The readings this Sunday present two religious responses to people who suffered leprosy. One way assumes the outward blemish is a sign of inner moral failure. It prescribes banishment and separation. Jesus’ way recognizes the sufferer’s inner longing and faith.

Growing up in a small coal town in the East, everything about our lives was circumscribed by the mines. Most of the men worked in the mines. Families lived in row homes owned by the mining companies. We kids played on the banks created by the digs, and begged the steam shovel drivers to beep their horns for us.

A leper came to him, begging on his knees, “If you want to, you can cleanse me.”

The dominant industry in the region where I live is agriculture, mostly small, family-owned fruit farms, which depend entirely on migrant labor. Last summer, a lot fewer migrant workers showed up.

After spring break, a priest and fellow teacher with few remnants of the full head of hair he once had, returned to school fitted with a toupee. When we all saw him for the first time, we couldn’t help but let our eyes travel right up to his new hairline. But he just ignored our stares. And we just pretended like we didn’t really see anything different about him.

The day after eighth grade my family moved, and all summer long I missed my friends back in the city. So I invited my friend Billy to spend the weekend.

“I just want my $1,500 dollars,” the man complained to the agent answering the compliance hotline. “It’s reimbursement for my gas and mileage. The clinics I service are refusing to pay even though it’s in my contract, and now they’re calling into question my job performance. It just doesn’t seem fair that I can’t get my measly 1,500 bucks when the doctors collect their checks, and they don’t even show up at the clinics.”

We acknowledge our faults before the Lord, who takes away our sins.

I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper’s wounds, I feel I am nursing the Lord himself.