(At Home in Concord, NC)
Hi God. Everything is quiet here now. It’s 10:00pm and Kim has just gone to bed. The TV is off, and the only things I hear are the sound of my own breath and the low “whoosh” of our central air conditioning (for which I am ever so grateful on this hot, humid summer night!). I am sitting here in our great room on our old worn-out sofa… the one that swallows you whole when you sit down due to the sagging springs underneath the cushions – which is why we should probably call it sitting “in” our sofa, not sitting “on” our sofa. Buster is sleeping in one of his favorite spots… just above my left shoulder on top of the sofa cushion.
I have wanted to sit down and write in my journal for several days now, but this is the first time I have actually taken the time to do so. A few days ago, as I was preparing Sunday’s multimedia slides for our guest speaker’s message, one particular phrase from a Bible story he mentioned stood out to me as I read it.
The story, found in the gospel of Luke, is one that I have heard many times – and have even taught on it a few times – throughout my life. It’s the story of Jesus healing the ten lepers. It goes like this (my paraphrase):
Jesus was walking toward Jerusalem when ten lepers yelled out at him from a distance. (They had to do everything from a distance, since they were considered societal outcasts due to their disease.) They called out, “Master, have mercy on us!” Jesus instructed them to go and show themselves to the priests… which they did. As they were on their way, they noticed that they had been healed. One of the ten stopped in his tracks, ran back, knelt at Jesus’ feet, and thanked Him. Jesus asked (rhetorically, of course), “Weren’t there ten of you? Where are the other nine? Stand up and go. Your faith has healed you.”
Now, here is the phrase that jumped out at me – it is a small detail of the story that I had never noticed before now. Luke 17 says:
14 He looked at them and said, “Go show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed of their leprosy.
Did you catch it? The verse says that “… as they went…” they were healed. When they took those first few steps toward the village, they were still lepers… still outcasts… still hopelessly stricken by the AIDS of their day. If a miracle of God hadn’t intervened, they would have looked completely foolish. They no doubt would have caused quite a commotion in the village. They would have been ridiculed, cursed, and screamed at as they made their way through the town on their way to the temple. And in addition to that, they probably would never have made it to the priests at all – the temple guards would have surely lost their jobs if they had let ten diseased lepers anywhere near the priests that day. But they didn’t let their "fears of the worst” deter them. Why? Because they were in a state of total desperation. I mean, what could have been worse than this life they were forced to live? Thrown out of town due to leprosy… even required by law to verbally announce their approach by crying out “Unclean!!” And so this desperation drove them to risk looking foolish – to risk ridicule and embarrassment – if it meant finding a better life than the one in which they were hopelessly trapped.
And “while they were on their way,” so the Bible says, they were healed. In other words, they had to step out in complete faith – even at the risk of looking like complete idiots – before they received their answer from God. I think that Jesus painted a beautiful portrait of the kind of faith that He asks of us – the kind that drives us to simply step out and go where He asks us to go, swallowing our pride and casting aside any worry about “what people might think” or “whom we might offend” or “what if Christ doesn’t come through this time.” It is the kind of faith that says simply (as Jesus said to the one leper who returned to thank Him in verse 19), “Stand up and go.”
This kind of reckless faith is conceived and incubated only in a desperate heart. Like the Prodigal Son, we must come to the end of ourselves… i.e. the death of any naïve notions that we can accomplish anything at all by relying on our own intellect, wiles, and resources. When we realize – like the lepers did – that Christ is our only hope, then we also realize that the path He points us toward is the only path toward true contentment and healing for us. And that drives us to “stand up and go…” even if it doesn’t seem to make sense… even if we can’t see a good outcome ahead… even if we can’t see anything at all.
God, my desperate heart cries out to You. I will go where You are pointing, even when it doesn’t seem to make sense… even when there is a distinct risk of looking completely foolish. I will be Your fool, O God. I would rather be God’s fool than anyone else’s sage.
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