Why are we doing this?

Because leprosy doesn’t win.

There’s a great story, passed down through the ages, about a man who had leprosy.  In the days this man lived, leprosy was greatly feared because it always won.  It would wreak havoc on an infected person’s skin and nerves, sometimes leading to great disfigurement and even deformity.  There was no known cure; if you got it you had it.  And it was contagious, so those with it had to be socially isolated, often in ‘leper colonies,’ of which you may or may not have heard.  Sounds like a fun place to live, right?  So the disease had tremendous negative physical, psychological, and social effects.  It always won.

Until one day, this man who had leprosy called out to another man for help, believing that somehow this man was different and could help.  And as a crowd watched (perhaps gasping as they did), the other man said he was willing to help and reached out to touch the man with leprosy.  Now everyone watching knew this was a bad idea.  You don’t touch a leper.  If you do, there’s a good chance you’ll get leprosy.  That’s generally how it spread.  Maybe, if you’re lucky, nothing bad will happen to you.  But nothing good ever comes from touching a leper.  Leprosy always wins.

But as the story goes, as soon as this ‘foolhardy’ man touched the leper, the leper was healed.  Immediately.  Leprosy lost.  Cleanness and wholeness and health won.  This was new.

The man who helped was Jesus of Nazareth, the long-awaited and promised Messiah, God in human flesh.  You can read about the incident, passed down and then recorded in what we call the biblical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

This incident is both historical and symbolic.  It’s a true story of a man delivered from leprosy because of the compassion of Jesus.  But leprosy in the Bible is emblematic of the whole human condition–frustrating, deteriorating, isolating, destructive, irreversible, and hopeless without a dramatic intervention.  And so this incident, which occurred early in Jesus’ ministry on the earth, is symbolic of the whole of what he came to do.  The claim of the Christian Scriptures, and thus the Christian church, is that the coming of Jesus changed everything-that he came with intent and power to overturn the corruption/disease/decay that has ruled the world since being contaminated so many years ago.

Why doesn’t leprosy win?  Because God intervened to fix what’s broken in the world.

Why CityLife Church?  Because God intervened to fix what’s broken in the world.  So there’s hope and purpose as we endeavor to love and labor for this merciful and victorious God in Minneapolis and St. Paul.