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SERMON
Jesus was making his way south to Jerusalem for what he knew would be his final confrontation with the gathering opposition. As they approached a village near the border of Samaria, Dr. Luke tells us that Jesus and his disciples encountered a pitiable scene. Ten men who had leprosy stood at the prescribed distance and cried out, "Jesus, Master, have pity on us!" It's noteworthy that they recognized Jesus. Obviously his reputation had preceded him. More remarkable, however, was that fact that these lepers were clearly a mixed group of Jews and Samaritans.
Remember that the Samaritans and the Jews hated each other. Yet here, faced with the common tragedy of their sorry condition, these men had set aside their differences. William Barclay reminds us how, when a flood surges over a piece of country, and the wild animals congregate on some little bit of higher ground, you will find standing together at peace animals who are natural enemies and who, at any other time, would have done their best to kill each other. We humans aren't so very different.
Yet despite their common misery, these men knew they had been banished forever from any contact with their families, their neighbors, the people they loved. There was no cure for leprosy, and the law was unequivocal. In fact Leviticus prescribed: "A person with any infectious disease must wear torn clothes, let his hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of his face and cry out, 'Unclean! Unclean!' As long as he has the infection he remains unclean. He must live outside the camp." (Lev. 13:45)
"Jesus, Master, have pity on us!" they cried. But here we come up against a most remarkable turn of events. On other occasions, according to Dr. Luke's notes, Jesus might have touched such sick people and said to them, "Arise and be healed," or something like that, and they would have been instantly and miraculously healed. But here Jesus simply assessed their condition from a distance and said, "Go, show yourselves to the priests." Now, what you may or may not realize is that Jesus had simply told them to do what the Law prescribes anyone must do when they are healed. In fact, Leviticus, chapter 14 stipulates that it is the priest who must verify that a person no longer has the disease.
But according to Dr. Luke's diagnosis they hadn't yet been healed. So in effect, Jesus had said to them, "I want you men to go and act as if a miracle had already taken place." Would you do that? Don't be too quick to answer. Suppose your car developed a problem in its steering. With your hands securely on the wheel and with absolutely no warning, it would start wandering all over the road. You consulted your mechanic who advised you that its rack and pinion mechanism was falling apart. He said that, given the age and general condition of your car, it was not prudent to fix it. But you loved that old car, so you sought out second and third opinions, but they only confirmed the first one.
Now you were desperate. So one Saturday you called 1-800-CAR-TALK and explained your predicament to two strange fellows from Boston whom you had never met and knew only by their rather dubious reputation. Now suppose these fellows advised you to just take off down the freeway and act as if the steering mechanism didn't have a thing wrong with it. Don't worry about what others might think. Don't let the fact that you might smash into something at 65 MPH deter you in the least. Would you do it? Would you risk everything on advice that in all likelihood was specious at best? I rather doubt it. Yet in a very real sense that is substantially what Jesus had advised those ten men to do. On Jesus' word alone, with no evidence whatsoever to substantiate it, they were told to go show themselves to the priests.
Of course there's something inside us that resonates with that kind of strategy; particularly when we're dealing not with a car but with this marvelous, mysterious machine we call the human body. It's certainly a well-documented fact that people can tell themselves they're sick to the point that they actually exhibit all the symptoms. Nobody knows exactly why it works that way; it just does.
Well, why couldn't the same process work in reverse? Act as if you're well and you may just discover that you are. And in fact, that is exactly what Luke reported. Jesus had told those men to go and show themselves to the priests. "And as they went," writes Dr. Luke, "they were cleansed." It's as if their obedience was the catalyst that triggered the healing. Evidently that is how faith can work - even faith as small as a mustard seed.
Imagine what must have been going through the minds of those ten men. As they went along, they looked at themselves and realized that they were watching a miracle taking place in their bodies. Try to put yourself in their place and think what that must have meant to them. For the first time in God only knows how long they would be able to play with their children once more; could make love with their wives; and be able to work with their brothers and colleagues at their old jobs again.
Of course, the disciples wouldn't have been aware of this. All they probably saw was this pitiful band of men with nothing to lose, shuffling away out of sight, apparently heading to the priest as Jesus had directed them. The disciples could have only guessed at what the outcome might be. But then a curious thing happened. One of that ragged band had obviously turned and was now coming back. Clearly he was in a hurry. As he got closer, waving his arms and shouting, it soon became evident that he was praising God at the top of his voice. And when he reached Jesus, he threw himself on the ground in front of him and thanked him.
Then, though it's not clear to whom he was speaking, Jesus posed three pointed rhetorical questions: "Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" A "foreigner?" Well, yes. Without making an issue of it, Luke had simply noted that the man who returned to thank Jesus was a Samaritan. Now, keep in mind what I said early in these studies. Luke's Gospel is the literary equivalent of Paul's mission to the Gentiles. Of the four Gospel writers, Luke is the one who wants to introduce people to Jesus not only as a Jewish Messiah, but as the Savior of the world. So while Jesus had clearly healed this mixed company of lepers, Luke makes particular note that, of all of them, it was a Samaritan who evidently understood best what God had done for him in Christ.
I can't help but wonder if one-in-ten isn't an accurate reflection of how people generally respond to God grace. What is it you want out of life? My best guess is that what most people want, more than almost anything else, is just to be normal. When a couple discovers that they're pregnant and someone asks them, "What do you want, a boy or a girl?" I'm sure that by far the most common response is: "We'll be happy with either. We just want the baby to be healthy - to be normal." Most people just want to be like other people.
I'm sure that was true even for those ten men with leprosy. What they wanted more than anything was to be healed. But because of the wretched sub-human conditions in which they were forced to live, for them "being healed" would mean simply being given the opportunity to go back home and be like everyone else again - to just be "normal." So when they cried out to Jesus for help, I have the strongest suspicion that they assumed that the greatest thing he could possibly do for them would be to heal their disease - to make them able to live like everybody else.
Let me ask you something. Is that your understanding of why God sent his Son into the world? Is that what the Scripture teaches us? "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should be normal - just like everyone else?" It may well be that, if our lesson today is any sort of accurate guide, nine times out of ten, people are willing to settle for that version of the Gospel.
Ah, but one of them came back to Jesus. And it's obvious from the way he was behaving that he had made a connection that the other nine had missed. All ten had been healed. The Greek word Luke uses here is kaqarizw (katharizo). It means to be cleansed - ritually cleansed. In fact it's the same word that Jesus used back in chapter 11 when he accused the Pharisees of "cleansing" the outside of the dish but being full of wickedness on the inside. All ten of the lepers had been cleaned on the outside. But one came back when he realized that something more had happened to him - on the inside. He didn't know how to describe what had happened. All he could do was go on praising God and thanking Jesus that something had happened to him, and he knew he would never be the same again. The man didn't have a word for the change inside - but Jesus did.
Luke says that Jesus told him, "Rise and go. Your faith has made you well." The word translated in the NIV "made you well" is seswken (sesoken). It literally means, "saved you." In his paraphrase of the Gospel, "The Message," Eugene Peterson does justice to the sentence. He has Jesus saying to the man, "Get up. On your way. Your faith has healed and saved you." Ten men had been cleansed (healed) - but one, the one who came back, had been healed and saved.
Was he saved because he was thankful, or was he thankful because he realized that he had been saved? I don't know the answer to that one, and Jesus doesn't bother to explain it. It's simply one of those delightful mysteries about how God's grace works in people's lives. God takes the initiative and does something truly wonderful and everyone may benefit, but some people catch on and some don't. I don't know how it works. What I do know is that I don't want to be like the nine who got cleansed, (made "normal") and that's all. I don't want to be normal if by "normal" we mean "like everybody else."
In that sense, I don't believe God wants any of us to be "normal." God knows better than anyone that none of us is exactly like everybody else, and he loves us that way. But as much as I believe that God loves each of us uniquely, I believe that he longs for each of us, individually, to be renewed on the inside. He doesn't just want you to be disease-free. He wants to give you a clean heart - one that will last forever. But as I understand it, you have to be willing to accept the transplant. Have you done that? Have you said to God, in so many words, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me?"
I'll tell you this much. God has done a remarkable number on me. This is neither the time nor the place to go into great detail. Suffice it to say that, by the grace of God, I've "cleaned up my act." My life has been given some order and attractiveness on the outside. But whatever God has done for me on the outside (where others see me operating) is nothing compared to the work he has done, and is doing, on my heart. And I pray I'll never fail to thank him for it.
Fulton Ousler, an author of many years ago, wrote of his beloved old nurse, Anna-Maria Cecily Sophia Virginia Avalon Thessalonians. She had been present when his mother was born, and she was there when Fulton was born. "I remember her," he said. "as she sat at the kitchen table in our house; the hard old brown hands folded across her starched apron, the glistening black eyes lifted to the white-washed ceiling, and the husky old whispering voice saying, 'Much obliged, Lord, for my vittles.'
'Anna,' I asked, 'what's a vittle?' She said, 'It's what you got to eat and drink - that's vittles.' I said, 'But you'd get your vittles whether you thanked the Lord or not.' 'Sure,' she said, 'but it makes everything taste better to be thankful.' After the meal she thanked the Lord again and then said, 'Funny thing about being thankful. There's an old game a preacher taught me to play - looking for things to be thankful for. Many of them you'd pass right by unless you go looking for them. Take this morning. I woke up and lay there wondering what I got to be thankful for now. And you know what, I couldn't think of anything to thank him for. But then from the kitchen came the most delicious smell that ever tickled my nose - coffee. Much obliged, Lord, for the coffee; and much obliged, too, for the smell of it.'
Years passed and Ousler grew up, left home, and learned some of life's lessons the hard way. One day he was called to Anna's bedside. She was dying. Ousler noticed her old hands were twisted with pain and he wondered what she had to be thankful for now. Just then she opened her eyes, looked at all the people gathered around her bed. She closed her eyes again, smiled and said, "Much obliged, Lord, for such fine friends."
God grant me the grace to always be one who comes back to thank you - again and again; and who, in your good time, might make that kind of exit. |
