Introduction

Dress shabbily, and come in the back shouting: Unclean! Unclean!
This has all the makings of a good healing—a leper, submission, faith—a healer
Couple of comments about the text.
Jesus' attitude? Anger? One ancient manuscript suggests this, and many scholars interpret the text in that fashion. If so, why was Jesus angry? Probably because of the disease with which this poor man was suffering. News flash. God doesn't enjoy our diseases--he hates them.
One other item of intrigue: question—Jesus’ strong warning. Why? The answer is found in v. 45. The man didn't head Jesus' warning, and it hampered Jesus' ability to go openly into towns. One can hardly blame the man. Now I'm clean!!

Jesus Touched Him

What impresses me most—not the healing—but the fact that Jesus’ touched him. Jesus doesn’t merely close the distance—he makes physical contact with the man. Did Jesus have to touch him to heal him? Of course not! Plenty of times when Jesus didn't touch the person. Can't put Jesus' healings in a box. Different. Examples of Jesus healing long distance:
Jn 4:46-53
Lk 7:1-10
There were, of course, times when Jesus touched the person he was healing. But they weren't lepers—this man is a leper!
Jesus defied the cultural norm and broke the law by touching him.

Remember back at Thanksgiving time, message about the grateful Samaritan leper. Leprosy was a word that covered various skin diseases.
Hughes—Leprosy (Hansen’s disease) not a rotting infection, nor are its horrible outward physical deformities imposed by the disease. The research of Dr. Paul Brand and others has proven that the disfigurement associated with Hansen’s disease comes solely because the body’s warning system of pain is destroyed. The disease acts as an anesthetic, bringing numbness to the extremities as well as to the ears, eyes, and noses.
France-Clearly this man's disease was malignant, and may well have been Hansen's disease
Wonder what the man looked like . . .
He is ritually unclean. He's contagious!! Touch him, and you might get what he's got!!
Lepers were considered unclean—had to cry out that they were unclean as the traveled through a town—so that people could keep their distance.
Leviticus 13:45-46
Hughes—By Jesus’ time, rabbinical teaching, with its absurd strictness, had made matters worse. If a leper even stuck his head inside a house, it was pronounced unclean. It was illegal to even greet a leper. Lepers had to remain at least 100 cubits away if they were upwind, and four cubits downwind. Josephus said that lepers were treated “as if they were, in effect, dead men.”

*Today—what are reasons we find some people untouchable?

Same reasons. People haven’t changed all that much deep within.
AIDS. Remember when AIDS first came on the scene in the 80s. We were all so afraid of it. And to extent still are and should be. But our fears were extreme. Handshake. Toilet seats. You name it.
Still folks with AIDS are considered untouchable in our culture. Would Christ have us be that way?
What other groups of people would we rather not touch? Homeless. Criminal. ??
But . . .

No more convincing evidence of the absence of parental affection exists than that compiled by Rene Spitz. In a South American orphanage, Spitz observed and recorded what happened to 97 children who were deprived of emotional and physical contact with others. Because of a lack of funds, there was not enough staff to adequately care for these children, ages 3 months to 3 years old. Nurses changed diapers and fed and bathed the children. But there was little time to hold, cuddle, and talk to them as a mother would. After three months many of them showed signs of abnormality. Besides a loss of appetite and being unable to sleep well, many of the children lay with a vacant expression in their eyes. After five months, serious deterioration set in. They lay whimpering, with troubled and twisted faces. Often, when a doctor or nurse would pick up an infant, it would scream in terror. Twenty seven, almost one third, of the children died the first year, but not from lack of food or health care. They died of a lack of touch and emotional nurture. Because of this, seven more died the second year. Only twenty one of the 97 survived, most suffering serious psychological damage. (Unfinished Business, Charles Sell, Multnomah, 1989, pp. 39ff)

Do you know someone who is untouchable but that you need to touch?
Perhaps the compassion of Christ can overcome our prejudices, fears, etc. so that we will touch the untouchables.