On his way to
Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who
had leprosy
met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on
us! When he saw them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to
the priests.” As they went, they were cleansed.
One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God
in a loud voice. He
threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan. Jesus
asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other
nine? Has no one returned to give praise to
God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Rise
and go; your faith has made you well.”
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Of
all the seasons of the year, I think my favourite is fall. Toronto has its
beauty, in many ways – our home is close to the bluffs, and Bluffer’s Park to
me is at its most stunning in the fall. Yet there is also Hockley Valley and
the surrounding areas. We enjoy the most incredible colours, and on really
sunny days, the fire engine reds, and canary yellows, are almost painful to the
eyes in their brightness. What a sight!
Now take that colourful picture away
from your imagination and mind, and try to imagine Jesus and the disciples on a
journey through a desert in eastern Palestine. All we know is that they were
"on the way" through Samaria and Galilee, and they went into a village.
No brilliant colors here. No white tail deer feeding nearby. Because it was
desert there *might* have been a morning frost, but then the daytime
temperatures would be over 40 degrees. There might have been some of that
manna, the food which formed from the secretions of a desert plant. There might
have been a mirage or two perhaps, because of the heat rising from the landscape. Probably no one visible for kilometres in
every direction. After weeks of travel, little conversation. Even breathing is
hard. I’d bet they were as crabby as the Israelites with Moses – why are they
out here? They follow an endless path that leads on into more heat, dust, and
desert.
Until on the horizon there’s a village
– a few mud- baked, one-room hovels around a tiny well. The disciples think
there will be a place to sleep for the night. Jesus already sees, though – no
rest here. Some strange shapes appear, moving awkwardly. They are draped in
rags, and as the disciples come closer, they hear the words on the air
“Unclean! Unclean!!!”
Ten people, covered in rags, half
their face covered, hair dirty and disheveled. Lepers. Claimed by no one,
despised by everyone. They hung around the gates to the city, always making
sure everyone knew who they were – leaving baskets for alms or donations, but
never any contact. Outcast from their homes, their families – not even allowed
to enter the temple or practice their faith. Relegated to villages with other
lepers – their only real human contact.
Jewish cultural and religious law
was very clear regarding lepers and leprosy. Purity law and tradition commanded
these lepers never to enter regular villages – they were limited to their own;
tradition demanded that they cover their face and shout to passersby "Unclean,
Unclean." They were required to walk around with hair disheveled and their
clothes ripped. Tradition ordered them to live outside the community. If they somehow became well, tradition
prescribed a specific cleansing ritual before they were re-admitted to the
community, or to their places of worship.
Leprosy as we know it today is also
called Hanson’s disease – it is tuberculosis of the body. In Jesus’ time, given
that there was not the medical knowledge we have today, anything such as psoriasis,
ringworm, even acne, could also consign
a person to living the life of an outcast. Humiliated, sneered at, stripped of
their self-esteem, held up as examples of the results of sin. Subhuman. Proof that God selects some people for
blessing and others for destruction. A sinner, or a product of the sin of the
father. Outsider. Worthless.
Today, they’re the ones who
panhandle on busy streets, the ones who are passed out on the floor of busy subway
terminals, whose clothing reeks of the strong odors of urine, sweat, alcohol.
Humans dying of diseases associated with AIDS; Muslims who are tarred with the
same brush as fanatics. Immigrants accused of stealing jobs which curiously
Canadians don’t want anyway. Can't miss lepers. They're easy to pick out.
What would it be like never to be
touched? Never hugged? Never play with children-- no laughing,
arguing, wrestling. No kisses? No embraces. Their only ‘employment’, if you
could call it that – a lifetime of begging and always at a clearly prescribed
distance.
These ten, designated unclean, knew
exactly how far away they had to stand. Just within hearing distance, yelling,
"Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" Their sound is not liturgical or
rhythmic, but pathetic and hoarse as each tries to be heard above the others. How
did they know about Jesus? Who told these outcasts about Jesus? How did they know
this group of people was Jesus and his followers? Still, the message was
predictable. They wanted alms. They needed food. But they also begged for mercy and healing.
Now remember, all this dialogue goes
on at a far enough distance that they all have to shout – so Jesus shouts back "Go
show yourselves to the priests," This was also within the culture and
tradition. Lepers were supposed to beg for mercy and Jesus instructed them to
follow the same tradition's procedures for lepers who received cures. "Go
and show yourselves to the priests." And as they obeyed Jesus'
instructions and went in the direction of the local priest, they discovered
that they were healed. Still, they kept going; picked up the pace a little. They
hobble, scoot, lurch and finally break into a 30 yard dash until, out of breath,
they arrive at the priest’s home to begin the cleansing ritual. They have been
healed of their disease, even as they are hurrying to the priest.
But one of them is different. First,
he’s a Samaritan, a foreigner. He would have been considered unclean by the
Hebrews either way. And we know nothing about him really, except that he’s a
Samaritan. Jesus and the followers are on the border between Samarian and
Galilee – Samaritans do have a religion, just not the same one, and they don’t
observe the same purity laws. And here Im reading history and culture into a
text which really doesn’t tell us much except that this man is a foreigner. He
realizes that at that moment, out there in the dry dusty desert of eastern
Palestine, that he's been not just cured, but also truly healed. He has been
set free of religious rules which have nothing to do, in the end, with being a
healthy person. He stands there looking toward the lepers as they hobble and hoop
over the hill, trying to regain use of their bodies suddenly whole; then he is looking
toward the man who uttered the healing words.
It’s an incredible visual image –
standing in the middle of a desert outside a leper village, watching his nine
companions rush into town to find the priest, then looking back at Jesus
standing with his companions. Looking one way and then the other – what’s the
right thing to do?
And he jettisons the religious rules
of purity and cleanliness, as he runs instead to Jesus and throws himself down
– still maintaining his distance, even though he doesn’t need to any more. Though
only a few feet away, he yells out years of pent-up gratitude for this miracle,
and uncontrolled emotion realising what has happened to him.
“Where are the rest?” Jesus asks. “Weren’t
there ten??? Only one out of ten even
bothered to come back?” and we can hear
a couple of the disciples “But Jesus, they're doing exactly what you told them
to do. And now you're upset that they've done what you said?” The very ones who
follow the rules and traditions are the ones of whom Jesus is critical, and the
one who makes the U-turn from religious rules and tradition, Jesus praises. Only
this one, a foreigner, offers full and real gratitude. The rest are already
going through the ritual of cleansing which will regather them into the
community – and of course that’s understandable. So their illness is cured,
they can be part of community again. But what about their souls?
Which one is the true act of faith?
Following tradition, or stepping away from tradition to do something else?
Worship first – is it only what we do on Sunday morning? Or is it daily acts of
faith? Is our Thursday coffee time, or ham supper, or pancake breakfast, or
community party, or anything else – any less an act of worship and thanks? Tradition
is considered the fundamental building block of society; it tells us who we
are; gives us identity and shapes our values. It’s stories, experiences,
beliefs, and values that have grown up over the years and form the very basis
of our confessional communities. Thanksgiving is a tradition going back as far
as early biblical accounts, when the Israelites offered to God the first fruits
of the harvest, and gave thanks.
The problem with the nine lepers was
not that they followed their tradition. Jesus told them to obey what their
tradition required. The problem was that they were so engrossed in keeping that
tradition, that they missed the one most important thing, the most important
day of their lives.
What happens when we get so caught
up in who the church tells us we should be, or what we should believe, or the
right way to do church, that we can’t address or consider any new ways of being?
The nine lepers went back to their old lives before they became ill; the one
leper started on a new life.
Jesus pronounced the one leper *well*.
All ten were cured; but the Greek word sozo
is used here, which means, “saved.”
They were all cured, but Luke
implies that this one experienced true gratitude; he looked beyond the obvious,
beyond the strictures of his tradition, to the source of his good fortune. He
was not only cured, but the sickness within which accompanied the physical
sickness was truly healed. Ten people were cured, but one of them truly became whole. Gratitude
became an act of faith, seeing with new eyes and stretching beyond what his
religious traditions told him. Thanksgiving is about
gratitude. May gratitude be for us an act of faith.
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