Variety: Mark 1:40-41

A leper came to him begging…, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!” —Mark 1:40–41 

Walter Brueggemann emphasizes that we are all in need of Jesus’ healing touch: 

Jesus touched him. He put his strong hand into the sore skin. He risked touching the contagious skin and thereby making himself, as well, socially unacceptable and ritually impure. He risked all of that in his compassion. And the narrator says, “Immediately! The leprosy left him, and he was made clean.”…

Now I know this is not your story. I assume that you are like me; none of you likely has leprosy. But leprosy in the Bible becomes a metaphor for all kinds of diseases and malfunctions. 
* Some of you may be HIV positive and find it to be a social disease with a stigma attached, a lot like leprosy. 
* Some of you may have an addiction that has power over you, a lot like leprosy. 
* Some of you are in a tough marriage or at the brink of a failed marriage, a lot like leprosy. 
* Some of you have broken relations with a kid or a parent, a lot like leprosy. 
* Some of you have made bad decisions, and wish you could undo them, but cannot find a way, a lot like leprosy…. 
Take that list, extend it toward yourself. And slot it all under “L” for leprosy. Leprosy is the threat that may undo the world, … because such a disease overrides all barriers and leaves all under threat. 

Brueggemann imagines those healed by Jesus singing Psalm 30:5, “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes in the morning.” 
A lot of lepers are still in the night. But they wait for the morning when comes healing. This faith of … Jesus and the church is not a moral code or an ideology or a quarrel. It is rather a performance of transformation, of old made new, of lost found, of dead made alive. And the whole cosmos is filled with the singing of ex-lepers, the saints of God who attest that gifts from the holy God are given that make for life.