As Jesus continued his journey to Jerusalem, he traveled through Samaria and Galilee. As he was entering a village, ten lepers met him. They stood at a distance from him and raised their voice, saying,
“Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!”
And when he saw them, he said,
“Go show yourselves to the priests.”
As they were going they were cleansed. And one of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying God in a loud voice; and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. He was a Samaritan.
Jesus said in reply, “Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?”
Then he said to him, “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.”
In those times, lepers present to priests to be assessed. If they are clean, the priest gives them the green card to rejoin society. Two things were interesting. Firstly, the healing or cleansing happened on the way to the priest. Its is our faith and our change of heart that cleans us. Change our hearts is the big message here for me.
ReplyDeleteThe second interesting thing was that only the Samaritan came back to express gratitude. Clearly Jesus was unhappy about that.
“Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?”
It re-affirms my thinking that we are called to live a life that is an expression of our gratitude for our God given gifts. True sacrifice comes from a place of gratitude not fear. Action out of fear is an ego-driven response. It is more about survival than it is about love. It takes me back to that chestnut - “..give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar – and to God what belongs to God” (Mat:22:21). Our titles, our membership in groups and religions, are of this world and "belong to Caesar”. What is God’s are those things that are of our hearts. These include the choices we make to put others before ourselves like: love, forgive, sacrifice, commitment.