Something Marvelous

A Reflection on this Friday’s Gospel (Luke 5:12-16) – 10 January 2025

A beautiful piece of pottery slips from your hands and shatters on the ground. With sorrow, you sweep up the pieces; they seem worthless, destined only for the trash bin. Like pottery, we too are made from the slime of the earth, clay. (Genesis 2:7) Things can, and often do, shatter our dreams and aspirations and like broken pottery, all seems lost. However, in the hands of an artist, broken shards can be transformed into something marvelous. Such is the grace of God.

In Japan, expert artists repaired valuable clay pottery using an ancient method called kintsugi, “golden joinery.” The artists mended broken pottery edges with urushi lacquer made as a resin mixed with powdered silver, gold, or platinum. No one considered the mended pottery damaged. Instead, the various mended cracks or fractures were treated as a part of the beautiful history of the pottery. The history of clay pottery was not something to disguise but something transformed from its brokenness into something even more beautiful.

In Luke 5:12-16 we encounter a leper. Both his body and his life were falling apart. Because of the wasting disease, the leper was considered “unclean.” In accordance with the Mosaic Law,

The garments of one afflicted with a scaly infection shall be rent and the hair disheveled, and the mustache covered. The individual shall cry out, “Unclean, unclean!” As long as the infection is present, the person shall be unclean. Being unclean, that individual shall dwell apart, taking up residence outside the camp. (Leviticus 13:45–46 NABRE)

Imagine yourself in such a situation. You are cast out from home, family, and community. A leper, you are condemned to waste slowly away on the outskirts of love, forgotten. Broken, you wander in complete misery. You wear a bell to warn others of your disease, so they can stay away and avert their eyes from your tragedy. Friends, family, and every stranger that passes considers this misfortune as your own fault, the just punishment of sin. You are considered by others, and perhaps even by yourself, as worthy of only the waste bin. You need healing but no one will touch you.

The leper approaches the Lord in humility. At wit’s end, he prostrates himself before the Lord in complete surrender. The disease has stripped the leper’s life away both physically and spiritually. Like a beautiful piece of pottery that is broken, all that the leper was, or is, lays in pieces on the ground. Each shard represents his sufferings, mistakes, and despair. He does not ask for anything but simply makes a statement of faith in the divine healer, “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.” (Luke 5:12 NABRE)

It is then that the Master Artist, the creator of heaven and earth, picks up the shards of the leper’s life from the dust. The Lord descends into the brokenness of the man before Him, into his pain and suffering, and touches the leper. God does not simply restore the leper to physical health but both mends and transforms him. Like the Japanese artist practicing “kintsugi,” the Lord changes the Leper’s wounds into a source of grace as he returns him to wholeness. A leper no longer, he becomes something marvelous.

No matter our brokenness, God died to make you and I whole. Our own sin leaves us wounded, shattered, beyond repair. Like the leper, we cannot repair ourselves; grace must come from without. Christ is the divine artist who sees the beauty in the flawed or imperfect and wishes to pick up the pieces of our life to not just restore us but to mend us, transforming us with the resin of grace. He wants to touch us, creating something even more beautiful. We only need to ask and trust that He will do it.

Long ago at a dusty crossroad in Judea, the Lord promised to heal and cleanse a leper. In the same way, He promises us today, “I do will it. Be made clean.” (Luke 5:13 NABRE) When viewed from God’s perspective, the shards of our lives, pieces of a master work, can be mended beautifully, revealing His divine artistry. If we trust Him, our brokenness can indeed lead to something marvelous.