A frog and a scorpion are standing next to a river that is swollen to well above the flooding stage. Ordinarily, the two are predator and prey. But this is a different situation. Their natural habitat is covered with water and their survival takes precedence.
So the scorpion says to the frog, "Hey frog, let's forget about the past. I want to be your friend."
"Right," says the frog, "you're just going to turn into this lovable little fuzzball and we're going to be best buddies."
Scorpion says, "Now frog, you're not giving me a chance. But if you swim across the water and let me hitch a ride on your back, then I'll get my fellow scorpions to move frogs onto the endangered species list, and you frogs won't have to be constantly looking over your shoulder."
The frog looks at the scorpion with this look of incredulity and says, "Are you nuts? Did you forget that you're a scorpion? We'll got out in the middle of the water and you'll sting me."
The scorpion says, "Now frog, examine what you're saying. Your logic is flawed. If we get out in the middle of the water and I sting you, then we're BOTH going to die. Why would I do something that would bring my own demise? Listen, do this and I will forever be grateful."
So the frog agrees. He hops in the water, the scorpion climbs on his back, and they make their way across, all the while discussing this proposed peace treaty. Just when the frog is getting to think, "Hey, maybe this guy's not so bad after all," he feels a sharp jab. He turns his head far enough to see that the scorpion HAS indeed stung him. He starts to experience a rapidly encroaching paralysis. And as they are both about to sink to their deaths, the frog looks at the scorpion and says, "Now why did you do THAT?"
To which the scorpion says, "I couldn't help it: it's my NATURE." To which the frog says, "Well, you sure have a funny way of demonstrating gratitude."
Sometimes I think it's in a human being's nature to take things for granted, to overlook the obvious, and to fail to see the beauty even in the most mundane things. Sometimes I think it's in a human being's nature to look gift horses in the mouth, and to not be thankful for the surprising fits of joy that seem to come our way from the least likely of places.
One day Jesus is on His way to Jerusalem and takes a route between Samaria and Galilee. He's walking along, when ten lepers stand a ways off, yelling at the top of their voices, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us! Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!"
Leprosy was a disease caused by contact with a fungus that attacks the nervous system. The hands and feet ulcerate. The muscles waste away. The tendons contract. Then comes the progressive loss of fingers. Sometimes, because there is so much dead tissue on the affected areas, an entire hand or foot would simply fall off. Now, if all these physical characteristics of leprosy weren't bad enough, something made it even more horrific: lepers were treated like dead people. The minute a person was diagnosed as having leprosy, he was completely banished from society.
If he had a wife, he could never touch her again.
If he had children, he could never hold them again.
The Rabbi was called and a funeral service was held for the victim.
After that, the leper wasn't allowed in any city with walls. He went about with his clothing torn. He couldn't come closer than 10 feet to anyone. Whenever he came to a village, he would have to cover his upper lip and someone would walk in front of him yelling, "unclean, unclean, unclean." He could not be greeted in public. He could not be touched. He lived a living death.
It was awful being a leper. And about the only thing worse than being a Jewish leper was being a Samaritan leper.
In today's passage, we see what kind of people are standing off at a distance and crying, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" Ten people who are desperately in search of something for which to be grateful. And one of them is a Samaritan.
When I was a kid, we lived in a neighborhood on the edge of town. Just over the hill was a "holler" where a bunch of real hillbillies lived in shacks with old Chevy pickup trucks and washing machines rusting in the front yards. They burned trash in barrels, never cut their grass, and chickens ran around their houses. The kids only wore shoes went it snowed.
There was one family there who, to the rest of us, were untouchable. They were dirty and smelled like cigarettes, beer and kerosene. Their hair was always greasy. They were always getting in fights. It was said that to even touch one of them meant that you would come down with tuberculosis. They were looked down on and spat on and razzed and ridiculed and despised.
The Samaritans were the first century equivalent of that family, a race of people Half-Jew, half Assyrian, and a hybrid religion of Judaism and paganism.
The Gentiles hated these people because they weren't pure Gentile. The Jews despised these people because they had intermarried with pagans. And so it was that the Samaritans were universally hated by everyone.
The Samaritans were the lepers of their day. And about the only thing worse that a regular leper was a Samaritan leper, doubly untouchable, double scorned and ridiculed, doubly despised, doubly feared, and because of those things, probably doubly double doubly in need of grace and mercy. Doubly double doubly in need of someone to touch them, doubly double doubly in need of someone to relate to where they've been and who they are.
I remember one time my friend Jeff, who was a fellow Presbyterian minister in Washington, PA, had to be away for a few days. We had this reciprocal agreement where, when either of us had to be away, the other would cover for him in case any parishioners needed pastoral care.
So I am at the hospital visiting one of his parishioners, a gentleman not much older than myself, who has had a heart attack. And he tells me what led up to his heart attack, the stress, the family problems, and then what had precipitated his cardiac arrest: he and his wife had lost their four-week old son to SIDS, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. I suppose I was like anyone in that kind of situation. I wanted to SAY something that might help. So I say to him, "Wow! I know how you feel."
And at this, he sat up in his hospital bed and looked at me and said, "You mean YOU lost a baby to SIDS?"
And I said, "No, I can only imagine what it feels like."
And he looked at me with a look that was both kind and like I was the biggest pig in the world. "Reverend," he said with no shortage of exasperation, "with all due respect, you DON'T know how I feel, and you'll never know unless you ever have to pick up the body of your dead infant son and hand him over to paramedics.
"Needless to say, I've been a little more careful in my choice of words since that day. But the fact remains: no one knows what someone else is going through unless they've been there.
These lepers are desperately in need of touching someone who's been there. These lepers are desperately in need of being touched by someone who's been there. These lepers are desperately in need of someone who is the same yet different, who knows what it's like to be separated and cut off and feared and hated. There is, within their sights, one who fits that description perfectly: the Lord Jesus Christ.
Ten lepers, nine of whom are Jewish, one of whom is Gentile. Ten men, probably all from every different economic and social backgrounds. Ten lepers who used to notice these differences a lot more than they notice them now.
Have you ever seen television footage of a flood taking place in a remote area or a nature preserve? In these situations, you will see all kinds of animals huddled together, literally helping each other keep their heads above water. You will see animals that are natural-born enemies, who ordinarily would be chasing and clawing each other, maiming and killing each other. Yet here you will see them getting together, overlooking their differences with only one thing in mind: survival.
That's one of the most wonderful things about Jesus. He looks at these ten lepers yelling for mercy and doesn't see Jew and Gentile and Samaritan. He doesn't see Fundamentalist and mainline; He doesn't see Methodist and Baptist and Presbyterian and Lutheran. He doesn't see Christian and Jew and Muslim. He only sees ten sick people in need of mercy.
Of all the times I've studied and contemplated this passage, one thing has always struck me, and it's how Jesus deals with the situation. When Jesus healed, He didn't have a boilerplate way of setting people free of their disease. It wasn't a one-size-fits-all approach to how it was done. With some, He would lay His hands on the person. One at least one occasion, He made a paste of mud and rubbed it on the eyes of a blind man. On at least one occasion, He spit on His forefingers and then placed them into the ear canals of a deaf man. Sometimes, He would mere speak the words and it was done.
I've often wondered why Jesus didn't physically touch these ten lepers. These men, so deprived of human contact, separated from touching and being touched by people who loved them, why didn't He touch them?
Some would say that He didn't because He was simply following the Law prescribed in dealing with lepers. Some would say that Jesus would have been considered a leper Himself if He had touched them, and that no one would want to receive the ministry of a leper.
Only Jesus knows the exact reasons for what He did and how He did it, but one of the things that come to mind is my exposure to kids who have a form of developmental disability like autism or Asperger's disorder. These kids have a neurological disorder that affects the functioning of the brain in areas like social interaction and communication skills. One of the defining characteristics of these disorders is that the kids do not like to be touched. Even if a parent or loved one comes near, there has to be something along the lines of negotiating a nuclear arms treaty just to get them to bed or take them to the doctor. And I can't help but think that something similar to this was going on with these lepers, that they had not felt sensation for so long, that even getting near them may have caused them to run away.
But that's one of the wonderful things about Jesus: He deals with each one in individualistic ways; He knows the form of treatment and the best means of delivery for every situation. And for this particular situation, with a crowd of people around excited on the one hand about seeing Jesus and scared to death on the other hand about the presence of lepers, all He does is say, "Go and show yourselves to the priests."
So ten lepers begin to walk. And as they do, these strangely wonderful things begin to happen. The legs gain strength. The spots on their skin begin change and to fade away completely. The eyes begin to experience normal vision. They no longer look like creatures from the zoo: they are beginning to look like human beings. And as all these things are happening, they all begin to leap and run and shout. Nine of them are running helter-skelter to the nearest temple when one of the lepers stops dead in his tracks.
He smiles. He turns around. No longer is someone out in front of him shouting "unclean, unclean." He runs back, falls down on his face in front of Jesus and thanks Him.
Now, I want you to think about this for a minute. Perhaps I'm the only one who's like this; I don't know. But let's say that you are on 494 or 694 or the Dan Ryan Expressway, one of these freeways in Minneapolis or Chicago or some major city. The traffic is creeping along; you're in the right hand lane and see some guy up ahead on an entrance ramp that has been trying to get on the freeway for the past fifteen minutes. So you, being the nice guy that you are, motion that he can get on. You let him in. You feel so good about yourself. And when the guy pulls onto the freeway you don't get as much as a wave, much less a lip-reading session of "thank you." How do you feel? If you're like me, you're probably a little miffed and say, "Well Thank YOU, Mr. Grateful."
So let's say the same thing happens a few minutes later, then a few minutes after that, then again and again and again, all with the same results. And by the time you get onto 94 heading west and the traffic has thinned from 90-weight gear oil down to the consistency of a thick porridge, you've let ten cars onto the freeway and only ONE single guy had the courtesy to give you a wave. How do you feel?
Can you see how Jesus may have felt? He's healed ten men. He's completely restored the health of ten men. He's unsealed the death sentence for ten men. He has restored ten men back to the wives and their children and their community. He's given ten men back their lives and healed them from this excruciatingly painful disease, and only ONE of them comes back.
He says, "I healed TEN of them, and only ONE comes back to express his gratitude? And would you look at the one who did return: it's a Samaritan. The outcast, the hated, the feared, the marginalized of marginalized; it's the Turley kid who comes back to thank me."
He then looks at the Samaritan former leper. Jesus has taken away the spots of his disease; Jesus has taken away the spot of his social isolation; Jesus has taken away the spot of his lingering, living death and completely restored him. And He says, "Go your way. Your faith has made you well. Yes, by faith a leper CAN change his spots."
I don't know about you, but whenever I read this story, I realize I have so much for which to be grateful.
I'm grateful for my family, that I'm not cut off from my wife and my kids, that no disease or condition forbids me from hugging my daughters; nothing can stop me from assaulting the kissy cheeks of my grandkids.
I'm thankful for my church family, that even my sinfulness doesn't cut me off from them, or theirs from me.
I keep mulling how those lepers had each other, how their disease made them depend on one another. I can't help but somehow pray that Christians everywhere would put aside all this pretentiousness we have, that we begin to realize that the church is not a monument to these fake lives we portray around each other. I can't help but pray that we could really see that we are all sick people in need one another.
We have a disease that makes us odious in the sight of God. It is called sin. It eats away at you and me because we're all carriers and is in varying degrees of decay. And I am so thankful that Jesus took that sin upon Himself. He took that disease upon Himself so that now I am no longer unclean before God. 2nd Corinthians 5:21 tells us "He made Him who knew no sin to become sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." Christ became our leper. Christ took the spot that is sin upon Himself. "O death, where is thy sting?" He beat the scorpion at his own game.
© Rev. Duane Brown, 2005 e-mail Rev. Brown