Editing Fast Fridays: 30 Minutes for God (section)

== Friday, January 10: The Cleansing of a Leper and Us ==
From [https://bible.usccb.org/bible/luke/5?12 Luke 5:11]:<blockquote>Now there was a man full of leprosy in one of the towns where he was; and when he saw Jesus, he fell prostrate, pleaded with him, and said, “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.”

Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him, and said, “I do will it. Be made clean.” 

And the leprosy left him immediately.

Then he ordered him not to tell anyone, but “Go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed; that will be proof for them.”

The report about him spread all the more, and great crowds assembled to listen to him and to be cured of their ailments, but he would withdraw to deserted places to pray.</blockquote>The passage gives us a wonderful opportunity to apply the Senses of Scripture to understanding the Lord’s message:
# The Literal 
# The Allegorical
# The Moral
# The Anagogical

With any passage, we can apply the one or the other, or all of them, and sometimes one becomes more meaningful than the other — for example, Genesis 7:6 tells, “Noah was six hundred years old when the flood came upon the earth.”

Literally 600 years old? How do we make sense of that?

The Cleansing of a Leper, on the other hand, makes perfect sense literally: a leper comes, Jesus heals, and everyone wants to be healed, too. But we miss so much if we leave the passage to the literal sense alone.

Let’s discuss us in this story — the Anagogical sense, and maybe we’ll learn a little more.
----A common error in Biblical exegesis (interpretation) is to isolate a passage without broader and cross context. If we look at this passage in Luke 5 unto itself, we lose sight of the lesson it provides. However, if we take it in the light of, say, Jesus' parable of the Lamp ([https://bible.usccb.org/bible/luke/8?14 Lk 8:16]),<blockquote>No one who lights a lamp conceals it with a vessel or sets it under a bed; rather, he places it on a lampstand so that those who enter may see the light.</blockquote>and then look at a similar passage to Luke 5's of the Leper, such as The Healing of the Two Blind Men ([https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/9?29 Mt. 9:29]) in which also tells the cured not to tell anyone, which, of course they run off and do. It's odd at first, that he tells people he heals not to tell anyone, but when we consider that he wants our faith to be pronounced for all to see and hear -- if they have eyes to see and ears to hear, that is:<blockquote>Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father ([https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/5?16 Mt. 5:16])</blockquote>Oh-- wait, let's take that one back to Luke 5 and Jesus' instructions to the leper,<blockquote>Go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed;</blockquote>What did Moses prescribe? Well, it's in [https://bible.usccb.org/bible/leviticus/14?1 Leviticus 14] for someone who has had a "scaly infection": 

# bring the leper to a priest who will meet him outside the camp
# if it has healed, he will gather two birds and materials for a sacrifice
# sacrifice one of the birds, then purify the live bird in clean water and with the blood of the other bird
# then let the bird fly away
# the cleansed person will then wash his clothes and shave his head, sleep outside his ten for seven days, then wash and shave again
# then that person will present two lambs for offerings (sacrifices) of reparation, purification, and atonement
# all the above "before the L<small>ORD"</small>

The events and the parables taken together help us recognize the "anagogical sense" as to where does it lead us? Jesus' message: believe and act for the glory of God.
----Now, let's look at Luke 5 allegorically: with us in place of the Leper. We'll discuss.  
----Fun discussion! As usual, we strayed off into a few different topics and biblical passages, but got back around to how  in taking the Gospel literally alone misses so much.

One of those other passages we looked at was [https://bible.usccb.org/bible/luke/4?16 Luke 4:16], Rejection at Nazareth. We reviewed how Jesus declared “Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing" (verse 21), and how they were all "amazed," yet Jesus knew they didn't fully believe, so he pushes them by quoting from Old Testament passages from Elijah and Elisha about the gentiles, the widow in Zarephath who Elijah fed, and Naaman the Syrian, a leper, whom Elisha cured, and, well, gentiles? that's going too far! As they prepare to hurl Jesus off the cliff, "But he passed through the midst of them and went away."

He also does this in today's passage, [https://bible.usccb.org/bible/luke/5?15 Luke 5:15-16]:<blockquote>And great crowds assembled to listen to him and to be cured of their ailments, but he would withdraw to deserted places to pray</blockquote>Where else did he slip away? 

Healing of the blind man from birth:<blockquote>The man who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away, since there was a crowd there. ([https://bible.usccb.org/bible/john/5:13 Jn 5:13])</blockquote>Jesus' "I am" statement ("before Abraham came to be, I AM")<blockquote>So they picked up stones to throw at him; but Jesus hid and went out of the temple area([https://bible.usccb.org/bible/john/8?59 Jn 8:59])</blockquote>At the Temple, telling the people of the Father, "I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me."<blockquote>So they tried to arrest him, but no one laid a hand upon him, because his hour had not yet come. ([https://bible.usccb.org/bible/john/7?30 Jn 7:30])</blockquote>At Jerusalem in the Feast of the Dedication, Jesus again asserts that he is God,<blockquote>[Then] they tried again to arrest him; but he escaped from their power. ([https://bible.usccb.org/bible/john/10?39 Jn 10:39])</blockquote>There are other passages in which Jesus simply goes aways, such as after the feeding of the 5,000, or even when he stays at the Temple while Mary and Joseph return home, and the Road to Emmaus, when he hides his identify (see also [https://bible.usccb.org/bible/john/11:54 Jn 11:54]).  Might be fun to consider more about in another session.