Theology Thursday with Dave Holzhauer

We’re used to the idea that if something clean touches something dirty, the clean thing becomes dirty. Think of food and the five second rule (except on a really dirty floor, with dust bunnies running amok).

One of the major themes in the Old Testament is the idea of cleanliness, usually a metonymy or stand-in for holiness. In Haggai 2:10-19, this problem is addressed directly. God asks the priests if something holy touches something else that is unclean, does the unclean become holy/clean? The priests said, “no.” What about if something unclean touches something clean/holy? The priests said, “it becomes unclean.” God goes on to tell the tell the people that they are unholy through their actions, but he will make them holy. Something that seems impossible after the previous Q&A session.

Haggai never resolves this dilemma. If something holy is made unholy by contact or interaction with something unholy, what are we to do? Are you simply supposed to shut yourself from anything unclean or sinful? Good luck. If everything around you is unclean, you’re going to become unclean at some point when you brush up against it. If you’ve ever sinned or done wrong in your life, you’re already unholy or unclean.

We get the answer to this unsolvable problem in Mark 1:40-45. A leper begs Jesus to heal him. This is no big deal, we’ve already seen Jesus do lots of miracles by this point in the story. What’s interesting/weird is how Jesus heals the leper. Instead of simply healing the disease (we’re not told which skin disease it was) with a word of command, Jesus reaches out this hand and touches the leper. Only after touching the leper does he tell the disease to be healed. Jesus does not stay aloof or far away from our suffering. 

Under the reigning ritual purity laws of the day (and our own experience), the clean (Jesus) has now become dirty and contaminated. Stop and think about that for a second. Jesus didn’t grab a bar of Irish Spring and scrub the guy. Instead, we’re presented a picture of something so clean that the dirty and unclean become clean by touching it. That’s a stunning reversal of our ideas of how things go. And yet there we have it. There is a god who is so infinitely clean and full of compassion that he will reach out to touch the dirty and unclean. Not simply to make reassuring contact with the dirty and unclean, but to make them clean like himself.

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