A Time to Laugh

I’ll let Phil Yancey do the talking:

Levitical laws guarded against contagion: contact with a sick person, a Gentile, a corpse, certain kind of animals, or even mildew and mold would contaminate a person. Jesus reversed: rather than becoming contaminated, he made the other person whole. The pitiful woman with the flow of blood did not shame Jesus and make him unclean; she went away whole. The twelve-year-old dead girl did not contaminate Jesus; she was resurrected.

I sense in Jesus’ approach a fulfillment, not an abolition, of the Old Testament laws. God had ‘hallowed’ creation by separating the sacred from the proface, the clean from the unclean. Jesus did not cancel out the hallowing principle, rather he changed its source. We ourselves can be agents of God’s holiness, for God now dwells within us. In the midst of an unclean world we can stride, as Jesus did, seeking ways to be a source of holiness.

Post a comment

Name: (required)

Email Address: (will not be published) (required)

URL:

Comments: