The Painted GospelsSample

The Leper
by Dave Yauk  

In Authority: Every Human’s Journey from Slave to Free, I talk about the Leper. Consider this as you read today’s reading and ponder the deeply symbolic painting for today, The Leper, from Ron Dicianni:

Leprosy is a very common thing in the Old Testament, and its prevalence continued even on into the time of Jesus. A leper is someone who cannot heal him or herself, nor fight off infection. Not only can a leper not fight disease, but the disease produces two dramatic effects. On one hand, the leprous spread produces numbness within a person’s body. As limbs grow increasingly infected, they lose sensation and whole arms, toes and legs can fall off or remain broken, and aside from loss of mobility, the leper may not even feel anything. In the exact opposite way, the cancerous venom can travel pervasively about a person’s body in such a way that wreaks painful havoc on everything in its path. The decaying nature of the disease exposes nerves, breaks open sores, and creates painful discharge that seeps out from open cuts and unhealed breaks or wounds.

Anyone with leprosy, per God’s orders, was to isolate themselves from the community at large. They would gather into colonies outside the city gates. They were secluded, alone, and cut off from any real help. Not only did fear start to cripple them in their approach to each other and to all of life, but it formed in them a view of themselves—an identity. The leper begins to define themselves by their leprosy. If someone were to inquire of them and say for instance, “tell me about yourself…” they would simply reply, “I am a leper.” 

Lepers are “painted” symbols of our condition as sinful humans. When left only to our sin, we are a cancerous community of numb and neurotic people that interact only in defense and fear. The good news of Scripture and of this painting is that Jesus heals Lepers.