The Untouchables

Matthew 8 begins with Jesus coming down from the mountain after preaching the Sermon on the Mount and immediately running into three people most Jews would prefer to overlook.

A leper. A Roman soldier. A sick middle-aged woman.

Three people who, in first-century Israel, would have been dismissed, avoided, or outright condemned by the religious establishment. Three people who had every reason to stay back. And three people who approached Jesus anyway — with trust and with humility. Matthew 8 isn’t just a collection of miracle stories. It’s a portrait. Three pictures of the same breathtaking truth: Jesus rewards trust and humility. Every time. Without finding fault.

Leprosy in the first century was what AIDS was in the 1980s. Fear. Stigma. Isolation. The law required lepers to shout “unclean” whenever anyone came near. It was against Roman and Jewish law for those diagnosed to live among healthy people. They formed colonies outside the city walls — communities of the forgotten, surviving on whatever family, friends, or well-meaning strangers would leave at a safe distance.

Here’s what we tend to miss when we picture lepers through our modern lens: these were ordinary people. Men with wives, children, friends. Moms and merchants who knew what it felt like to shake hands, to hold a grandchild, to put a hand on a friend’s shoulder, to hug, kiss, or hold hands. And then one day — on a day just like any other — they found out. And everything ended. Not just the social contact. The touch itself. The basic human experience of being included and physically touched by others - withdrawn, gone.

Research tells us a newborn baby deprived of physical touch will die within hours, even in a warm, safe environment. We were made for contact. We need it. And this man may have gone years — possibly seven or eight years — without a single hand laid on him.

He comes to Jesus in the crowd and says: “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.”

Notice what he doesn’t say. He doesn’t ask a question. He doesn’t make demands. He doesn’t remind Jesus of his suffering or list the reasons he deserves to be healed. He simply acknowledges two things: Jesus has the power, and the outcome is entirely up to Him. That’s trust. That’s humility. Both in one sentence.

And then Matthew tells us something we blow past too fast: “Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him.” I don’t know about you, but I don’t imagine a timid reach. I’m guessing it was more of a bear hug! Then perhaps Jesus stepped back, tilted the man’s chin upward, looked him in the eye and said, “I will; be clean.”

According to Leviticus 5:3, anyone who touched a leper became unclean. Jesus knew that law. He didn’t just wave his hand from a distance. He reached out and touched a man the entire world had fearfully scurried past. And something unexpected happened: rather than Jesus becoming unclean, the leper became clean.

Jesus doesn’t abolish the law. He transcends it. When you bring all your brokenness and lay it at the foot of the cross, you don’t dirty up the cross. You get clean.

There’s one more thing worth serious consideration here. Jesus didn’t use a label. Matthew, writing the account, calls the man “a leper” — that was the accepted label of the day. But watch Jesus throughout the Gospels. He never identifies people by their condition, their sin, their worst moment. The labels we carry — the ones others have pinned on us, and especially the ones we’ve pinned on ourselves — those did not come from God. You are not your diagnosis. You are not your failure. You are not the worst thing anyone has ever called you.

The second encounter is stranger still. A Roman centurion approaches Jesus — a soldier from the occupying force that had conquered and controlled Israel. Two reasons the Jewish crowd would want nothing to do with this man: he’s a Gentile (non-Jew), and he’s Roman. He represents everything that opposes them.

And yet the first word out of his mouth is “Lord.”

Pay attention to that. Throughout the Gospels, believers call Jesus “Lord.” Unbelievers call Him “teacher” or “rabbi.” This soldier gives himself away immediately. Somebody he trusted had told him about Jesus. And he trusted them enough to transfer that trust to someone he’d never met. That’s how faith spreads — credibility leveraged for the sake of someone else’s soul.

He’s not coming for himself. He’s coming for a sick servant. In the Greco-Roman world, philosophers like Aristotle, Varro, and Cato wrote that servants were no greater than animals — subhuman, deserving no more compassion than livestock. This centurion defies his entire culture. He cares about someone nobody expects him to care about.

Jesus says He’ll come. And the centurion stops Him: “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. But only say the word, and my servant will be healed.”

A Roman officer — by law superior to every Jew in the land — says he is not worthy. He then explains his understanding of authority: I give orders and they’re obeyed. You have authority over sickness itself. You don’t have to be present. Just speak.

Jesus marvels. And then He says something that should rattle us: “With no one in Israel have I found such faith.”

The insider missed it. The outsider got it. And Jesus uses that moment to deliver a warning: many will come from the east and the west to recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. Meanwhile, those who were supposed to be in — those depending on family lineage, religious pedigree, their record of good behavior — will be thrown into outer darkness.

The most dangerous labels aren’t the ones that hurt you. They’re the positive ones. The ones you lean on. Being a good person won’t get you in. Being generous, well-respected, moral, well-attended at church — none of it is a substitute for trusting Jesus. Depending on your reputation is no different from the Pharisees depending on their bloodline. Jesus sees right through it.

The third encounter, brief as it is, completes the picture. Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law — a middle-aged woman. In first-century Israel, women were legally kept from the temple courts. Declared unclean monthly. Not taught to read or write. No authority. No pity. Voiceless in public life.

She didn’t approach Jesus. He went to her, touched her, and healed her. Then “she rose and began to serve him”. Humility and trust in a single phrase. She didn’t celebrate or run tell everyone. She rose from her bed and served Jesus.

Three encounters. A leper. A Roman soldier. A middle-aged woman. The religious establishment would have had a reason to dismiss all three before they opened their mouths. And Jesus healed all three without hesitation.

The pattern is the point. Jesus is not favoring the elite. Jesus is not letting in the pedigreed. Jesus is favoring the humble. Jesus is letting in those who trust Him.

There is only one eternal divider among people. Not occupation. Not denomination. Not theology, politics, economics, education, or age. Not social skills, emotional intelligence, or what passes for wisdom in the eyes of the world.

The only divider is this: If one trusts Jesus or not.

James 1:5 says that if any of you lacks wisdom, ask God, who gives generously — without finding fault. That last phrase is the whole gospel. God is not scanning you for reasons to turn you away. He is looking for the posture of the leper, the humility of the centurion, the desperate trust of someone who knows they can’t do this on their own.

You can cross to the other side of that divider right now. The wall can come down today. There is not a label you carry, not a thing you’ve done, not a category you fall into — that puts you outside the reach of a Savior who walked into a crowd, spotted the one person nobody would touch, and reached out His hand first.

He didn’t wait to be asked. He stretched out His hand.

Thanks for Reading,

John