8. “In Bondage to Corruption” (Leviticus 13 and 14)

                                                         In Bondage to Corruption

                                                              Leviticus 13 and 14

At the beginning of this series, I said that Leviticus is the place that New Year’s resolutions for reading through the Bible in one year go to die. It is perhaps the book in all the Bible most famous for causing readers to say, “What do I do with this?”

And if there’s one part of Leviticus that especially causes people to scratch their heads in bewilderment, it’s the section we’ve been considering these past two weeks, about ritual uncleanness. 

I believe, as I said last week, that one of the reasons people get so confused here is that they misunderstand how Leviticus is supposed to work. Leviticus is not like a modern self-help book that gives you a few key principles about life and tells you how to make yourself a better you. It’s much deeper than that. It’s designed to help God’s people begin to grasp fundamental spiritual mysteries of the universe—building blocks of reality about who God is and how this world works. And because it’s dealing with such deep and complex stuff, it doesn’t just lay out principles. It gives symbols, rituals, practices that are meant to be lived out. As they are, day after day, people begin to see and experience the things of this world in a new way.

Last week we especially considered how clean and unclean animals were meant to instruct about holiness. This morning, as you may have noticed, we’re considering the instructions about leprosy. More than half of this whole section about uncleanness is focused on leprosy. 

And the reason for this is that leprosy is perhaps the best symbolic representation of what sin has done to us. Leprosy, as we’ll see, is about corruption; it is the power of death made visible. Understood rightly, leprosy is really a picture of what WE are.

Death

When we’re using the word “leprosy” here, it’s important to note that what Leviticus is talking about is different from what we in our modern day call leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease. Here, leprosy actually is not just referring to one disease, but a group of conditions. One of them likely was psoriasis, a chronic skin condition where large patches of skin become inflamed and red with scaly white spots. Another in this group is likely favus, a dangerous fungus that infects scalp causing scarring and hair loss. On top of this, in portions of these chapters we didn’t have a chance to read we see also the word “leprosy” being used to describe clothing and houses experiencing mold and rot. 

And so, obviously, Leviticus is not making a scientific classification. It’s a symbol focusing on associations: what these conditions have in common is that they have to do with corruption and decay. Mold and rot obviously fit this. More particularly, the skin diseases identified here are ones associated with the decaying of the body, skin getting pale and breaking apart, exposing flesh underneath. It’s a kind of physical corruption people associate with corpses. So, in Numbers 12, when Moses’ sister Miriam is struck with leprosy by God, Aaron, as he pleads for her, says, “Let her not be as one dead, whose flesh is half eaten away when he comes out of his mother’s womb.” That’s how leprosy was thought of—as flesh decaying, being eaten away. 

In other words, leprosy symbolically represented a kind of living death. This is why when someone was diagnosed with leprosy they were to tear their clothes and let their hair hang loose: that was what you did when someone died. In this you were identifying yourself as someone who has been actively dying. For that’s what leprosy was about: being under the power of death.

More exactly, leprosy is about being under the CURSE of death. From the beginning of the Bible, death is never viewed as a natural thing. It’s something wrong. It’s something that has happened only because human sin messed things up, the terrible result of falling away from the loving presence of the God in whom life is found. Death is a consequence; it’s a punishment; it’s a curse. 

And in the symbolic world of Leviticus, leprosy was meant to be seen as a visible manifestation of this curse of God. In our chapter, in those places where it’s translated “disease” or “diseased” area, it’s literally “touched,” or even “struck”: a strike of leprosy in verse 2, the struck area of skin in verse 3, and so on. It’s a word often connected to God’s hand of discipline, and that’s how we’re supposed to think of it here. 

Sometimes when someone was struck with leprosy, it is God’s specific discipline for a specific sin. We already mentioned Miriam being struck with leprosy after challenging God’s commands. Centuries later King Uzziah gets the idea into his head that he can enter into God’s temple, and immediately he too is struck by God with leprosy.

More often, however, when someone was struck with leprosy, it wasn’t about the individual’s sin but a sign of the collective curse upon humanity. When an Israelite saw someone struck with leprosy, someone under the power of corruption and decay, they were meant to recognize a representation of what was true of them as well: for they too were under the curse; they too were under the dominion of death, even if in a less visible and accelerated way. 

Now our passage makes clear that this curse of corruption was not something to be treated lightly. Leprosy was treated as a contagion—because that’s how sin and corruption work: they spread. If you came into contact with a leprous person, or even if you entered into a “leprous” house, the uncleanness spread to you as well. Like a contagious disease or like a fungus, the decaying sickness spreads to those who come into contact with it. This is why a person suspected to have leprosy was immediately quarantined, and why one diagnosed with leprosy must cover their mouths and cry “unclean” whenever people came near to them. This was also why “leprous” clothing was burned and a house with “leprosy” had the stone with mildew immediately removed and the plaster dug out and redone—the corruption must be taken away before anything else becomes contaminated.

But beyond treating leprosy as a contagion, Leviticus also teaches that this curse of corruption must be treated as something completely antithetical to God. This corruption of the flesh had no place in the camp, among God’s holy people; and it especially could not come near the tabernacle or the priesthood. Because God is life, and not just life, but life incorruptible. God does not change or diminish or grow tired., He is the opposite of corruption, of decay, of death—those things are what we find apart from God, not close to him. And so there is no place in the camp of God for anything or anyone who represents corruption like this. God in Numbers 5 says to Moses, “Put out from your camp all who are leprous that they may not defile their camp, in the midst of which I dwell.” In God and in his presence corruption cannot be.

Now, returning to what I said at the beginning, do you see why I’m saying leprosy is a picture of us? If leprosy is a visible manifestation of the curse of sin upon humanity, of the curse of corruption and decay, of the dominion of death, then leprosy is a sign of what has happened to all of us. According to the Bible, apart from Jesus—which we’ll get back to in a moment, we are all dead. Not just destined to die, but even now we are under the power of death. Like these lepers, we all are the living dead. We all are under the dominion of corruption and decay.

I realize that sounds a bit bleak. But isn’t it how things are?

At a purely biological level, this is undeniably true, right? We are people of mortal flesh. We are corruptible—we are subject to decay. Just think for a moment about something as small and simple as our teeth. In our mouths we are fighting a lifelong battle against decay: every time we brush or floss, every time we sit in the dentist’s chair, we are trying to hold it off. And still, we lose; we get cavities. Because our teeth are subject to corruption. 

And that’s our bodies in a nutshell. No matter how frequently we run half marathons or shop at Whole Foods or get our annual doctor checkups, our bodies will break down. There’s nothing we can do in this life to prevent this. All of us, unless we die suddenly, will at some point find ourselves in one of those flimsy hospital gowns, lying with an IV hooked up to our arms, feeling fragile, vulnerable, helpless. In the end, what is true of the leper is true of us. Our flesh is mortal; it’s corruptible; one day, it will die. 

And our corruption goes deeper than just physical breakdown. This curse of death is a disease, a condition that goes to our very souls. We are, at every level, corruptible. Isn’t that one of the great frustrations of being human? At certain moments of clarity, we find ourselves with good desires for who we want to be. It can be all sorts of things: I’m going to turn over a new leaf and get into an exercise routine; or I’m going to stop losing my temper so much—I want to be patient and loving with my family. We feel so committed…and then over time, that commitment decays; it grows weak; it falls apart, and we fail. 

Romans 7 describes this well: “I do not understand my own actions. I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” Don’t we understand that feeling? And Paul goes on to cry, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Do you hear that? “This body of death.” The weakness of our will is part of the experience of being under the curse of death, of corruption.

We see it at a societal level too, don’t we? Throughout human history, we see all sorts of attempts to do something truly good—whether that’s in the start of a new government or a new movement or a new company. There can be such idealism. But inevitably, corruption will come; ideals will be sacrificed; hopes are let down. 

And it’s important to understand that while this is all too common, this is not natural. This is not how it’s supposed to be. I realize that some people will disagree with me here. They’ll argue that in a world where we are just the accidental product of evolution, violence and death and corruption and decay, these are just the way things are. No use complaining or resisting—we just need to accept and embrace our weakness and mortality. 

But I think we know that’s not true. And Leviticus tells us that this way of thinking is completely mistaken. In the camp of God, and especially the tabernacle of God, the place representing creation as it once was, creation as it’s meant to be, leprosy has no place. Corruption has no place. That is not how God made the world. God is abundantly, completely alive, overflowing with life incorruptible. And when he made us, he wanted us to share in that life, that joy and energy and love that will never fade or grow tired or spoil. 

Remembering this is an important part of resisting despair and cynicism. We must hold on to the memory that the world we know is a corruption of what it once was. And that we are a corruption of what we were meant to be. Sin and death entered the world and it spread like a contagion, so that its stain is experienced everywhere, by everyone, and our creation, and we, together with it, groan with the awareness that something is wrong. We are under the power of death. We are lepers.

Resurrection

That is what we’ve become. But that is not how we must remain. 

In our passage, there’s another part of these instructions about leprosy that is more hopeful. In chapter 14 we see the possibility being held out that a leper who is unclean, can somehow be made clean again. That someone under the curse of corruption and living death could be healed and made whole.

It’s not clear how often this happened in the life of Israel, if at all. In that time people generally didn’t recover from either favus or psoriasis. There’s a story in 2 Kings about a foreign army commander named Naaman who had leprosy, coming into Israel to seek to be healed. And when the king of Israel hears about this, he cries out in fear, “Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy?” Which tells you something about how being healed from leprosy was viewed: it was a miraculous coming back to life. But without getting into all the details of Leviticus 14 we see there a process for reinstating the individual into the full life of the community, involving symbolic acts that reconnected the person who had experienced social death now into the privileges of communal life, reconnecting them to Passover and to the priesthood. With these ceremonies, the one who was formerly dead subject to corruption was now to take hold of the new life—to put their death behind them and to live. 

And I wonder if one of the chief reasons we see these “resurrection instructions” in chapter 14 is to point forward to a hope, a hope of life from death that only one day would be fulfilled.

One of the first miracles of Jesus recorded in the gospels involves a leper. Jesus has just finished his famous Sermon on the Mount; he comes down from the mountain; and a leper approaches him. Likely everyone there knows he’s a leper because of his torn clothes and him covering his mouth, pronouncing “Unclean, unclean.” This living dead man draws near to Jesus and kneels before him, face to the ground, and says, “Lord, if you are willing, you are able to cleanse me.” “You,” he is saying, “can give me life from this death.”

And then Jesus does something shocking. He touches the leper. Think of that in the context of what we’ve seen in Leviticus! When was the last time the leper had experienced any sort of touch? Nobody touched him, because nobody wanted to make themselves unclean. And here it’s not just anybody who’s touching the leper in this moment. It’s Jesus, the one that Hebrews tells us is the great high priest. He is holy, the one on whom the Holy Spirit himself descended like a dove. When a human being who is holy comes into contact with uncleanness, we know what happens, right? God has repeatedly told the high priest, “Don’t bring uncleanness into my presence, lest you die.” 

Yet Jesus in that moment allows himself to be made unclean by touching this man who embodies the curse of death. And as he does, he says to the leper, “I am willing. Be clean.” And in that moment, something wonderful happens. Just as the uncleanness flowed from this man into Jesus, now life flows from Jesus into this man; life you might say becomes the thing that is contagious, and the leprosy leaves him. The man who was once an unclean leper is now clean.

And from that point onward, it seems like everyone wants to experience the touch of Jesus: sick people want to come into contact with him, parents seek to have him touch their children and bless them, a woman bleeding for 12 years seeks his touch, again and again, Jesus comes into contact with broken people, sick people, even with the dead. Again and again he seems to absorb their uncleanness, their corruption, and they in turn become filled with his life.

The miracles Jesus performed were all signs, symbols, we might say, meant to help to reveal what Jesus was doing in coming to earth. With these touches of those who were unclean, he was revealing something wonderful. That the Son of God, when he became man, had chosen to enter into our uncleanness. In taking upon himself mortal flesh like ours he was taking upon himself our curse, our corruption. He, in his life, and especially in his death, was a sin and uncleanness absorber. On the cross, it was as if Jesus was stretching out his hands not just there, but somehow, mysteriously to all people throughout space and time, inviting all who desired in that moment to touch him. 

About a year ago we ordained new elders in our church, and if you were there, you saw that those of us who already were elders placed our hands upon these men. Symbolically we in that moment not only were praying for them, we were also symbolically sharing authority.

In the moment Jesus was lifted up between heaven and earth, we should imagine all of us who throughout human history have ever trusted in Jesus—all of us, we, the walking dead, the spiritual lepers—we were placing our hands on him. Not to share authority of course, but to share our uncleanness, our sin—Jesus stretching out his hands to all of us, took upon himself all of our guilt and corruption and death. He bore it upon himself on the cross and there brought it all into the presence of the Holy God. As our high priest, stained with our uncleanness before God, he suffered death.

And then it was done. And then something else happened. With justice done by the perfect and complete sacrifice for all of our sin, his body, his flesh was fully cleansed, and just as centuries earlier the glory filled the tabernacle, now the glory of God filled Jesus’ once mortal body with life incorruptible. As Paul puts it “Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.”  

And what we need to understand; what we need to imagine is that we, all of us throughout the ages who trust in Jesus, still have our hands placed upon him. And just as on the cross our uncleanness flowed to Jesus, now, amazingly, the incorruptible resurrection Holy Spirit life of Jesus flows outward to us. Life becomes the thing that is contagious, and we who once were dead are made alive with life incorruptible. As Peter puts it, “By Christ’s resurrection, you have been born again, not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible.”

When I’m saying, “Imagine” these things, please don’t misunderstand me. I’m asking us to imagine, not because these things are not real but because these things not only are real, but they are so extraordinary that normal ways of speaking cannot comprehend them. 

Death really is at work in all of us. All of us have ongoing experience of the curse of sin and guilt. But whoever entrusts himself to Jesus: whoever looks to him for help as their Savior and Lord; whoever places their hands upon Jesus—if that’s you—even if that’s you for the very first time this morning, then there is also something new going on within you. Your sin has been paid for; your soul through Christ has been cleansed, and the powerful life-giving Spirit of God really is at work filling you more and more with his life. And one day, death will be dead and the life of God shall be all. 51 Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 53 For this corruptible body must put on the incorruptibility, and this mortal body must put on immortality.” 

Let us now, the lepers, the walking dead, turn to Jesus and in him find life.