Learning to Hug Lepers

She lay there babbling incoherently, a half-eaten pizza sitting next to her. Her clothing was worn and filthy, her hair matted with dirt. I noticed her as I returned to my hotel on San Diego Bay, where I was staying for a conference. I locked my eyes on the street corner, willing myself to look past her and the other homeless people lining the street. I walked past her without a word or a backwards look, just like hundreds of others before and after me. I returned home the next day, intrigued by an apparent “class system” among the homeless of San Diego. Bubbling under the surface of that interest, however, was the haunting feeling I had about her – the incoherent woman next to the pizza. I don’t know her name. I don’t know her story. I don’t know her. All I know is that I walked past her.

Shortly after I arrived home, my husband and I joined another couple to go to the movie theater to see Risen – a largely fictionalized account of the events between the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and His ascent into heaven. As the movie neared an end, I watched a farmer fearfully and angrily shoo away a leper. The leper’s clothing was worn and filthy, his hair matted with dirt. Jesus stood, walked deliberately to the cowering leper, knelt down, and hugged him close, soothing him. As the leper walked away, he happily discovered that he had been healed by the touch of the Savior. 

Shortly after these events, I participated in commencement downtown in the city where I live. Afterward, as my husband and I returned to our car, I smelled him before I saw him. There was a crowd around a homeless man who had collapsed. Maybe he was dead, maybe just passed out. He had lost control of his intestines, and the stench was terrible. My mind flashed back to the woman on the street in San Diego. My heart felt clad in iron. Yet, I walked on yet again.

I cannot shake the images from my mind – the woman on the street, the leper, the hug for the leper, the man lying there in his own filth. I find myself yearning for the opportunity to go back and just touch that woman’s hand, to let her know that someone loves her just because she exists and is worth loving. I find in my heart a war which threatens to rent it in two. On the one side is an awakening of love for the unlovely. On the other is a habit of repulsion. Time will tell which side will triumph in my heart in the end, but my will is on the side of love, and I choose to believe that my will is stronger than the turning of my stomach.

I am convinced that the repulsion is the result of lies – lies that I’ve told myself, lies that I’ve been told. In an effort to give truth the upper hand, my purpose now is to identify a few of those lies – and to present an alternative.

They are there by their own choice.

“They could go back home if they really wanted to.” “Most of the people living on the streets are choosing that life for themselves.”

As with every lie, there are tiny grains of truth infused throughout. It is often (although not always) true that the path to homeless hopelessness begins with a choice. A choice to pursue a life of crime. A choice to saturate one’s mind with drugs and alcohol. Here’s the catch, however. As I wrote in a recent post, our choices so often become chains. Maybe the woman on the street in San Diego had a choice at one time, but it was abundantly obvious that she no longer has that choice. She didn’t even know where she was. She will never move past her helplessness unless someone helps her. I wasn’t that person for her. I want to be that person someday, with Christ’s help.

It’s not the place of ______ to help those people.

Fill in that blank with whichever entity you want, and you’ll have heard the excuses about it. The government. The church. Whatever. The truth is, though, that whether or not it’s ever the place of an entity to create a program to help those people, it is always my place. I am responsible for loving and helping my fellow man. As long as I walk past them without a second glance, there is someone who is choosing not to do what they can. That someone is me.

I don’t have anything to give.

Let’s face it, I’ve been a student for a long time. I don’t have much in the way of finances to give, but that doesn’t mean that I have nothing. Did you know that human touch is important? I could have at least touched that woman’s hand. I could have at least reached out to remind her of her humanity. All of us have something we can give. It’s time to start. 

I am praying for the strength to choose love. To reach out and touch the filthy person on the street, to look into their eyes and give them the gift of a moment of camaraderie with another person. To extend friendship to the friendless. To embody the love of Christ to the person who feels like the dregs of humanity. A bad smell shouldn’t turn me away. There are numerous instructions in God’s Word about loving and helping those who cannot help themselves, and there is judgment waiting those who refuse to do so. God, give me the strength to hug the leper!