I'm the Doctor, and I cured them.

I caught an episode of the Doctor Who marathon that SciFi did recently. Ok, actually, I recorded an episode that I've been thinking about for a while, because I love the messianic overtones.

If your not familiar with the Doctor, in any of his iterations, he's a time traveler who travels around the universe, sometimes with a companion or two, and makes sure the timeline stays in order. He is the Last Time Lord, specifically. In the episode in question, New Earth, he is travels to earth in the year 5billion 23. Well, not earth, exactly. When earth blew up about 5 billion, all the human species decided to get together, so they returned from the far reaches of the galaxy to start a New Earth. So much for the background.

Upon arrival at New New York (a joke that’s a little old after it's run on Futurama) The Doctor gets a distress call from a hospital. He finds the dying Face of Bo, a friend, who according to legend will "Impart his great secret, he will speak those words only to one like himself, a wonderer, a man without a home, the lonely god"

Meanwhile, his companion, stumbled across an old foe, Cassandra. Cassandra claims to be the last human, but is really a brain in a jar, who sees through her eyes, which were implanted on her skin. So she looks a bit like a piece of leather being tanned. Just, stretched out and pink, that’s all. Cassandra possesses Rose, and goes to find the Doctor. The Doctor uncovers (with some help from Cassandra / Rose) a ward full of artificially grown people, supposedly not sentient, but who come alive nonetheless. They were kept in the hospital as carriers, used as guinea pigs for everything the hospital needed - walking carriers of disease. In the process, however, the possessed rose lets out the carriers - who desperately want to be touched. They wander around the hospital, looking for someone to hold them, because they have all spent their lives in incubators.

That's all fine, except anyone they touch gets all the diseases that the carrier does. The situation quickly devolves into a classic sort of "run from the zombies." That is, until the Doctor comes up with a solution. Drenching himself in disinfectant, made to keep disease from entering the hospital, he starts touching as many of the carriers as he can, telling them "Pass it on" The clean carriers then touch the unclean ones, and soon, the whole hospital is teeming with cleansed people, "A brand new form of Life" in the words of the Doctor.

All of that, reminded me of the story of the leper in the Synoptics. Jesus touched the leper. That man had not been allowed physical contact with another human since he had become a leper. Everyone who touched a leper was unclean, so people would avoid them, not only touching them, but their physical presence as well. It was too easy to become unclean around a leper. Under the Law, anything could move from Holy or clean to unclean simply by coming into contact with something that was unclean. Going the other way on the scale required ritual cleansing, and sometimes days or even weeks of isolation. Yet Jesus takes a man who is unclean, and like the Doctor, cleanses him with a touch.

We cannot cleanse people. We can defile ourselves, but not cleanse ourselves. The only way for someone to be cleansed, and be pure before God is to come into contact with Christ, and be washed in his blood. It's the only way for us to receive "New Life"