he remade her child of God, disciple of Yeshua.
Metzorah Slide
I want us to spend our time this morning looking at a story in the Gospels that I know will shed some light on our Torah portion.
It is a story that was so transformative and remarkable that it shows up in all three of the gospels: Matthew, Mark and Luke. It is the story of a Metzora, one struck with Leprosy. Now, there is no doubt in mind that this story is 100% authentic because if you were at all trying to present Yeshua as a decent rabbi, law abiding Jew, then this story about the leper you are either changing completely or leaving out.
When you read this story you only have three options to choose from about Yeshua.
He is either a rebel, ignorant or the perfect embodiment of God’s love.
The story that I am talking about takes place early in Yeshua’s ministry career. In Matthew’s gospel it is what happens just after the Sermon on the Mount. Which makes the story so much more tantalizing because when Yeshua preached the Sermon on the Mount comes across as a supra-Torah observant Jew saying “your righteousness must be better than that Scribes and Pharisees” but what we are going to see from this story is that does not mean more rules, more contempt for people unlike you, different than you, outsiders, it actually means more compassion.
Mark 1:40 A man with tzara’at comes to Him,…begging Him and falling on his knees, saying, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.”
A man with tzara’at comes to Him, begging Him and falling on his knees, saying, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.”
First, this leper is a law-breaker. Lepers were not supposed to approach anyone. Not supposed to enter into cities. He had an obligation to live away from people, to tear his clothes and say “unclean, unclean” as he came upon a person.
“The one with tza’arat who has the plague-mark shall wear torn clothes, the hair of his head is to hang loose, he is to cover his upper lip and cry, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ All the days during which the plague is on him he will be unclean. He is unclean. He is to dwell alone. Outside of the camp will be his dwelling.
This leper is outside of the Law of God.
Mark 1:40 A man with tzara’at comes to Him,…begging Him and falling on his knees, saying, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.”
A man with tzara’at comes to Him, begging Him and falling on his knees, saying, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.”
Secondly, he knows the Law of God. This is not a man ignorant of God’s law. He says to Yeshua, ‘you can make me clean.” If he were a Roman or a Greek or just ignorant of God’s Law he would have said, “if you are willing, you can heal me.” He is not Roman, Greek or ignorant he knows that the Law of Moses has put him in a religious category that is next to impossible to escape.
Third, the laws branding has made him desperate. He is begging and falling on his knees. This is the greek word parakaleo, παρακαλέω, which according to BDAG means a strong form of begging like when the parents of a kidnapped child beg and plead for the child’s return. The TLV does a horrible job translating the particle γονυπετῶν. They having falling down on his knees but its not falling, this an act of intentional taking a knee in desperation, an act of showing someone that they are superior and you are inferior.
The action is repeated. It’s not that he just says it once. The way it read is that he kept on begging and kneeling and saying to him, “if you are willing, you can make me clean.”
Last, this man thinks Yeshua can cleanse him not because of faith but because of what he has heard about him. In the paragraphs preceding, Yeshua is presented as a very popular and charismatic healer. People are coming from everywhere to be healed by him.
When you recognize who Yeshua is you will lose you fear of religion and religious people. This leper knew he was out-of-bounds, knew the law was working against him, knew that rabbi’s would condemn him if not kill him, that socially people were frightened of him. Despite the scarlet letter “L” branded on him, despite all the condemnation that must have been working against him, he had heard and maybe seen who Yeshua was and that he would loosen the shackles that religion and religious people had placed upon him.
Religious people will always leverage their:
Theological System
Personal Ideology
Politcal Agenda
Family Loyalty
to re-name and re-make people.
The goal is exclusion not compassion. They use the commandments of God and whatever else they can find to maintain boundaries of exclusion.
When you start to hear about the kind of people Yeshua interacts with, eats with and heals you come to find out he does not operate based on
Theological System - Grace and Truth
Personal Ideology - Came to do my Father’s will.
Politcal Agenda -
Family Loyalty
He operates on a different motive all-together.
Mark 1:41 Moved with compassion, Yeshua stretched out His hand and touched him. He said, “I am willing. Be cleansed.”
Moved with compassion, Yeshua stretched out His hand and touched him. He said, “I am willing. Be cleansed.”
Yeshua is touched by this man’s desperate situation. This is not some random act of kindness meant to just move this guy along. This is not some act of kindness to move Yeshua’s ministry one step closer to revival. It says Yeshua is “moved with compassion.” In Greek, it is just one word in the passive. What that means is a body of water is still unless something causes it to move. Yeshua is not a robot, not some detached deity, he feels for the pain of this person. He is hurting for him.
Surprisingly, the response of Yeshua is no less scandalous than the leper’s audacity. He stretches his hand out and touched him. Bam, bam, bam…I mean he just broke the command and “touched” a man who was a leper. He just broke every social taboo on record.
He did not say, “wait, before I heal you, what denomination are you with?” He did not say, “Who did you vote for in the last election?” He did not say, “Who is your mom or your dad?”
He said, “I am willing. Be Cleansed.” He does not appeal to any other authority but his own. Because his authority is even higher than the Law’s authority, his authority is rooted in who he is as God and his number one attribute: love.
I want you to realize at this point both leper and lord stand under reproach by the command of Leviticus 13-14, the rabbinic regulations and social taboos.
Here is the thing about compassion. Compassion says or does what is necessary for the benefit of a person and works out the consequences later.
Yeshua could have cured him with a word. But he chose not to. If you study the eight times that Yeshua touches someone in Mark’s gospel here is what you discover. Each one of those touches challenges our answer to the question,
“What is God really like?”
The answer, “He prioritizes compassion over command, love over labels, inclusion over exclusion.” He cares about what hurts you and excludes you. He re-names you and re-makes you to heal you and include you.
Do you know what Beth El Shalom’s mission statement is? It is that we are a messianic community where everyone is a someone who can be transformed by the story of Yeshua. A community that practices the compassion of Yeshua, the perfect embodiment of God’s love.
Moved with compassion, Yeshua stretched out His hand and touched him. He said, “I am willing. Be cleansed.”
We are not told exactly why Yeshua was moved to compassion. Maybe it was the physical pain this man was in, maybe the social shaming, maybe the outcast status, maybe it was psychological and he could not stand how others made him felt. Mark certainly wants us to understand that Yeshua was emotionally affected by the encounter, but does not explain why. The most likely explanation is, perhaps, that the suffering caused by the disease, both physically and socially, moved Yeshua not only to compassion but to anger at the presence of such evil in the world; perhaps also over the insensitivity of the social taboo.
Can you imagine the drama in the air. We know what happens next but no one else does. If you were one of his disciples standing at a good pace away. I am sure a few were, you would have been like, “this is the end of this guy’s life.” As you see him touching the most toxic person in all of Israel.
Mark 1:42 Immediately, the tzara’at left him, and he was cleansed.
Immediately, the tzara’at left him, and he was cleansed.
Mark says that immediately the tzara’at left him and he was “cleansed.” Unlike an ordinary rabbi, Yeshua is not polluted by the leper’s disease; rather, the leper is cleansed and healed by Yeshua’s contagious holiness. Yeshua’s willingness to touch the man suggests a lack of concern with ritual purity, or at least a deliberate preference for meeting need over ritual correctness.
Yeshua never prioritized a command over compassion. I think there was something he wanted his disciples to learn early on. That is why this takes place in the start of his ministry.
He wants them to get this principle, “When what’s best for people is no longer what’s most important to you, you are at odds with God.”
Mark 1:43 Yeshua sent him away at once, sternly warning him.
Yeshua sent him away at once, sternly warning him.
Mark 1:44 He said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go show yourself to the kohen. Then, for your cleansing, offer what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”
He said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go show yourself to the kohen. Then, for your cleansing, offer what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”
There has been much debate about Yeshua’s “stern” warning coming the heals of such great compassion. Why the stern tone, why the silence to the masses and speech only to the priests? Some people have said it is because Yeshua is wanting to play by the rules of the book. But, at this point, that is not going to fly. He has already broken the rules of the book.
Listen the moment he declared the man “clean” he just supplanted the High Priest or Priest who alone had authority to do what Yeshua did. This is ritual treason or mutiny. Let’s not pretend Yeshua is no somehow trying to course adjust.
I know that I might be in the minority opinion on how I interpret this but I think the stern tone and the “sending out” (see Greek text) have to do with Yeshua’s compassion for him not anger towards him. In other words, though Yeshua had healed him, declared him clean, he would still not have social standing until the Priest in Jerusalem wrote a letter saying he was well and cured of leprosy.
The physical healing was one part of the cure but the other part was restoration back into community. Yeshua could have said you are “cleansed” go home. To go home would be to go back to the shackles and outcast status of being a leper.
Graphic Slide of Bird and Blood
He had to go through an 8 day process according to our Torah portion.
Word would be sent to the Priest. He would meet the man outside of the walls of the Temple. Confirm the leprosy was cleansed. He would sacrifice one bird and drain in its blood in water. He would dip cedar, hyssop, scarlet and a live bird into the blood water and then sprinkle it on the man seven times and release the live bird into the wild.
This whole ritual is a merging together of two of the great festivals in Israel: Passover and Yom Kippur. Passover involved blood, hyssop and wood. Resulting in the release of Israel from bondage. So the leper was released from his bondage. Yom Kippur involved the one goat dying and the other going to the wilderness. So here one bird dies and one is a “scape-bird” sent into the field as a witness.
Then the man would wait until the eight day. On the eight day he would offer up a sin offering in the form of a 1 year old lamb and a burnt offering along with flour and oil. And in a procedure that mirrors the ordination of the priests, the leper would have blood and oil put on his ears, thumbs and toes signifying that he is now newly created.
This would have given the leper status back into the community. People could come to his home again. He would know longer be known as “leper” but would be known by his real name.
While I deeply believe Yeshua knew he was the future fulfillment of both the Passover and Yom Kippur sacrifices, I don’t think that is the primary reason he wanted this man to go to Jerusalem with such seriousness.
I think, I am guessing, he wanted the priests to see through this miracle what God was truly like. He wanted them to see that God’s unrelenting love cares for people that they had written off in the name of the “Command” in the name of “Law” in the name of “Social Taboo.”
In the name of the commands of scripture, the religious found a reason to isolate, shame and exclude people. In the name of compassion, Yeshua sought to embrace, honor and include people.
yet, when I look at the portion where it says in Leviticus 14:2, “This is the Torah of the one with tza’arat in the day of his cleansing.” What I hear is that we are supposed to expect “cleansing.” We are to look for “the day” of his cleansing. If I expect cleansing then I should arrange my actions and my heart around that day, around that event. My heart should never be hard towards the needs of others but open and expecting to find a way for it to change.
“This is the Torah of the one with tza’arat in the day of his cleansing. He shall be brought to the kohen,
The people who liked Yeshua were nothing like Yeshua. On the other hand, the people who did not like Yeshua were indignant he did nothing like them.
If you want to be like Yeshua really be like him then what’s best for the you next to you has to matter to you. Because, When what’s best for people is no longer what’s most important to you, you are at odds with God.”
Mark 1:45 But he went out and began to proclaim and spread the word, so much that Yeshua could no longer enter a town openly but had to stay out in wilderness areas. Still, they kept on coming to Him from everywhere.
But he went out and began to proclaim and spread the word, so much that Yeshua could no longer enter a town openly but had to stay out in wilderness areas. Still, they kept on coming to Him from everywhere.
It is funny, this guy does the exact opposite of what Yeshua has told him to do. I find that modern commentators and theologians offer a word of caution and rebuke that this man’s actions are a sign of shallow faith and obedience.
Hold the truck. Be careful about condemning someone the Bible does not condemn. Yeshua does not offer a word of condemnation and none of the Gospel writers put off an air of condemnation. What I find here is a positive. It says he went and proclaimed and spread the word. That is always a positive in the New Testament. In the NIGTC it says κηρύσσω is the word for spreading good news (vv. 14–15), and, however inconvenient for Yeshua, the man’s… proclamation was recognized as, good news.
When you recognize who Yeshua is you will lose you fear of religion and religious people. I think this man detected in Yeshua stern-ness just what I said, an anger towards a religious system and people that used the Law of God to condemn people instead of as a means to cure and have compassion for people. I think he heard Yeshua correctly say “I am willing. Be cleansed.” And He knew, he did not need to look any further. He did not need religious people in sacred buildings to tell him he was cleansed, he had the word of Yeshua and that set him free. I hope I am not taking the metaphor to far but this man was the bird set free in the open country, a sign, of what God is really like: loving and compassionate.
Sin controls people with two exactly opposite lies. The first is, I shared this last week, that are minor flaws are not major sins to worry over. The second is when religious people say, You are so bad you are beyond help.
What makes sin gain even more power over a person is when sacred people with a sacred command in a sacred building use the Scriptures to affirm sins claims: you are beyond help, go away, you are unclean.
Have you ever had this happen to you? I have. Been through it and I got a shirt to prove it. Have you ever done it to somebody? I have to.
If we ever attend to be the kind of congregation that embodies the love of God in Yeshua we are going to have to embrace this statement: The you next to you must take priority over the potentially flawed views you carry around inside you.
Does your version of politics get in the way of embodying God’s love?
Does your version of messianic judaism get in the way of embodying God’s love?
Does your version of purity get in the way of embodying God’s love?
Does your version of right and wrong get in the way of embodying God’s love?
I know that I am rooting around and asking you to think deeply but I believe God has called us to be a messianic congregation that emulates the love of God that Yeshua embodied for us. Our mission for Beth El Shalom is to be a diverse messianic community where everyone is a someone who can be transformed by the story of Yeshua.
We can’t prioritize command over compassion or we will just become petty legalist. Legalism has never created a soul stirring revival. It has done more damage to more people than anything else I know.
Instead I want us to offer an alternative community. A community that embodies the love of God that first has compassion/love says or does what is necessary and works out the consequences later. That is more concerned about the suffering sin has caused then pointing out that there is a sin. More concerned about alleviating the suffering sin has caused then letting the person know “you brought this on your self.”
This will not be easy. But our Torah portion, our Messiah calls us to look for healing for the most unclean and toxic.