Luke 17: ESV
Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan.Then Jesus answered, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” And he said to him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”

We had a bible study in church the other day and yours truly was spaced out as usual and dreaming about speaking at TED. Through my haze of pleasant clouds somehow some parts of this passage caught my attention.

The story is; Jesus was walking along minding Gods business one day when ten lepers find him and beg him to heal him, and heal he does, and asks them to go show themselves to the priest. One of these chaps instead of running to the priest comes back to thank Jesus, and that’s the main lesson of this story.

Jesus, to put it mildly, was rather weird. He was God and he was man, the creator and the created in one hominid package. He was weird because he was the only human being on the planet at that time who really understood all the “whys” of God. This is one of the reasons I guess a lot of people never really understood what he meant even if they obeyed what he said. This passage has such an all too familiar group, ten guys who have been miraculously healed, ebullient and obedient running to declare themselves restored into society, just as Jesus asked them to. Only one of them, the only one unschooled in the ways of Jehovah really understands what this man-god wanted.

The purpose of his healing was not just his restoration to normalcy or glory, but to realize that the most important thing is to glorify God. This leper disobeyed Christ and in doing so was healed wholly. He came back to worship because he understood that the god who heals is much more important than the priest who declares you healed.

Ciao

Schizo

The marvelous painting is by Brian Kershisnik