I’d like us to consider a story found in Luke chapter 17, starting at verse 11. If you’re not familiar with this story, it is when ten lepers have an encounter with Jesus. And as we know, when someone has an encounter with Jesus, they are never the same again. When people have an encounter with religion, they stay the same, but when you have an encounter with Jesus, he changes your whole life. It is impossible for him not to, because that’s who he is. He is a God of transformation. He is a God of all power, and he works to heal and to restore.
I don’t know where you are in your faith journey today, but if you haven’t decided to know Jesus, I just want you to be open to what God might say to you as you read these words. Jesus wants to speak to you, and he wants to see you changed, and it’s always for the better.
You know when it comes to religion, it will bind you. It will confuse you. It will complicate life for you, but Jesus sets people free, and that’s what I want to look at today in the story of these ten lepers.
Starting from verse 11, it says: “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 – 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.” (Luke 17: 11-19.)
I’d like to draw a few things out of this passage which I think can change our approach to Jesus and change our lives.
So we discover that Jesus is traveling to Jerusalem, and ten lepers stand at a distance. This was protocol because they couldn’t stand near people. They begin to shout out. Lepers in that time were outcasts, but here we have ten lepers, and we are told that one of them was a Samaritan.
That man was doubly rejected – doubly disowned, because being a Samaritan, he was firstly an outcast among the Jews. Jews and Samaritans did not get on. To the Jews he was a foreigner, and there was always a racial divide between the two. He shouldn’t have been approaching Jesus. There would have been a complete divide. Yet he still shouts out. Then secondly, he was an outcast among his own people because he was a leper. They had disowned and rejected him. So this one man who decided to return to Jesus was the one who was doubly rejected, doubly isolated, and doubly hated by society.
Just picture it. The lepers see Jesus standing at a distance, and they shout to him: “Master!” Now normally that word would mean teacher, but as we look closer in the Greek, it means a little bit more. It’s a word that speaks of greater authority than others. So when they’re shouting out to Jesus, they recognize he’s a teacher, but he’s not an ordinary teacher. He has something that the others don’t have.
When you look at scripture, you’ve always got to look at it in the context of its original time, but it was written for us to learn from as well. So we can understand now in 2022 that these ten lepers understood that Jesus had a higher authority than every regular teacher. So they shout out: “Jesus, master have pity on us!”
Don’t forget, these are lepers. I don’t know if you’ve ever read about leprosy, but it’s a horror. It rots the flesh, and it rots the bones. These are lepers standing at a distance. We don’t know exactly what they would have looked like. They may have lost limbs. They were like rotting walking dead men.
What strikes me is the question they ask when they see a man they know is not just a teacher, but someone that they believe has higher authority and power than any other teacher. If I try and put myself into the story, this is what I believe I would think. If I had leprosy, I would immediately say: “I want to be healed.” However, they don’t ask for that. So I question, why didn’t they ask for what I would say is the most natural thing? If I was sick and someone asked me what I wanted, I would immediately say healing. Yet the lepers shout out: “Have pity on us.” That actually means Jesus, would you have compassion on us? Would you give us food? Or would you help us? Would you give us shelter?
What they’re asking for is something to sooth their pain. Maybe they just thought they’d be lucky if they got pity. They may have thought, let’s go for something lower than a complete healing. If they were healed, everything would be restored, but they asked for pity. Give me a morsel – just something to eat. We are rejected. Just give me some clothes. Just give me some love. Just reach out. Just show that we’re human after all. Over the years, one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned about Jesus is that he is always interested in what we request from him.
In verse 14, it says: “When he saw them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” Now that’s a bit of a predicament. You could say it was a divine predicament, because by law lepers weren’t allowed to go to the priests unless they were completely healed. Only restored people – only perfect people could go to the priests. So Jesus is asking for something from them that they could not do.
I have learned over the last thirty odd years as a minister that Jesus is in the business of asking things from me that I can’t do. He is constantly positioning me or pushing me into places where my brain tells me: “You can’t do this!” He is in the business of putting us in divine predicaments where we say: “Oh, he can’t mean this. Surely God doesn’t want me in that place of influence. Surely God has got this wrong.” Well, I’d like to encourage you to change your language, and start speaking truth over these things. When you’re scared – when you’re in a position, and you are thinking: “Oh no! What am I doing here?” this is the time to change your language. Instead, say: “I’m in a divine predicament, and when God puts me in a divine predicament, I know that I can do it. I think I can’t, but I know I can because God has put me there.” The reason why we panic is because we can’t figure out how this is possible. It’s all about what we think, and it’s not really about what God thinks.
Often, before we go anywhere or do anything – before we obey the word of God, we want to know how. We say: “Yes, but how?” However, the truth is that God put you there, so he’ll show you one step at a time as you go.
So even though these men were still leprous, they walked in obedience to Jesus’ words. Even though they were diseased, they went, despite the fact that they had no idea what would happen. They obeyed. Even though the law said can’t, they went. Even though culture said don’t, they did.
We can’t change his word. If he says go, we should go. If he says stay, we should stay.