The Fraternity of Lepers
Now on His way to Jerusalem, Jesus travelled 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.” And 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? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then He said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”
Speaking with the pastor of one of the largest churches in North America, I was challenged to tell the story of a revival I had witnessed. As I told of the men and women of the congregation in the Outer Mission District of San Francisco, I related their story. George, whose mind was permanently fried from drug abuse… Armando who paid an extreme price for his faith in Christ when he was fired from the only job he could perform, which was driving cab… I told how Patty Hearse was captured only a matter of feet from the vestibule of the church. I told of the prostitutes and pimps, the thieves and muggers, the common people and the street people — all united by their love for Christ who had redeemed them. I continued by telling how respectable churches were horrified by the odd assembly of believers. I concluded by saying that they would not likely be welcomed in his own congregation. It seemed as if there weren’t a normal one in the crowd; but, oh, how they did love one another.
Crippled and broken, the Body of Christ is a fraternity — a fraternity of lepers. We have been redeemed from our abject slavery to sin and our utter isolation from Holy God; our brokenness has been restored by the grace of God who is life. Our story is akin to one which is related by Doctor Luke. My prayer is that our particular story is not that of the majority, but that we are part of the minority. Perhaps I should clarify that statement by exploring the incident.
Jesus, together with His disciples, was travelling to Jerusalem. They were walking along the border between Samaria and Galilee where they entered a border village. The text reports that ten lepers met Him. We may speculate that these lepers had heard of his presence and were deliberate in arranging to intercept His journey. On the other hand, perhaps it was serendipity … a chance occurrence. Seizing upon this chance encounter, they stood apart from Him as required by the Law and cried out for mercy.
The command Jesus issued is simple, predicated upon their faith in His power. Go, show yourselves to the priests. Doctor Luke is quite precise about what happened next. As they went, they were cleansed. Even as they began the journey to Jerusalem to show themselves to the priests, they were cleansed. We will never quite grasp the importance of this cleansing until we understand the stigma attached to leprosy in that ancient day. We likely cannot fully grasp the sense of isolation, the feeling of ostracism and rejection, until we explore the social view of the various skin diseases from that ancient era.
United in Misery — Let’s try to understand what it meant to be a leper in ancient Palestine. Leprosy, the horrifying disease which lends its name to the biblical skin ailment, is still with us to this day. The disease is caused by the rickettsia Mycobacterium lepræ, and is still a dreaded diagnosis. This disease is part of the family of germs which cause Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and Tuberculosis, each of which is difficult to cure and each of which presents a serious challenge to modern physicians.
The horror of leprosy in our day is that it causes nerve paralysis. When the patient cannot feel pain, they tend to injure themselves, and the burns and wounds are easily infected with concomitant mutilation. Fingers, toes, ears, nose and even lips seem to literally rot away since the pain which would normally serve to warn of injury or infection is not present. Lepers, especially without aggressive treatment, are consigned to an awful, lingering, horrifying death. The disease is not highly contagious; physicians and religious workers have for years provided help within leprosoriums without themselves contracting the disease. Nevertheless, the uneducated are frightened at the sight of a leper and the irrational fear that they also may be contaminated. No doubt there is a sense of ancient fear instilled in our minds by memories conjured up by unverified stories which contributes to our horror.
When you read the account of diagnosis of leprosy in the Pentateuch, it becomes apparent that a range of skin conditions was possibly included in the diagnosis of leprosy. This is not to say that lepers were not leprous; it is but to caution that other skin conditions could isolate an individual from society. That is the important point for our consideration in this message. The diagnosis of leprosy was a sentence to utter isolation. The leper could not live among the people. He or she was removed from his or her family home and forced to live outside the town. Lepers were compelled to wear old, torn clothing, leave their hair unkempt and uncovered, cover their lower face, and cry out at the approach of any person, Unclean! Unclean! [Cf. Leviticus 13:45].
A leper was a social pariah. They could not work, since that which their hands touched would be deemed to be unclean. They could not socialise with others, since they were unclean. Where they sat was unclean and others could not sit there. Where they lived was unclean and others were not permitted to enter there. Their breath, should they approach too close, was considered unclean, and those upon whom they breathed were contaminated. To be a leper was to be consigned to a living death.
There is still a deep, abiding fear of leprosy in this day. The last leprosorium in the United States, located in Louisiana, is not the closed facility it once was. In the not so distant past, patients diagnosed with leprosy were sent, even against their will, to that isolated facility, or to another in Hawaii. In Canada, patients diagnosed with leprosy were sent to a facility in the Maritimes, where they would live out their years isolated from family and friends and all social intercourse save for the artificial society of the dying lepers.
We no longer have many such conditions with the social stigma of leprosy … with the possible exception of AIDS. Perhaps those infected with HIV are the new social pariahs. Whether through promiscuous sex (usually homosexual), through intravenous drug use, or through governmental mismanagement of blood supplies, those contaminated with the HIV virus will almost assuredly die a lonely, lingering, frightful death. Deserted by those they thought to be friends, at the last these modern social outcastes will succumb to strange diseases in abject loneliness and in deepest agony.
And the Band Played On, an investigative study of the politics and the people affected by AIDS was written by Randy Shilts over a decade ago. Shilts, himself a homosexual, eventually succumbed to the disease. The graphic descriptions of the final days of those men infected with the disease cannot help but affect the sensitive soul. One great overriding thought as I read the book was that the gay culture is anything but gay. Populated with lonely individuals, the sodomite subculture of contemporary life is sad and lonely, isolated by right-thinking individuals. Tragically, instead of being appalled by the rebellion, too many are angered by the individuals.
I remember a former pastor of mine who until recently served the First Baptist Church of San Francisco, telling of a young man in his final days of a losing struggle against AIDS. He told how the young man, the son of an evangelical preacher, had rebelled and lived his own life. Now, at last, he was dying … the consequence of his rebellion. Alone, isolated from family, even his friends had forsaken him. Dr. Higgs told how the aide who delivered the food tray would literally throw the food across the floor so she would not need to enter the room. The dying man was isolated even by the very staff hired to minister to his needs.
Horrible though the treatment of those afflicted with AIDS may be, even more horrifying are those infected with such new and deadly diseases as Ebola. Such people die quickly … and alone. Blood pours from every orifice of the body and the lungs fill so quickly that the patient literally drowns in his or her own secretions within a matter of hours. Being viral in origin, the disease passes readily through the unbroken skin. Consequently, save for a few religious workers, few people have been willing to tend to the dying in those villages infected with Ebola. The village is isolated and in some extreme incidents anyone attempting to leave the village was shot and their body burned.
There is no question but that some diseases present a horrible possibility for death, and there is no question but that those infected are too readily isolated from society. The Bible does not pretend to be a textbook of medical science, and the proscriptions against those infected with leprosy were not solely for hygienic reasons. Leprosy was a type of sin. The leper was marked, and the visible blemish was a vivid reminder of the sinful condition of mankind. You would think that the purification rituals prescribed in Leviticus 14 would serve to encourage the leper to pray for deliverance, creating in that one a heart dependent upon the mercies of God. The evidence from our text would cause us to question such a situation.
You see, the lepers formed a sort of society within society. They really were outcastes. Just so, those contaminated by the leprosy of sin are utter outcastes from all divine intercourse. The sinner is loathsome to God. God is pure and holy. Sin is awful. Sinners cannot be tolerated in His holy presence. The Psalmist understood this terrible situation before God when he wrote these words.
My wounds fester and are loathsome
because of my sinful folly.
I am bowed down and brought very low;
all day long I go about mourning.
My back is filled with searing pain;
there is no health in my body.
[Psalm 38:5-7]
The words of Paul take on new significance when I consider the awful stench in the nostrils of God represented by sinful man. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us [Romans 5:6-8].
We are great, are we not, at categorising ourselves? We segregate and sort one another by every criterion imaginable. We divide one another on the basis of race, of nationality, of culture, of economic status, of educational attainment … and a thousand other bases. One criterion for classification is sin. We are willing to admit that we sin, but we are uncomfortable admitting that we are sinners. We think that though we occasionally slip up, we are not as bad as another. Because we are not vile sinners like some other fellow human, we may slip past the scrutiny of Holy God. The standard He has set, however, is perfection!
We are united in misery before Him since the truth remains:
There is no one righteous, not even one;
there is no one who understands,
no one who seeks God.
All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.
Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit.
The poison of vipers is on their lips.
Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.
Their feet are swift to shed blood;
ruin and misery mark their ways,
and the way of peace they do not know.
There is no fear of God before their eyes.
[Romans 3:10-18]
Indeed, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God [Romans 3:23].
Just as though we were in the terminal stages of dying from a loathsome disease, our condition before God renders us repulsive and detestable before Him. Even when we think we are doing what is good and pleasing to the Lord God, the good we believe we are presenting is as stinking, filthy rags, which are contaminated by the putrescence of lives terminally infected by sin. This startling and depressing truth is forcefully stated through Isaiah’s words.
All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
[Isaiah 64:6]
I know the passage is familiar, but consider again the words of Ephesians 2:1-10. As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions — it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Christ did not come to save good people, but He came to set prisoners at liberty. He came to set the captive free. He came to save sinners. He came to deliver those under sentence of death. He entered into a world utterly detestable to Holy God and presented Himself as a sacrifice for sin, that He might accomplish what no man could. It is by grace that we are saved. Just as those ten lepers were set free of the confines of their living death by the voice of Christ the Lord, so we are set at liberty from the sentence of eternal death through faith in Him.
Distinguished by Gratitude — Wouldn’t you think that people freed from the sentence of eternal death would be grateful for deliverance? Wouldn’t you think that men and women who were once excluded from mercy would rejoice at the extension of mercy? I should imagine that anyone who received grace would praise Him who gives grace and mercy. I should imagine that everyone set at liberty would give thanks to Him who alone sets the heart free. Such is not the case, however. The most live as though it were their due and fail to show gratitude to God who sets us free.
These ten lepers had been united in misery. Race, nationality and culture no longer mattered. Their former economic status and their prior social standing were of no importance. They were lepers. Maintaining an appropriate distance between themselves and the band of disciples, the pitiful group cried out as Jesus passed them, Jesus, Master, have pity on us. Becoming aware of them, Jesus instructed them to go, show themselves to the priests. The implication was that they would perform the rite of purification outlined in Leviticus 14.
There is a dynamic in Luke’s words which may be missed in our casual reading. And as they went, they were cleansed. Had these men remained standing where they were, they would not have been healed. Had they turned and began to return to the place where they stayed, they would not have been healed. It was as they set out to obey the Lord’s command that they were healed. We would not be in error to conclude that only as they set out to fulfil the command of the Master would they be healed.
One of these men, realising that he was healed, returned, exulting before the Lord in his wholeness. Lifting His voice all the way he was praising God until he again found Jesus. Before the Lord he threw himself on the ground and thanked Him. He worshipped Jesus for what He had done. He praised God and gave homage to Jesus for the healing he had received. This man recognised Jesus as God and revealed faith in Him.
What is surprising in this act is that the man who returned was a Samaritan. Samaritans were detestable to the Jews because of their religious syncretism. Theirs was a mixed religion, which though enjoying Jewish roots had incorporated pagan rites. The Samaritans were the descendants of people resettled in Israel after the Assyrian invasion. The account of this mixed race introduction to the land is found in 2 Kings 17:27-34,40,41. The king of Assyria gave this order: “Have one of the priests you took captive from Samaria go back to live there and teach the people what the god of the land requires.” So one of the priests who had been exiled from Samaria came to live in Bethel and taught them how to worship the Lord.
Nevertheless, each national group made its own gods in the several towns where they settled, and set them up in the shrines the people of Samaria had made at the high places. The men from Babylon made Succoth Benoth, the men from Cuthah made Nergal, and the men from Hamath made Ashima; the Avvites made Nibhaz and Tartak, and the Sepharvites burned their children in the fire as sacrifices to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim. They worshiped the Lord, but they also appointed all sorts of their own people to officiate for them as priests in the shrines at the high places. They worshiped the Lord, but they also served their own gods in accordance with the customs of the nations from which they had been brought.
To this day they persist in their former practices. They neither worship the Lord nor adhere to the decrees and ordinances, the laws and commands that the Lord gave the descendants of Jacob, whom he named Israel… [The people] would not listen, however, but persisted in their former practices. Even while these people were worshipping the Lord, they were serving their idols. To this day their children and grandchildren continue to do as their fathers did.
Despite inauspicious roots, this Samaritan moved from crying out to Jesus as a healer to rejoicing before Him as God, though he may not have recognised Him as Messiah. Underscore in your mind this vital truth: the presence of gratitude is one of the greatest evidences of salvation. Recall the dark characterisation which initiates the slide toward social oblivion. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened [Romans 1:18-21].
All the dark statements of a godless society begin with individuals who are ungrateful. Regardless of how religious an individual may be, regardless of how religious a society may present itself, without gratitude to God they reveal that they have not known God. The soul set at liberty from sentence of death cannot help but be grateful to the One who sets the prisoner free. You profession is meaningless, if there is no evidence of gratitude to God for His grace. Your refusal to submit to first commands reveals a heart seized by pride and incapable of gratitude.
I think of how often people have pointed to one healed of a great illness as an evidence of the power of God. Yet I marvel that great grace seldom changes the heart. Literally multitudes of individuals walk the streets of our cities who point to a miraculous deliverance, a gracious healing, some glorious provision, and yet refuse to serve Him. Great deliverance will not change the ungrateful heart. Yet the one whose heart has been touched by grace cannot help but reveal gratitude to God.
Dear people, the Puritans of old were wont to say, Say not thou hast royal blood in thy veins except thou darest prove it by a holy life. A holy life is a life marked by gratitude. Frankly, you cannot worship if you do not know gratitude toward Him you worship. Such gratitude is the sole preserve of the heart transformed by grace. The people of God are marked by obedience, but obedience without gratitude is no obedience at all. There is a wonderful admixture of joy and praise and thankfulness which characterised the worship of the people of God. They have been freed from their miserable bondage and they cannot help but worship Him who set them free.
Surprised at Ingratitude — This was the second time Jesus had healed leprosy in the account provided by Doctor Luke. The first pericope is that recorded in Luke 5:12-16. In that instance, Jesus reached out and touched the man. In this case, Jesus healed from a distance, needing but to speak the word and at the obedience of the men completing what He had promised. He is God, with power over all of creation. In either case, however, the lepers are instructed to fulfil the Law, showing themselves to the priests that they may be declared cleansed. Jesus came to fulfil the Law.
At the approach of the Samaritan, Jesus exclaimed, Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? I appreciate the comments by one commentator who writes:
The lack of gratitude by the other nine former lepers was typical of the rejection of Jesus’ ministry by the Jewish nation. He alone had the power to cleanse the nation and make it ceremonially clean. However, the nation did not respond properly to Him. The nation accepted the things that Jesus could do (such as heal them and feed them), but it did not want to accept Him as Messiah. However, those outside the nation (such as this Samaritan leper — a person doubly repulsive to the Jews) were responding.[1]
However, the application is so much greater than a simple restriction to the rejection of the Jewish people. Indeed, they failed to recognise Jesus as Messiah. Failure to recognise that we also fall under this condemnation can only serve to magnify our censure by God.
There seems to be a note of surprise in the Saviour’s voice. Is it possible that He is also surprised at the failure of our contemporaries to recognise His grace? When God causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends His rain on the righteous and the unrighteous [cf. Matthew 5:45], wouldn’t you expect that all would lift their voices in praise to Him for His grace? We dwell in a land of great riches; the earth yields her bounty to us almost without labour. Wouldn’t you expect Canadians to praise God for His goodness? We have never experienced a successful invasion and to this day we live at peace with our neighbour. Should not such freedom and peace in the land lead all the inhabitants of the land to worship Him who gives such goodness?
Instead, the vast majority of Canadians does not attend church and do not worship. They are not a grateful people, declaring by attitude and by word that it is by their own strength that all this exists. We have imbibed deeply of the toxic draught which poisons the mind and compels us to insist on freedom from religion. Surely God must be surprised at the rejection of His mercies and of His goodness! Surely Jesus must marvel at our ingratitude as a nation.
It is bad enough when the majority of citizens of a nation are ungrateful, but that majority does not profess the Faith of Christ. Among those of us who do so profess His Name, surely we will find gratitude to Him. Surely we will be counted among those who worship and honour Him. What would you expect of a grateful people?
In the instance before us, because the Samaritan leper had faith in Jesus as God, he returned to worship. His worship was filled with loud praise so that no one could miss the object of His adoration. Gratitude is revealed in praise and worship. Praise and worship are always in the context of obedience, for it was his obedience which first led him to the realisation that this Jesus was God. Just so, shouldn’t we, if we will honour Christ the Lord, obey His commands?
His commands are not onerous. Instead, they are the means by which He blesses. Our Lord calls us to faith in Him as very God. Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved [Acts 16:31]. Those who have believed identify with Jesus after they have believed. Identification is not in order to believe, but it is always because one has believed. Immediately [the jailer] and all his family were baptised [Acts 16:33]. Those who so identified in baptism as believers in the Lord Jesus were henceforth identified with the church in their community. They went to Lydia’s house, where they met with the brothers and encouraged them [Acts 16:40]. From earliest days, those who were grateful to God for deliverance and who rejoiced in His goodness met with the brotherhood of believers at every opportunity.
In our day the Church of the Living God has become an association which we turn to if we are in dire trouble. When the path seems less difficult, we can make it on our own again. It seems that I meet an unusual number of people who “used to be Christians.” Some were even at one time preachers and others were engaged in missionary endeavour. Now, they haven’t time for the church since they are so busy making money, enjoying the blessings of God, or simply pursuing their own ends. Can it be that our pleas are so weak before these “once upon a time” Christians, because we ourselves have so little gratitude toward God?
What would happen in our witness if our walk revealed our gratitude to God? What would it be were we to determine that as a congregation we will obey God, beginning in first things? We will believe Him and we will identify with Him. We will not make excuses or pull back in stubborn refusal to identify with Him because our parents once made that decision for us. We will submit to His Holy Spirit and follow Him in believer’s baptism, immersed in the waters of solemn identification just as He taught. Having obeyed in first things, what would it be were we to determine that our worship would be marked by loud praise to God and by rejoicing.
I’m not suggesting that we need to work up anything, but I am recommending that we need to ask whether our lack of joy is a demonstration that we have lost our heart of thankfulness to God. Review His grace toward you. You enjoy life. He has given you senses to revel in His great creation. He has given you a mind to comprehend His handiwork. He has given you ability to participate in His world-wide work through earning a living and through sharing in the ongoing advance of His cause. He has given you His good Spirit, gifted you with spiritual gifts, and called you by name to be His child. Shouldn’t your heart overflow with gratitude?
My prayer is that we may realise that we were once a part of the fraternity of lepers, but that by His grace we are now a part of the Body of Christ. May He make us grateful to Him in all things. Amen.
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[1] Martin, John A. in Walvoord, John F. & Zuck, Roy G., (eds.), The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures by Dallas Seminary Faculty, New Testament, SP Pub., 1983