Matthew 8:2-3
And behold, a leper came to Him and knelt before Him, saying, "Lord, if You will, You can make me clean." And He stretched out His hand and touched him, saying, "I will; be clean." And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.
Jewish tradition early on made a strong imaginative connection between sickness and sin. Both were seen as defiling, both drew forth the impulse to quarantine, both tended to be seen as somehow blameworthy. Something of this mindset survives today in our muddled tendency to conflate sickness with sin and vice versa. Thus, it's not hard to find people today who speak of AIDS as a "judgment" (a puzzling verdict when speaking of, say, infants born with AIDS). Likewise, we tend to speak of deeply evil people like Osama bin Laden or Hitler as "sick." There is some root instinct here that recognizes evil at work, but is unsure just what sort of evil it is and tends to mistake moral evil (i.e., the willed choice to do evil) with non-moral evil (disease, hurricanes, earthquakes). Lepers in Jesus's time bore the brunt of similar confusion. They were treated like pariahs partly because their disease was revolting and frightening and partly because there was a vague notion that, as Job's comforters said of Job, they had it coming. Jesus would have none of this. Where others drew their skirts around them, Jesus reached out. A blessing on those who imitate Him!
