(Monroe)
Yesterday I preached out of Luke 17:11-19 – the story of the ten lepers who were healed by Jesus. This story has always been a favorite of mine. It’s about more than a physical healing. It’s about true seeing; about a revelation or epiphany.
Lepers were socially and religiously outcast. In the time of Jesus if you were sick it was thought that God was cursing or punishing you. Remember, e.g., the blind man in John 8 who was sitting outside the temple. Jesus’ disciples see him and immediately wonder who sinned – this man or his parents – that he was born blind.
Jesus is walking towards Jerusalem on the border between Samaria and Galilee. Ten lepers, keeping their distance, call to him – “Have mercy on us!” They knew Jesus was socially higher than they were. And they must have seen something in him that made them think “He can help us.”
Jesus heals them – “cleanses them.” This “cleansing” means they are not only physically restored but socially and spiritually restored as well. As they walk away from Jesus one of them, a Samaritan (Jesus calls him a “foreigner”), stops. A light goes on in his mind. He does a 180 and walks back toward Jesus. As he’s doing this he’s shouting out praises to God. He approaches Jesus, throws himself at Jesus’ feet, and thanks him over and over again. Arguably, this foreigner is the most outcast person we ever meet in the New Testament. He’s physically, socailly, and spiritually unclean, and on top of that he’s a Samaritan, and Jews and Samaritans hated each other. Now here he is worshiping a Jewish man who just cleansed him in three ways, the most important of which is that he can worship God and get close to God.
This is important, and it’s the “revelation” part of this story. In John 4, in the story of the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus tells her that a day is coming when Samaritans will no longer fall down and worship on Mount Gerizim and Jews will no longer fall down and worship on Mount Zion. God is looking for true worshipers, and true worship is non-geographical and non-ethnic. True worshipers worship in spirit and in truth.
The Samaritan ex-leper gets it. He’s not worshiping on any mountain any more. He’s worshiping at the one place where true worship happens, which is at the feet of Jesus. You and I don’t have to make a pilgrimage to the holy land to worship God. We don’t have to climb Mount Zion and bow down. Munson Park here in Monroe will do. If you’ve had a revelation of the Real Jesus, that he is the One who makes all things new and all things clean, you’ll see you can throw yourself at his feet where you’re at while reading this and give thanks to the One who has come to save us.
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