Friday of the 12th Week of Ordinary Time
In the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, in the tenth day of the month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came, he and all his army, against Jerusalem, and encamped against it; and they built forts against it around it. So the city was besieged until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah. On the ninth day of the fourth month, the famine was severe in the city, so that there was no bread for the people of the land. Then a breach was made in the city, and all the men of war fled by night by the way of the gate between the two walls, which was by the king's garden ( now the Chaldeans were against the city around it ); and the king went by the way of the Arabah. But the Chaldean army pursued the king, and overtook him in the plains of Jericho; and all his army was scattered from him. Then they captured the king and carried him up to the king of Babylon to Riblah; and they passed judgment on him. They killed Zedekiah's sons before his eyes, then put out Zedekiah's eyes, bound him in fetters, and carried him to Babylon.
Now in the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month, which was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. He burned the Lord's house, the king's house, and all the houses of Jerusalem. He burned every great house with fire. All the army of the Chaldeans, who were with the captain of the guard, broke down the walls around Jerusalem. Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried away captive the rest of the people who were left in the city and those who had deserted to the king of Babylon— all the rest of the multitude. But the captain of the guard left some of the poorest of the land to work the vineyards and fields.
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yes, we wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows in that land, We hung up our harps.
For there, those who led us captive asked us for songs. Those who tormented us demanded songs of joy: "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"
How can we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? If I forget you, Jerusalem, Let my right hand forget its skill.
Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth if I don't remember you, If I don't prefer Jerusalem above my chief joy.
When he came down from the mountain, great multitudes followed him. Behold, a leper came to him and worshiped him, saying, "Lord, if you want to, you can make me clean."
Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, "I want to. Be made clean." Immediately his leprosy was cleansed. Jesus said to him, "See that you tell nobody; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them."
There's a weight to these readings that settles on us slowly. Jerusalem — the city of the covenant, the place where God's presence dwelt in the Temple — is burning. The walls are broken down. The people are marched into exile. And then the psalm captures what no theological explanation could: a people sitting beside foreign rivers, harps hung on willow branches, unable to sing.
Notice how the psalmist doesn't spiritualize the grief. There's no quick pivot to hope or silver lining. Just the raw ache of loss, and the fierce, almost stubborn refusal to forget what was home. "If I forget you, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill." That's not poetry — that's survival. That's what it sounds like to hold onto something sacred when everything around you says it's gone.
And then we move to the Gospel, and the contrast is almost jarring. A man with leprosy — someone who, in that culture, was legally required to keep his distance from others, to shout "unclean!" as a warning — approaches Jesus. Not from a distance. He comes close. He worships. And Jesus doesn't step back. He reaches out and touches him.
The movement here is from exile to encounter. From a God who seems absent in the ruins of Jerusalem to a God who closes the distance entirely — who touches the untouchable.
What this offers us on an ordinary Friday is a question about our own unheld griefs. The losses we've learned to manage rather than mourn. The places in us that feel foreign, exiled, far from home.
Consider: Where are you hanging your harps right now, refusing to sing?
What in your life feels untouchable — by others, or even by God?
And what would it mean, today, to let Jesus reach toward exactly that place?