Modern Lepers
Leprosy - an age-old disease caused by bacteria, still around today, which causes skin lesions, nerve damage, and issues with eyes and respiration. Modern Multiple Drug Therapy (MDT) can treat and cure the disease; in ancient times lepers were outcast from their communities in an effort to nullify the contagion. While there are over 200,000 newly diagnosed cases of leprosy yearly around the world, more often today "lepers" and "leprosy" are used as a metaphor for people who are cast out, excluded, on the fringe of society and local communities.
On Sunday, we will hear the story of Jesus healing ten lepers. After he gave them instructions of how to be made well, one of the ten, identified as an outsider, a Samaritan, turned around and gave thanks to Jesus. This is not to say that the others were not thankful, too, only they were not specifically mentioned in this story. The important part of the story is the instructions that Jesus gave to the ten: "Go and show yourselves to the priest." Jesus does not tell the lepers to change anything about who they are, how they present themselves to Jesus. He simply says that these people, as they currently are, are restored in spiritual cleanliness enough to go before the priest. How would you feel if you had spent years excluded from everyone you love, and at just a few simple words from Jesus, you are restored? While townsfolk, family, and the religious elite debate over words of cleanliness and worth, Jesus accepts these ten lepers as they are, warts, lesions and all. "As they are" is worthy of God's love and acceptance.
We can become so caught up in debates over words, words of worth and worthiness, categorizing groups of people as good or bad, that we lose the true measure of worth - that God loves all, as we are. If we believe that God formed us, knew us before we existed on earth, that God made us whole and complete as we are, even when we do not conform to human labels, that we are each made in the image of God, then we are approved by God. In the words of 2 Timothy 2:14, "Wrangling over words does no good but only ruins those who are listening." In other words, as we, as believing members of faith, fight over what characteristics make a person worthy to participate and what traits are beyond the love of God, curious folks who do not consider themselves believers hear the message that God's all-inclusive love is not as all-inclusive as advertised.
~Rev. Andrea Joy Holroyd
