Topic: Kintsugi and Redemption — Key Scripture: Luke 5:12-13
There’s a two-word answer in Luke 5 that I think carries more weight than many sermons.
A man covered with leprosy sees Jesus and falls on his face, saying, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean”. Everything about that sentence reveals how this man understood his situation. He doesn’t ask whether Jesus is able — he seems certain of that. He asks whether Jesus is willing. Because in his world, leprosy didn’t just mean illness. It meant exile. It meant living outside the camp, warning others away from your own presence, being untouchable in the most literal sense possible. This man wasn’t just asking for physical healing. He was asking whether someone as clean and whole as Jesus would be willing to come anywhere near someone as unclean and broken as him.
And then comes the detail that I think changes everything about how we should read this passage: “Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, ‘I will; be clean.’ And immediately the leprosy left him”. Jesus could have healed this man with a word alone, the way He healed people from a distance elsewhere in the Gospels. He didn’t need to touch him. But He touched him anyway — before the leprosy was gone, while the man was still, by every social and religious standard of the day, contagious and unclean. The touch came first. The healing came in the same instant, but the willingness to touch what was still messy came without hesitation.
I think about how many people carry some version of this man’s question into every hard season of their lives. Not “can God fix this,” but “will He, given what this actually is?” There’s a difference between doubting God’s power and doubting His willingness to get close to a mess as specific and as ugly as yours. Most of the people I’ve sat with over the years aren’t wrestling with whether God is capable. They’re wrestling with whether they’ve become too much — too far gone, too repeated in their failure, too raw in their grief, too complicated in their trauma — for Him to actually want to come near.
This passage answers that question directly, and answers it before the healing even happens. Jesus touches the man while he is still unclean. The willingness isn’t contingent on the mess being resolved first. It’s not a response to cleanliness. It’s a response to the man’s presence, exactly as he was in that moment — untouched, unclean, uncertain whether anyone with the power to help him would also be willing to.
I’ve watched people avoid the very help they need because some part of them believes their particular version of brokenness is too much to bring into the light. Addiction that’s gone on too long. A betrayal too specific to admit out loud. A season of numbness or despair they’re embarrassed to name plainly. They don’t doubt that healing exists somewhere. They doubt whether it’s willing to come near what they’re actually dealing with.
What I find most compelling about this story is the order of operations. “I will” comes first. “Be clean” comes second, but almost as an afterthought grammatically — as if the willingness itself was the significant part of the sentence, and the healing simply followed naturally from it. Jesus doesn’t negotiate the terms. He doesn’t require the man to clean himself up first, prove his sincerity, or wait outside a reasonable distance until his condition improved enough to be worth approaching. The touch, and the willingness behind it, come while the mess is still fully present.
This is worth sitting with if you’ve been holding some part of your life at arm’s length from God, convinced that it’s too raw, too repeated, or too specific to bring near Him honestly. The man in this story didn’t clean himself up before Jesus touched him. He simply asked the real question — if you will — and got the most direct possible answer.
I will.
Not eventually, once you’ve resolved this. Not from a safe distance, once you’ve proven you’re worth the risk. Now, while the mess is still exactly what it is. That’s the pattern this story sets, and I don’t think it’s an isolated exception. It’s a description of how God tends to move toward people — willing before the mess is gone, not after.
If you’ve been asking your own version of “if you will” — quietly, in the specific mess you’re most ashamed of — I want you to hear the answer this passage gives without qualification. I will.
If this resonates with where you are today, BRKN Soul Care is here. Book a free Introductory Conversation at brknsoulcare.org and take the first step. You don’t have to carry this alone.