About a decade ago a student said to me, “I just can’t get comfortable in my own skin.” He went on to describe his life. He described comparison and competition with others to be enough – to be as good – to be recognised and respected. He also spoke of expectations that he could never meet. He revealed that loneliness had isolated him in his family, with friends, and even at church. He was essentially describing skin-level life. He was looking all around him, at the people and circumstances of his life but he was either unwilling or unable to look within himself. He wanted what the nine lepers wanted. He wanted new skin, comfortable skin. He wanted the acceptance and approval of others. He wanted the priests of his life – all those people to whom he gave power and authority over himself – to declare him to be clean, to belong.
If today’s gospel statistics are any indication, 90 percent of us live life at skin level. That is, we live on the surface. It is a “what you see is what you get” attitude. We assume (or at least act as though) there is nothing else in life than what can be seen, heard and smelt. At skin level, our view of life is mostly determined by whether life is going our way and whether we get what we want. Life is very much exteriorised. I am not, for a moment, suggesting that skin-level life is relatively easy or pain free. To the contrary, life at that level feels mostly like day-to-day-survival, is rarely peaceful, and leaves us feeling as if something is missing or waiting to go wrong. More than anything else skin-level life seeks to be comfortable: physically, emotionally, spiritually, socially, and financially. There is, of course, nothing wrong with being comfortable until we choose to settle for being comfortable rather than moving to a deeper place, a deeper way of seeing, relating, and living. Asking questions, challenging conventions and probing possibilities. Sometimes the desire or achievement of comfort can insulate us … from the fundamental realities of life and the persistent presence of God. It seems that only about ten percent, one in ten lepers, are willing to move in a new direction, to seek a wholeness that cannot be found in mere comfort.
For most of us, life starts to get uncomfortable when things do not go our way, and we do not get what we want or expect. It is at that moment that we begin seeking relief. We want the pain to stop and the difficult situation to change or go away. Too often we look for quick and easy solutions (perhaps better termed fixes), something that will restore our former comfort; something that will allow us to go back to life … the way it was before. That is the life of a leper. That is life at skin-level. One day you are clean. Life is as expected. You have work, friends, and family. You are part of the faith community. The next day everything changes. The next day you are unclean, and the whole point and purpose of life confronts and confuses. Why did this happen to me? Why is the world like this?
For the ten lepers in today’s gospel, being unclean means no family, no friends except each other, no work, no recreation and no temple worship. They were physically shunned, excluded from community life. They were kept at the farthest edges of society. They had to wear shabby rags for clothes. Their hair was to be a mess and left uncombed so their unclean status was visibly displayed. If anyone came close, the leper was required to cry out “unclean, unclean.” That’s how it is when you were a leper. Unsurprisingly, the lepers want to go back to the way it was before, when they were clean. But now they would settle for comfort. From a distance they cry out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” We can only imagine what they wanted. Maybe they hoped for a piece of bread, some water, a blanket. Maybe they sought to hear a kind word from a teacher known for compassion. Maybe they simply wanted to be seen and, if only for a moment, feel real, feel alive, feel like a human being. There was nothing comfortable about their lives. At skin-level, each day of life was spent searching for some relief. I know that search and perhaps you do too.
Regardless of our skin condition, we all know what it is like to be a leper. We may not have lived under the same conditions as the lepers of Jesus’ time, but we could each tell a story about a time when we could not get comfortable in our own skin – when we felt out of place or a stranger in our own lives. That feeling is the leprosy of today. Today’s leprosy is not a medical condition or a legal status. It is, rather, a spiritual condition. It is leprosy of the heart and its symptoms have nothing to do with our skin.
Instead they are things like perfectionism and pride, greed and gluttony, sadness and anger, boredom and back biting, the need for control or the quest for approval, fear and judgmentalism, restlessness and excessive busyness, gossip and grudges, prejudice and jealousy, condemnation and indifference, addiction to substances and experiences. Leprosy distorts how we see and relate to God, the world, others, and even ourselves. Leprosy keeps life at a superficial level. These symptoms, what the early church referred to as “passions,” reveal a deep discomfort. As long as we deal with them at the level of skin, seeking cleanness rather than wholeness, we can – I would contend – never truly be made well.
Leprosy even convinces us that the most we can hope for in life is a declaration of cleanness. So we settle for being comfortable rather than being changed. We seek relief rather than wholeness. We desire something from Jesus more than a desire for an encounter with Jesus. That is life at the skin-level. That is where we tend to live. It is where the lepers in today’s gospel have lived. Nine of the ten lepers will settle for a declaration of cleanness. But there is always that one, that one who is able to look below the surface, to see more than new skin. One leper, the Samaritan who was socially marginalised even before he contracted leprosy, looks past the exterior illusions of new skin. He sees a deeper reality and understands that healing is an interior condition. It is about the heart more than the skin. If he wants the healing and wholeness that Jesus offers, he will have to turn around and go in a direction different from the other nine. And he does.
While nine lepers celebrate new skin, one leper celebrates the creator of life and the restorer of skin – to know the one who changed his life and to explore the deeper depths of human living. While nine lepers hear the priests say, “You are clean,” one leper hears the Son of God say, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” What gave him the authority to say those words? What kind of power was he able to command? These were the questions the leper no doubt wanted to explore. He wanted to understand, to grow in wisdom and to grasp a little more about his own potential for nobility.
Last weekend I attended the twice delayed 40th reunion of my high school class in Wollongong. It was a terrific evening, albeit late as I drove home afterwards. In addition to comparing waistlines and hairlines, much of the discussion was dominated by what we had done. I seemed to be the odd one in wanting to probe what we had become as graduates of a selective state school which was known for strong academic competition among students. This was probably too intrusive for some but it struck me how superficially we relate to other people, assessing their personal lives on the basis of professional achievements. It was also apparent that I was one of very few non-drinkers and among a small handful of Christians with most people apparently liberated from the religion of their parents. It was, then, a terrific night, but also a terrifying one as I drove back to Tarago and wondered what we had all become.
My reflection on the night continues as I think about today’s gospel observation that ninety percent of us live life skin deep. The Gospel also reminds us (because it is nothing new) that Jesus offers more. He desires more for us than we often desire for ourselves. In fact, we do not ask for too much; we accept too little. What Jesus does for the one … he offers to them all. “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” The take home message is this: it was not a rebuke. It was (and is) an invitation.