Even the greedy tax collectors wouldn’t dare get close enough to extort the lepers. These were the people despised by the most despised people in society. But fooling around with leprosy victims went far beyond even that. Jesus was often observed in conversations with prostitutes and tax collectors just after giving a cold shoulder to the wheeling-and-dealing Sadducees or refusing to get in a ceremonial tiff with the always-arguing Pharisees. But then, isn’t that the definition of grace? This cultural context is essential to understanding why Jesus’ interaction with lepers was so absolutely startling, and such a potent demonstration of the length to which God will go to extend grace even to people whom society believes are the least deserving of it. Most modern people can’t comprehend the kind of terror that leprosy produced. If you were walking down a market street with your kids, and you heard the hoarse cry of “unclean” from an approaching leper, you would immediately, without hesitation, drop everything you were doing to get you and your family as far away from the approaching leper as quickly as possible. Leprosy, above all things, produced fear - and not the simple startlement of finding a spider crawling across your shoulder. This was incapacitating, panic-inducing fear. Should a leprosy victim ever have to travel back into town, he would have to announce himself as he walked through the streets, hands covering his upper lip: “Unclean, unclean, unclean!” In fact, even in recent history, in some parts of the world lepers have been required to carry a bell to warn others in the streets that they were approaching. So anyone - even well-to-do people and sophisticated, religious, respected members of society - unfortunate enough to “catch” this disease would immediately be banished from society, condemned to a life of shame. It was the application of the age-old law of retribution - bad things happen to bad people. His disease resulted from some sin, attitude, or choice that deserved just punishment, and one of God’s chief tools for administering such justice was the infliction of this debilitating, humiliating, and miserable disease. In first-century culture, and especially among the ultra-religious elite, a victim of leprosy was often believed to have been afflicted by God. It’s also not unlike the bad advice that Job, the Bible’s iconic figure of suffering, received from his nice, “godly” friends when they barked at him to repent before his sin caused even more problems. Jesus lived in a highly superstitious time, when most people believed that leprosy was the result of a curse or of some incorrigible and hidden sin - not unlike modern Eastern religious systems that teach that your current place in life is the direct result of the karma, or lack thereof, in your previous life.
The way Jesus Himself interacted with leprosy victims is a great illustration of God’s compassion for us. Jesus: The King of Kings and Lover of Lepers