Today’s Scripture Reading (March 26,
2016): Psalm 51
Cancer. Just
the name is enough to drive fear deep into our hearts. It is true that cancer
is not the death sentence that it once was, but it still has the power to make
us very afraid. And so we struggle to find the cure, and in several areas, it is a battle that we are winning. The number
of definitely fatal cancer is slowly shrinking – and maybe one of the
advantages of our fear is that it drives some of us to go and be checked by a
doctor whenever we are suspicious that something might be wrong. And even with
all of our advancements, early detection is still the best tool that we have in
our belt to defeat cancer.
In the
ancient world, it wasn’t cancer that made
people afraid. The word that scared them the most was ‘leprosy.’ And part of
the problem was that leprosy was almost 100% fatal and there was nothing that
anyone could do. A leper was immediately cast out of the society and forced to live
alone away from the healthy culture. They gathered in colonies where they found
ways to be a support to each other. In the margin of your Bibles in response to
any passage of Scripture on ‘leprosy’ is most likely a comment that leprosy in the Bible was used to describe a wide
range of skin conditions and not just leprosy. But the explanation actually
hides a dark reality. If it was eczema or psoriasis that was the actual cause
of your skin condition, the only people who would be around you were the
lepers. And if you didn’t have leprosy at the beginning of your association
with them, chances were that you would develop the disease at some time during
your life and that leprosy would be the
cause of your death. The fatal nature and the total isolation that the disease
caused meant that many tried to hide the symptoms of the disease as long as
they could and the word leprosy made
everyone afraid.
David writes
Psalm 51 as a prayer of repentance in the aftermath of his sin with Bathsheba.
And in this prayer, David recognizes the absolute depth of his sin. He admits
that his sin has always been with him. His words and his experience with
Bathsheba brought memories of all of the times he had sinned and not been
caught. But he recognized that God had been the witness to every single sin.
The depth of his sin was such that it was part of all of him. And he needed to
be cleansed from that sin in a very deep way. Sin was as serious to David as
leprosy.
The imagery
that David uses is the image of a priest cleansing a leper. This was the depth
of the sin that he felt. He was a leper and an outcast from the nation that God
was trying to build unless there was some
way that he could be cleansed from that sin. And that would be the job, not of
a priest waving his hyssop branch in his direction, but of God taking the
branch and administering the cure. Only God could make him whiter than snow.
Today is
Black Saturday. On this day, we
traditionally remember Jesus in the grave. It is a day of mourning. But tomorrow
he will rise again. Tomorrow God will wave his hyssop branch in our direction.
Tomorrow we will all be made whiter than snow.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 2
Samuel 13
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