MY FELLOW LEPERS

Joseph Damien was a missionary in the nineteenth century who ministered to people with leprosy on the island of Molokai, Hawaii. Those suffering grew to love him and revered the sacrificial life he lived out before them. But even he did not know the price he would pay. One morning before he was to lead them in their daily worship, he was pouring some hot water into a cup when the water swirled out and fell onto his bare foot. It took him a moment to realize that he had not felt any sensation. Gripped by the sudden fear of what this could mean, he poured more boiling water on the same spot. No feeling whatsoever.

Damien immediately knew what had happened. As he walked tearfully to deliver his sermon, no one at first noticed the difference in his opening line. He normally began every sermon with, “My fellow believers.” But this morning he began with, “My fellow lepers.” In a greater measure Jesus came into this world knowing what it would cost Him. He bore in His pure being the marks of evil, that we might be made pure. “For this I came into the world,” He said (John 18:37).

R. S. Thomas poignantly captured the significance of Jesus’ sacrifice to accomplish our redemption in his poem, “The Coming.”

And God held in His hand A small globe. Look, He said. The son looked. Far off, As through water, He saw A scorched land of fierce Colour. The light burned There; crusted buildings

Cast their shadows; a bright Serpent, a river Uncoiled itself, radiant With slime.

On a bare Hill, a bare tree saddened The sky. Many people Held out their thin arms To it, as though waiting For a vanished April To return to its crossed

Boughs. The son watched Them. Let me go there, he said.

The gospel points to the person of Christ who went to the cross, not just to transform the Jeffrey Dahmers and the money-grabbers behind the scenes, but to renew even those whose self-righteousness blinds them to their own need. It was not just the prodigal in the far-off country who squandered the love of the father; the older brother lost out as well, though he was so close to the father’s love. The treasure is within reach of Americathe treasure of her recovered soul. Ravi Zacharias, Deliver Us from Evil: Restoring the Soul in a Disintegrating Culture (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998).