This week’s gospel text offers yet another healing story — a healing that is both dramatic for the cure it manifests and for the impact that cure had on Jesus’ public ministry.

The recipient of Jesus’ healing powers in this story is particularly problematic — he is identified as a “leper.” The diagnosis of “leprosy” was applied to many different skin disorders in the first century. But whether or not the “leper” in today’s text actually suffered from what we now call Hansen’s Disease, or some other skin malady, the results for the affected individual were the same — extreme social isolation, the label of “unclean,” a life lived separated from family and community, and the assumption by others that the lesions and sores on the skin were evidence of some divine punishment for personal sins…