Be Cleansed, Be Healed

Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!”

When he saw them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed. One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him – and he was a Samaritan.

Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him,“Rise and go; your faith has made you well.” Luke 17:11–19

My friends, let me ask you. If you were one of the ten lepers, how would you feel if God said to you, “Be cleansed!” – and then you were cleansed. What if you were freed from sin and shame and felt new life within you. Would you rejoice? Or would you be ashamed? Would you deny God the chance to say to you, “Be healed from your suffering”? Would you refuse to let him make you well? And now I ask what if I, or someone else, were to say such things to you? Would you answer, “That’s impossible, how can anyone hope in these kinds of things?”

Help from God is being given more often than we care to admit. But too many of us belong to the nine lepers, we are not the Samaritan who returned to praise God. We see things, even miraculous signs, but do not give God the honor. We hear things and still do not fall on our knees. We are too self-sufficient to say, “Lord, my God and Savior, you alone can help us.”

Do you realize that Jesus can actually be right among us and at the same time be quietly pushed off to the side? We can experience something inwardly, even healing, and be joyful about it, but then we put it in our pockets and think no more about it. There seems to be something human in us that always fancies itself to be great and wise. And then the very thing we long for gets struck out of our hands.

We drop just the thing we thirst for, out of fear of some human opinion or reaction. We might accept the Savior as the one who helps, but we’re afraid to mention his name and remain silent.

If we do not have the courage to witness to what Jesus can do, then we can go to church as much as we like and have all the correct beliefs, but we will remain obstacles to God’s work on earth. We can go on talking about the Savior as long as we like, but what good is it if he is not honored? We can be healed and yet die and perish in our sins. Only when we praise God before men will God enter our world. Then, like the Samaritan, it can be said that our faith has made us well.

Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt