ONE SURPRISED PRIEST!

A remarkable incident occurs in Luke 17:11-19.

Most who are reading this blog will be somewhat familiar with the vignette; it is the most common text for Thanksgiving!  

Essentially, ten lepers encounter Jesus.  One is a Samaritan while the others are Jews.  Jews look down on Samaritans and consider them less than acceptable.  Samaritans were not even allowed to worship in the temple at Jerusalem!  These men call out to Jesus:  "Jesus, Master, show mercy to us!"  

It's important for us to recognize that these men were completely ostracized from society.  Most lived in leper camps.  Some wandered the country in hope of finding a cure or being healed.  They were not allowed to approach urban areas.  When they encountered others, they had to cup their hands to their mouth and cry out the warning: "Unclean!"  They lived miserable, lonely and humiliated lives!  

However, these men had heard about this Jesus!  Perhaps they had heard that He could heal lepers?  Maybe their lucky day had arrived?  

Upon asking Him for help, He gives them an odd instruction: "Go now and present yourselves to the priests for inspection of your disease." [v.14]

Nine of them left immediately and were cleansed as they went to find the priests.  The tenth stayed in Jesus’ presence continuing to seek his healing before going to find the priest.  This man was never healed from his leprosy because of his lack of obedience.

You're smiling, right?  You know this isn't the way the story went!  Instead, remarkably, the very next words in this story are:  "They went".  Does this surprise you?  What would you have done?  [That's actually a very good question!]

Reading on we find that as they were going, they were suddenly healed of their leprosy!  Imagine the joy as they looked at the clear faces of one another!  Their hands were whole!  Their skin was no longer chaffed and drying.  They must have surely celebrated and clapped their hands - even dancing for joy!  

But that's the last time we see this team of ten together!  Immediately after being healed, one broke away from the band of brothers.  He felt compelled to go back to Jesus and express his gratitude for this miraculous healing!  He fell down at Jesus' feet repeating his thankfulness.  By the way, this one man happened to be the one Samaritan; the least likely to return to Jesus!  

Jesus asked him: "Didn't all ten receive the same healing? Where are the other nine?"  Jesus observes that the one who was truly grateful was a Samaritan.  He tells the man to get up and go his way.  Jesus assures him: "Your faith has saved you."  

It's a wonderful story!  They were all healed, but the Samaritan received something significantly greater!  

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But I'd like to speculate about the nine who ran off to see the priests.  

The priests were apparently authorized to pronounce a person clean from leprosy!  Apparently some occasionally recovered from this dreadful disease and were able to be pronounced clean and return to their families!  How wonderful!  

But surely this priest must have been mystified by the arrival of nine Jewish men who had simultaneously been healed of their leprosy!  Isn't it likely that they stumbled over one another as they tried to report the story of the encounter with Jesus and the odd timing of the healing.  

Had this priest ever had multiple people come to him before claiming to be healed of leprosy?  

My childlike curiosity gets the best of me:

Did he seek out this Jesus to investigate this odd occurrence?

Did he marvel at what had happened?  Or was he too entrenched in the Pharisaic ways to make room for a divine miracle at the hands of a man from Galilee?  

Do you wonder about things like this when you read the scriptures?  

Wouldn't it be nice to have a biblical Paul Harvey to tell us 'the rest of the story' for a lot of these biblical encounters?  

It reminds us of John 21:25 (NIV),

"Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written."

This would be even more true if we knew the ripple effect of all of Jesus' teachings, healings and encounters!