Notes: Skin Disease not just leproacy
Priests are the ones who declare people clean and unclean.
Luke 17:11–19
On the way to Jerusalem
Jesus was going through the region between Samaria
and Galilee.
As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him.
Keeping their distance, they called out, saying,
“Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”
When he saw them, he said to them,
“Go and show yourselves to the priests.”
And as they went, they were made clean.
Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed,
turned back, praising God with a loud voice.
He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him.
And he was a Samaritan.
Then Jesus asked,
“Were not ten made clean?
But the other nine, where are they?
Was none of them found to return and give praise to God
except this foreigner?”
Then he said to him,
“Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”
SERMON (PASTOR)
The same system
When you have been deeply welcomed you are unbelievably
grateful.
I imagine the ten lepers, and I always wonder how old they
were when the priests first deemed them unclean. Did they develop bad acne in
their early teens and were sent to live in the leper colony or did they have
eczema since childhood and their parents covered their legs until the child was
found out and shunned. Were they older and moles began to mark their skin and
the life they knew was taken away because people didn’t understand that they
were harmless and uncontagious.
Who was the priest who first deemed them unclean, and did
the lepers remember his name? What was the feeling when someone’s skin cleared
and the priests allowed the leper to be roam free? Was it relief, triumph,
trepidation? Did they return to visit risking contagion for relationship or
were they too afraid of those who were once their outcast band?
What's it like to be unable to touch or be touched by
another person? What was it like to walk on the outside of the streets and be
ignored? What was like to see Jesus, and have to keep their distance? I imagine
they yelled mighty loud to this one whom they had heard might make them clean.
“Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” As if they internalized they had done
something wrong. “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” They chorus out, louder
still, until he sees them. “Go and show yourselves to the priests.”
I assume they felt dismissed, another prophet, keeping them
on the outside. His first word, “Go,” instead of, “Come,” let me look, never
breaking the social shunning code of you over there and me here. The prophet’s
second phrase, that they show themselves to the ones with the power to proclaim
them still dirty. As if instead of healing, they needed to be reminded of their
station. Another prophet, failing, these ailments unable to disappear with
words alone, instead their occurrence and disappearance as unpredictable as a
change in weather.
These lepers had been shunned like this before, and so they
walk on, on the sides of the streets where they know the corners where the dirt
meets each structure’s edge. Yet, walking they start to notice it on one
another. Their pox scabbing, scaring, and clearing. Their acne shrinking and
disappearing, their rosacea reducing to just a the flush of hot weather, they
begin to talk and tell each other, and see it on themselves, and they know they
have been cured, and to go to the priests now means they will be deemed clean
and allowed to be free. I imagine their pace quickening, their voices
loudening, their dreams rushing of whom they will first embrace, of where they
will be allowed to go. I don’t know if I would be the one to turn back and
postpone such long held dreams, I don’t blame them for rushing on to the thing
they have longed for, rushing from the place of oppressed outcast to welcome
home. But one did.
One of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back,
praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and
thanked him.
Then Jesus asked,
“Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are
they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this
foreigner?”
And as if answering his own question Jesus said to the
healed man,
“Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you
well.”
The nine ran to be proclaimed healed and clean by the same
people, in the same system that had deemed them unclean. The nine ran to the
authority of the priests, but this one, this one, turned back. In his turning
back, he was not just healed but also made well. He was cured of the system
itself, no longer tethered to the authority of the synagogue, but instead to
the authority of gratitude. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked
him. And it is this deep thankfulness that changes the way we live. It is when
someone sees you and with grace heals you, seeing your completeness, sometimes
without your knowing, until later someone says you are changing or you have
changed, and you see for yourself. You can go on, most of us do, but sometimes
if we turn back, like the lepers, with
thanks we can live into the ways our faith has made us well.
Jesus says to the healed man, “Get up and go on your way;
your faith has made you well.” Get up and go a different way. I don’t think he
goes to the synagogue. I think he goes around expressing that gratitude that
has made him completely well. And I hope we do the same.
