NOTES for Luk 5:12-16
12 And it came to pass, when he was in a certain city, behold a man full of leprosy: who seeing Jesus fell on his face, and besought him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. |
13 And he put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will: be thou clean. And immediately the leprosy departed from him. |
14 And he charged him to tell no man: but go, and shew thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing, according as Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them. |
15 But so much the more went there a fame abroad of him: and great multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed by him of their infirmities. |
16 And he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed. |
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Today's passage about the healing of the leper gives us a remarkable and wonderful formula of prayer, preserved by all three Synoptics: If You are willing, You can make me clean. This is exactly what our prayerful request should be. We should ask God only for what He Himself wants. This is easy to understand, but how hard it is to carry out. When we have some special need, it fills the whole world, and there is only one thing in the mind: Lord, finally deliver me from this, or God, make this happen. And if it is truly something serious, then, as a rule, it does not even occur to us to ask whether our desire might be displeasing to God. It is so obvious to us that this is exactly what everyone needs right now.
Considering this phrase of the leper, one understands that, in fact, it somehow jars the ear. One wants to ask two questions. First, can God really not want a sick person to be healed? And second, one wants to ask him, do you yourself want this? The answers to these questions appear obvious. Of course, God cannot fail to want the sick to recover, and of course the sick themselves want to recover too. Yet for some reason the questions arise, making the text somehow strange. This is the special quality of the Word of God: where it catches our ear, it teaches us most of all.
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