J.C.Cordova, D.Min., LCSW
A leper came to Jesus beseeching him, and kneeling said to him, "If you will, you
can make me clean." Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched
the leper, and said to him, "I will; be clean." And immediately the leprosy left the
man, and he was made clean (Mark 1:40-41).
At the outset, it is important to explain what is meant by the will and how it works. The will is the psychic
force impelling the individual into action. It is one of three basic components of personality. The other
two are intellect and emotions. The intellect speaks about the ability to think and decide. Emotions are
feelings. The will is the free individual desire to act or not to act in a chosen manner. Let us look at
each component separately.
This is the human ability to think and decide on a course of action. The human intellect developed
gradually and slowly through time as follows. The human body is covered by nerve endings working as
sensors. Primitive people looked, heard, smelled, touched and tasted objects just as we do today. The
sensations go directly to the brain for identification and labeling. Based on such information, folks
decided how to best utilize these objects.
Observation was a major catalyst providing the mind with knowledge about the environment. A process
of trial and error brought expansion and development to the mind as people found new ways of using
simple things. Later, folks began to combine matter. New views and concepts emerged as new
essentials were added to the human intellect.
In early human societies, citizens conceived the world and its content as the making of undetermined,
unidentified, mysterious supernatural forces. Birth, health, sickness, weather conditions, food
provisions and death were attributed to the unpredictable whim of these forces. Early folks feared
these capricious entities and tried in their own ways to keep them happy. Those persons developed
magic rituals and made human sacrifices as a means to placate the fury of the supernatural. Further
conceptions about the supernatural gave these forces personal identities. The sun, the moon, the
stars, the night and so on, were given names and called gods.
Much later, in Ur of Chaldea, present south of Iraq, the most developed city of the area at the time,
some six thousand years ago, a man named Abram, later Abraham, heard from the One Maker of the
universe, calling him to start a human society conforming to the Deity’s expectations. Abram’s
compliance with the request led to the development of the Hebrew people. Eventually this people
received from the Deity guidelines to live sound existences.
Through time, the religious leaders of the Hebrew people interpreted in oral form God’s expectations
to the folks. With the advent of writing, an enormous amount of documents appear expanding these
divine instructions. Today the collection of the writing and teachings of Moses, the prophets, rabbis
and Jesus are compiled in book form. This book is known as the bible (collection of documents).
Because the documents deal with divine expectations from humans, these are considered holy and
are rigid guides of behavior.
The Bible is the one document framing the ways of life of the Western nations to this day. It centers
around ten behavioral commandments. In fact, someone once figured out that we have 35 million laws
trying to enforce these commandments. In addition, the accumulated literature led writers to produce
countless commentaries on biblical texts and books expanding on innumerable scriptural themes.
Apart from religion, beginning with its first experiments, science has produced a massive amount
literature explaining findings and recommending further investigations. The achievements of the
human intellect to this day have been immense. Present human societies are highly complex thanks to
the accomplishments of science and technology. The development has been exponential, increasing
ever faster. Because of scientific research, life in modern societies has been completely transformed,
a trend that will continue even at an ever increasing speed. It is the intellect what has made possible
the development of thinking and recording through time to produce the immense body of knowledge
accumulated to this day.
Emotions are feelings. This component of personality gives vitality to human beings. If humans would
not possess feelings, they would be data processing machines without life such as present day
computers. Over fifty different feelings have been identified as reactions to the environment. Many
theories attempt to explain the origin and development of emotions. One thing is clear; emotions are
reactions to the environment. Let us take a basic emotion to see what it could do to a person. Love is
a basic emotion. A child reacts to the mother’s loving care with an expressive attitude of satisfaction.
Another receiving disaffection from his mother reacts in an opposite manner. Basically, an affectionate
upbringing makes for a happy person. The contrary is true for a poor development.
Sigmund Freud, the Viennese medical and psychoanalyst doctor, first worked to tell us the effect on
the emotional development during the first five years of life. In summary form, Freud’s findings indicate
that depending on the presence or absence of tender, loving care toward the newborn, personality
tendencies begin to develop during the first year of life. A continue consistent behavior of the mother
toward the baby will reinforce these tendencies either way.
Erick Erickson (1950) took a psychosocial approach looking at the behavioral effect emotions can
cause in human conduct. Based on research, he developed eight crucial stages of personality
development in a classic study expanding on the work of Sigmund Freud (1901). Erickson set out to
investigate what behavior the person would exhibit at different stages in the human life by receiving
affection from the beginning of life or being the recipient of abuse. In a summary form, Erickson said
the following. During the first year of life, the person learns to trust or mistrust others depending upon
the kind of treatment received. From one to three, babies become self-sufficient or self-insufficient;
from four to six, they develop initiative abilities or become shameful because of a feelings of
insufficiency; seven to twelve, the trend continues and the person becomes competent or incompetent;
from thirteen to nineteen, adolescents know who they are or remain in a state of confusion; twenty to
thirty-four, they develop intimacy or remain isolated from others; thirty-five to sixty-five, the person is
producing or failing to produce; and finally, from sixty-five on the personality is integrated or
desperate. Freud stages stopped at age 5 and were therefore not able to observe much behavior, his
student continued through life observing behavior at extremes. Both scientists shed much light on the
effect of emotions on conduct.
Much is known today about human emotions thanks to the pioneering work of Freud, his students and
collaborators. Since those early days, numerous men and women have added important findings to
the literature on human emotions opening new possibilities to assist emotional sufferers to resolve
conditions preventing healthy living.
According to any dictionary of your selection, the will is the mental capacity the person has to decide
what to do or not to do at a given moment. Going by this definition, then, the will is the force behind
both the intellect and the emotions making possible for the person to do a particular task. Lack of will,
on the other hand, is the human inability to perform such a task. A person in a state of apathy lacks
complete will.
The force behind the will is meaning. People do what they do because of meaning. Meaning, in turn,
ceases being a concept to become a reality by forceful effective, functional basic motivators. Three
motivators are most important giving meaning to life and propelling will into action. Let me put them in
an ABC format for easy remembering. These are achieving, belonging and controlling.
A. People like to achieve. Observe children’s reaction after completing tasks their mothers have
assigned them. Exuberance would be a good word to describe the satisfaction children feel at that
moment. On the other hand, if they do not succeed, frustration would be the word. As people become
older, they go through cycles of successes and failures. This is normal. But watch how people feel
after each experience. Whenever folks succeed, they feel great but not so when they fail.
B. People like to belong to groups. This is because humans are born to groups called families, where
they learn to act in the human group. When children are of the right age, they are allowed to play with
peers. Later, they go to school to learn in groups. Even later they go to work in connection with others.
And for the rest of life people exist in the context of others. Sometimes we find people living in isolation
for different reasons such as solitary confinements in jails and prisons, health reasons, legal evasion
and so on. But these are small exceptions. People need and want to live with people.
Self-control also includes respecting others according to the cultural norms of the society where they
live. This is to be observed at home, school, work and during leisure time. Most people enjoy
observing these guidelines as a matter of course. Few people are out of control and their behavior is
most undesirable and hurtful. These people are restrained by law enforcers, put through trials,
sentenced and incarcerated for different periods of time depending upon the severity of their
delinquent actions. Self-controlling and management continue through life bringing satisfaction to the
practitioners.
C. Controlling is the third important basic motivator driving people toward meaningful living. Controlling
begins with personal management. It includes hygiene, diet, exercise, rest and general personal care.
At home, playground, school and work people must observe all rules of good behavior.
Self-control is basic to live in the human group. People out of control destroy their personal lives and
are highly abusive of others. Often, these folks engage in criminal behavior. They are arrested, tried
and sentenced to serve short or long periods of time incarcerated.
Most self-controlled, hard working, competent people quickly ascend the managerial ladder of
corporations. Those in the military are promoted as soon as eligibility allows. And volunteer
organizations offer great opportunities to good manager.
The point here is that achieving, belonging and controlling if put to work effectively give meaning to life.
In this passage we find Jesus faced with the request of a leper. Leprosy is a bacterial disease of the
nerve ending system first appearing in Egypt in mid-fifteenth hundreds. It also appeared early in India
and China. Undetermined causation at the time, made people think that the ailment was sent by the
gods to punish folks for evil doing. Certainly, this was so in Israel. Leprosy is known today as Hansen’s
Disease, named after Dr. D. A. Hansen, a Norwegian physician who identified the bacteria causing the
illness in 1873. If treated in time, leprosy is cured in a matter of weeks.
Leviticus 13 describes the procedure to follow with a person suffering from leprosy. The person was
responsible for appearing before the priest for visual examination. Based on skin color and looks, the
priest would determine the treatment to follow. Light cases were isolated for a week, re-examined and
a decision was made about the action to take. More severe cases required more permanent isolation.
The isolation treatment was designed to avoid the spreading of the sickness.
The sinful connotation of the disease made the sufferer to be unclean and undesirable. Lepers could
not have any contact with the general population. In fact, lepers were to announce their condition to
approaching folks. The impossibility of having contact with others made the lepers’ existence in solitary
confinement long and sad. Even folks suffering from curable skin diseases had to undergo a public
rehabilitation ceremony described in Leviticus 14, making them questionable to the community.
The Mosaic Laws concerning lepers were applied up to the Middle Ages. Lepers were taken to a
church house led by a priest carrying a crucifix to celebrate a burial service for the sufferer. They
could not attend church services. Instead, they were allowed to watch through holes in the wall of the
buildings. Lepers were dead persons walking.
Giving the infirmity of the man and the isolation people suffering this disease were required to
observe, the narrative of the encounter is interesting. Certainly, lepers lived alone or in leper
communities. Non-lepers were excluded from visiting to avoid contamination and spreading of the
disease. Touching lepers rendered clean people unclean and subjected to isolation. Nonetheless
according to Matthew, Jesus touched the leper and declared him clean.
Jesus was a practicing Jew who strongly advised the observance of the traditional laws of Moses, as
Matthew records an advice of Jesus:
Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to
fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass
from the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments
and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and
teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (5:17-20).
Some commentators wisely observed that the reference in Matthew’s passage may have been to
someone recovered from a curable skin illness asking Jesus, a well know rabbi, to declare him clean to
avoid having to go to the temple for the cleansing ceremony and escape the stigma attached to such
public humiliation. Thus, Jesus complied with the request declaring the man clean, thus alleviating his
mental anguish. However, Jesus told the leper clearly to go to the temple and observe the
requirements specified by Moses.
What lesson may we extract from the meeting of Jesus and the leper? We find three simple themes
that may be expressed with three words: compassion, opportunity and action.
The text indicates that Jesus was moved by pity. Jesus understood the mental anguish of the man; and
moved by compassion, proceeded to alleviate the man’s bad emotions. Although Jesus ministry
primarily was one of preaching, he did not ever hesitate to help people with physical conditions.
Paul told the Galatians in a letter that: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (5:22-23). Compassion is love, kindness, goodness
and gentleness at work. The labor of love put forth by the people of God
throughout the last thousand years knows no limit, even at the peril of the workers.
Opportunity is a condition allowing a person or a group to perform a particular task at a given time.
Opportunities are available for specific time duration. Some opportunities last longer than others.
Sometimes we miss opportunities by not acting quickly. Jesus was alert to seize every opportunity to
talk about God and His plan for humanity. He also took opportunities to help people in need, such as
the case in our passage.
Action is the willful intention of a person or a group to accomplish a specific goal. The leper said to
Jesus: “If you will….” Jesus responded: “I will.”
God is our Creator, savior and lord. Believers served God by serving their fellow human beings. This
is the way Jesus did it. His followers continued the teacher’s model until the church lost itself in self-
service and absolute intolerance of others. With the Reformation, the church regained its mission.
Today, church action goes on strong in both quantity and quality throughout the world.
Humanitarian ministries, as church action in works of benevolence are correctly called, are wherever a
need exists at home and abroad. There are plenty of opportunities to serve in the existing
organizations. New groups are emerging everywhere to meet the growing needs of people. The time is
now
We think; we feel; and we decide. A balance between our thinking and feeling apparatuses allow the
person to have a meaningful life. Add to the mix the thriving of the will and the person will excel in
having an accomplished life. Not only this explains the rich life of Jesus; but, it also speaks copiously
about his disciples and the early church. After the Reformation, the church picked up again in an
increasing serving mode. The service going on today at home and elsewhere is considerable.