If You Choose

Listen to exactly what the leper says, because the wording is precise. Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean. He has no doubt about the power. He is sure Jesus can. His uncertainty is about something else entirely, something quieter and more painful: whether Jesus would want to. Whether someone like him, unclean, untouchable, kept at a distance by everyone for years, is worth the bother. That is the real ache in the if. And Jesus answers it with surgical exactness. I do choose. He does not just heal. He addresses the precise place the man is wounded, the fear that he might be powerful enough to help but not willing to. Then comes the detail that should stop us. Before he says a word about healing, he stretches out his hand and touches him. No one touched lepers. Touching one made you unclean too. And the healing did not require it. Jesus heals plenty of people with a word from across a room. He could have done it here. He touches the man anyway, because the man needed more than clean skin. He needed to know he was not repulsive to God. A lot of us carry a version of this. We believe God can do almost anything, in theory. What we secretly doubt is whether he actually wants to come close to us, specifically, with all of it. The hand reaches out before the answer is even finished.