Word to the Wise
Friday, June 28, 2013 - Friday in the 12th Week in Ordinary Time
[Gen 17:1, 9-10, 15-22 and Matt 8:1-4]When Jesus came down from the mountain, great crowds followed him. And then a leper approached, did him homage, and said, "Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean." He stretched out his hand, touched him, and said, "I will do it. Be made clean."
ST. IRENAEUS, bishop and martyr
Today's gospel scripture from Matthew immediately follows the Sermon on the Mount. As we can see, Jesus has just come down from the mountain! There he had been portrayed as a kind of "new Moses" offering a new interpretation of the Torah. Now he shows that he has the power to back up what he teaches with a series of three healings which Matthew sees as the fulfillment of a prophecy in Isaiah 53:4: "He took away our infirmities and bore our diseases." This prophecy is part of the "Suffering Servant" portrait in Isaiah, which the early Christian community saw as a "proto-type" of Christ. Thus Jesus is now shown as a mighty prophet.
Jesus' ministry cuts across old taboos. He heals a leper by touching him. The leper, an outcast, shows faith by doing homage to Jesus and expressing trust in Jesus' power. Jesus responds to that faith, but (in keeping with Matthew's respect for Jewish observance), tells the leper to "show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses prescribed."
The gospel portraits of Jesus offer us a complex picture of faith. From the difficult challenges of the Sermon on the Mount, we go to a compassionate healing prophet. Can we pick one to the exclusion of the others? There is always the temptation to pick a "Jesus of our own designs" like one of those "identi-kits" a little boy showed me on a game computer recently. Only by reading the whole Bible do we get the "big picture," but at least for today we can be startled by the change in the portrait in Matthew. AMEN