When I reflect on a lectionary passage, I want to shake your world. I want to knock one out of the park. In a way, I’m looking for trouble – inventing, as it were, problems that may not exist. Inconsequential nuances.
Today is no exemption. I find myself painted into a corner. Genuine edification flies out the door, and you’re stuck.
Jesus tells the grateful Samaritan that his faith has saved him. What does “saved” mean here. Is it the same as being cured, because it appears all ten were indeed cured?
- Does it mean that the Samaritan has been released from the grasp sin had over him? Is this by virtue of the gratitude he expresses?
- Does the Samaritan leper discern something about Jesus, so that his return is not so much a matter of gratitude as a matter of worship.
- Are the other nine so shackled by sin, that being cured from leprosy doesn’t really afford them the awakening that only one of the lepers seem able to manifest? Or are they just boring?
At first glance, it seems the Samaritan failed to show himself to the priests, as Jesus commanded, that the Father might be glorified.
But there was a greater purpose at hand. A purpose about which even Jesus himself may have been unaware. Jesus’ question may not have been one to merely highlight one man’s gratitude.
Rather, it may have been that Jesus needed to gauge the action of the Holy Spirit within the Samaritan leper against the others.
In the walk of Faith, discernment is very important for each of us, too. But in order for us to be sensitive to those special moments of God, we have to practice our discernment in our every-day world; we can’t sully or abdicate our daily decision making in favor of the pundits, religious or secular.
Further, we can’t expect that, like the Samaritan leper, people in our presence rarely know why they are before us, face-to-face, so we can’t expect them to fully understand their plight or their needs.
Sometimes we have to just get comfortable with each others’ presences, to look beyond what might seem to be a moment ripe for confrontation.
Most of the time we think our pithy insights are important, (or even accurate, for that matter.) We think the world may be indeed seem straining for our wisdom. Usually, however, their greatest need is fellowship.
An assurance they’re not alone, and that they stepped away from the crowd for the right reason. And most of all, that you and I will be there for them, even if we, too, are still working things out.
