Outcasts #3: The 10 Lepers
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Not a pleasant fate.
Not a pleasant fate.
I know its not pleasant to think about leprosy. its an awful disease, and even more so now a days because its 100% treatable… so I promise from here on in this sermon get better :)
Today as we continue talking about outcasts we going to talk about the 10 lepers...
But first we need to set the stage a little bit. Leprosy was and is an awful disease, but the more awful thing is the stigma around it. In Jesus day and even now in places like India. if you are found to have leprosy you are immediately an outcast… not just a social outcast, but a physical outcast. you are no longer welcome with your family, or your village. In Jesus day Leprosy was seen as a punishment from God so you also became a spiritual outcast.
You became an outcast in every sense of the words. no one would touch you, or even come near you. If you had a business you lost it. if you had status is was striped from you. you were not allowed to come into contact with anyone (save other lepers) If you had to come into town for any reason you literally had to shout out to people so they knew not to come near you.
And all that on top of a totally debilitating disease! It’s no wonder that lepers would take the chance to see Jesus in the hope of hopes that He would heal them.
So lets read about these outcasts found in Luke 17:11-19
Now it happened as He went to Jerusalem that He passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. Then as He entered a certain village, there met Him ten men who were lepers, who stood afar off. And they lifted up their voices and said, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”
So when He saw them, He said to them, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And so it was that as they went, they were cleansed.
And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks. And he was a Samaritan.
So Jesus answered and said, “Were there not ten cleansed? But where are the nine? Were there not any found who returned to give glory to God except this foreigner?” And He said to him, “Arise, go your way. Your faith has made you well.”
Oh… and He was a Samaritan to boot!
Oh… and He was a Samaritan to boot!
Let’s start with a lesson right off the bat.
We are all lepers (in the spiritual sense) we ll start out separated from God. outcasts, not worthy to be near him.
Of the 10 some were probably former business men. Some may have had status in the community, some may have even been pharisees… who knows… but we do know about one of them… an outcast among the outcasts… not only was he a Leper, but he was a Samaritan Leper.... and as we know Jews did not like Samaritans!
Samaritans where already like lepers to the Jews, no self respecting Jew. let alone a rabbi, teacher, or prophet would purposefully go to a Samaritan. So this particular person even among the outcasts, was even worse off than the rest.
So here we have a group of lepers. and they hear that Jesus is going to be coming near to their leper colony… They know they are not supposed to leave there, but they are desperate. By now everyone knows that Jesus has been healing people of all sorts of afflictions… so they decide that they will do together. find a place were they can see Jesus and yell at him! hoping to get his attention.
As far as plans go, this one isn’t the most intricate… but hey, you go with what you got right?
So as Jesus is passing by them on the way through town they start to yell out to him “Jesus, Have Mercy on us!”
not “Jesus Save us”
Not “Jesus Heal us”
Jesus have MERCY on us”
and sometimes these things are easy to overlook as we read the Bible, but if you think about it there is a mountain of difference between Save me, Heal me, and have Mercy on me
When someone says Save me. It means they are in a dire situation from with they cannot cope on their own. That’s why when you’re on a burning boat you yell SAVE me.... no have mercy on me… and certainly not Heal me
When someone says Heal me. that means they have a disease or affliction of the body from which they have no chance of resolving on its own… you don’t ask to be healed from a cold. But you would asked to be healed from Cancer.
When someone asked for Mercy… that is a different case… this is a person who has found themselves in a moral situation from with they have been found wanting. Someone doesn’t ask for mercy from a burning boat and you certainly don’t ask for mercy from from a disease.
So why where these people asking for mercy instead of healing?
The answer to this may come from a cultural perspective. and also serves as a second lesson to us.
The culture of the day told them they deserved their fate
The culture of the day told them they deserved their fate
The culture of the day informs much of religion. the fact of the matter is there are many things that we do in church that have everything to do with our culture and nothing at all to do with Christianity. from the way we dress, the terms we use and the things that we do, and how we treat certain people.
In Jesus day they didn’t know what leprosy was… of course now we know that leprosy is cased by a certain bacteria.. we know what it is and we know how to treat it… in Jesus time they thought that leprosy was a punishment from God.
So if you were afflicted with Leprosy you must have done something to anger God, there must have been something that YOU DID to DESERVE being a leper and there for you must be cast out.
but see this was a matter of culture bleeding into religion....
We do the same thing today and we cast out people that we don’t want around...
We cast people out because they don’t dress right? (eh! did you see how this person came dressed to church!) Like God cares how you look… we all started out naked! how we dress is 100% cultural and 0% spiritual
We cast people out because of how they act… like may favourite example “ Those people are so rude and disrespectful” and if you think that we’re not casting people out with this. simply count the number of young people we have staying in the church… or better come on a Saturday and see.
We cast people our because they don’t worship like we do. “oh, we are such and such a church and this IS the way we worship”
You look at these 10 lepers.. they KNEW that they had done something to disease God and therefore the solution to their affliction wasn’t healing.. but MERCY from Jesus… They had been artificially cut off from God because of something that was not their fault...
But lets continue on in the story. and we see that regardless of their circumstances, their status, or anything else. Jesus see’s fit to heal them.
Luke 17:14
So when He saw them, He said to them, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And so it was that as they went, they were cleansed.
So imagine. Here are 10 outcasts, and Jesus for once tells them basically to go to church. and as they are on their way there they are healed! suddenly these 10 men get their lives back! they can go back to their businesses, their jobs, their postings, their families, everything! they are literally no longer outcasts!
well all except for one of them… one of them… for all his other afflictions being removed, was still a Samaritan, and so seen as even less deserving of Jesus’ healing than the others.
See the 9 others were Jew’s and frankly if God was going to have mercy on anyone then it should be them… they probably thought (or knew) that they had done nothing to deserve being lepers in the first place and therefor may even have been DESERVING of Jesus Mercy.
But the Samaritan wasn’t a Jew and to the Jews’ was certainly not deserving of Jesus’ Mercy.
Where 9 may have seen their healing as Vindication of their innocence. One KNEW that he wasn’t deserving of this healing which made it all the more special.
so we see in vs 15 Luke 17:15-16
And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks. And he was a Samaritan.
There are 2 things that we can learn from this:
#1 We’ll never get everyone
#1 We’ll never get everyone
Can you imagine after all my talking about being more accepting, and being ready for all the people that could be coming to the church from the community, that this is my lesson?
I mean, for sure me of all people should be teaching that we can reach and touch EVERY SINGLE ONE of the people in this area and community!
But that fact of the matter is Jesus radically changed the lived of 10 people! and only caught one. One person! and that could discourage some… but then again. the fact of the matter is that not everyone is for us to reach! and actually that’s kind of good news. could you imagine trying to fit everyone from the community into the church? it wouldn't work! but more so we weren't designed to reach every single person. There is a harvest for All Nations. God gave us the seats and he expects us to work to fill them. but we are never going to get every single person who crosses our paths.
But on that note is lesson number 2
#2 You may be surprised who you do catch
#2 You may be surprised who you do catch
Think of it. 9 Jewish lepers who have been given the mercy that they sought, by the Messiah they had been waiting for for generations… and not one of them came back to say “hey, ya.. thanks for that btw” Not One!
and yet the one leper who knew he didn’t deserve to be anywhere near the King of Kings. came back glorifying God and giving thanks!
you know there are people out there who right now KNOW they don’t deserve to have God’s mercy.
They know they are living in sin
They know they are doing wrong
and they know that God is displeased with whatever they are doing
And often times the reason they don’t come to church is not because they don’t want his forgiveness.. it’s because they don’t want our look and our lectures and our judgement.
The fact of the matter is We are exactly what is stopping some people from experiencing the full joy of God’s forgiveness and Life in Him.
and I know that as we work and change our attitudes towards these people that they are going to start to come and they are going to start to fill this church up… but like i mentioned before… we’re not going to keep all of them....
but more importantly we are going to be surprised at who we keep and who we don’t keep.
Just like in this story… you would have expected that the ones to come back would have been Jesus’ own people… remember Jesus wasn’t a Christian.... He was a Jew. so it would have stood to reason that the Jews would have come to thank him and the Samaritan would have been the one to stay away…
Instead He caught the Samaritan and the Jews slipped away.
The Cultural Leper
The Cultural Leper
So as I close… lets give a thought to the cultural lepers.
the ones that we see as untouchable.
The ones that we see as unclean.
The ones that we see as sinners
But also the ones
that don’t think the way we do
that don’t act the way we do
or don’t dress or believe exactly as we do
Let’s stop shunning them and subtly and not so subtly letting them know that they don’t belong.
Let’s stop making them feel uncomfortable and pointing them out as different
instead lets show them the same healing love that Jesus showed.
Let’s invite and embrace them.
Let’s show them just how all nations all nations can be.