Outside the Camp Is Still a Person

A diagnosis can change a calendar before anyone knows what to say. Appointments replace ordinary errands. Energy becomes something a person has to budget. And then another change arrives: fewer messages, fewer invitations, fewer people who ask a question and stay long enough to hear the answer.

That is a contemporary illustration, not a story supplied by our passage. But it helps us recognize a loss that can accompany illness without appearing on a medical chart.

Some of us know that loss. Some have helped cause it without intending to. We meant to give someone space. We were afraid of saying the wrong thing. We assumed another person was visiting. Months later, someone who still belonged to our church had become almost invisible to us. Today we need to listen carefully to a hard law, and then hear the New Testament's instruction about caring for a suffering member.

Read the passage in its setting

Leviticus 13:45-46 belongs to Israel's sanctuary purity laws. God is addressing a people whose camp is ordered around his holy presence. The chapter describes priestly examination, differing conditions, periods of separation, and judgments of clean or unclean. It is not a collection of insulting labels that the strong may apply to people they dislike. Hear the complete primary passage from the World English Bible.

“The leper in whom the plague is shall wear torn clothes, and the hair of his head shall hang loose. He shall cover his upper lip, and shall cry, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ All the days in which the plague is in him he shall be unclean. He is unclean. He shall dwell alone.

His dwelling shall be outside of the camp.

Leviticus 13:45-46 (WEB)

The words are severe. Torn clothes. Loose hair. A covered upper lip. An audible announcement. A dwelling outside the camp. We should not hurry past the cost of those requirements. We should also refuse to make them say something they do not say. Our governing truth is this: ritual exclusion describes a painful condition, not diminished human worth. We will name that cost, keep the law in its setting, and learn how Christ's people share the suffering of a member today.