Wednesday, January 27

Luke 17:11-19

Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled 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!”

A number of years ago I received a call from a ministry volunteer at FBCG who told me that a man had come to the East Campus during our Wednesday evening children’s ministry program and was behaving in a very agitated way. I drove to the church as quickly as I could and found the man pacing back and forth in the lobby – obvious very distraught. I convinced him to follow me back into my office so we could talk and so that he would not frighten the children or others who were in the building. I discovered that he was the estranged father of one of the children in the ministry and was going through a difficult divorce. As I asked him questions, I also discovered he was a Vietnam veteran who struggled at times with post-traumatic stress disorder. Eventually, after more than an hour, he calmed down and began to talk about his life. He told me that, at age 19, he had done and seen things in Vietnam that still haunted him today. When I talked about the love, forgiveness and healing of Christ, he said, “But you don’t know what I’ve done, man. You just don’t know what I’ve done.”

To be a leper in Jesus’ day meant to be beyond the reach of God’s grace, healing and presence. Leprosy was seen as both incurable and as a kind of divine curse. Lepers were forced to live apart from the community and prohibited from worshiping in the Temple. Once diagnosed by the priests, lepers were doomed to live the remainder of their lives as outcasts, separated from both loved ones and God.

I think in some way we all know what it is like to be a leper. While few of us suffer that kind of physical disease or social ostracism, we do know what it is to feel shame, to fear rejection, and to feel a separation from God due to our own sinfulness. Deep down, we all have a need for forgiveness and grace than we can provide for ourselves. 

None other than the Apostle Paul himself, one of the greatest followers of Christ the world has ever known, wrote this of himself:

I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature…For what I do is not the good that I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing…What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? (Romans 7:18-24, selected)

Can you identify with the cry of Paul’s heart? I think all of us, if we are honest, know what it is to wrestle with sin and selfishness at the very heart of who we are. And therefore, with Paul, we can echo his cry of gratitude:

Thanks be to God – through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:25)

Just as Jesus was the one who cleansed the ten lepers from their disease, he is the one who cleanses us from our sin and shame. May we give him thanks and praise!

Pastor Brian Coffey