Your home away from home
Commentary
Object:
Imagine yourself in a ship out on the high seas. It stands to reason that you would want smooth sailing for that ship. You'd want everything about the vessel to be sound and secure, to function properly and fare well.
But what if you were on the boat involuntarily? What if it were one of the infamous eighteenth-century slave ships? Could you possibly pray for the welfare of such a despicable voyage?
Despicable or not, if you're on board, you pray for smooth sailing. And such was the logic of God's word to the exiles of Jeremiah's day.
"Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile," he told them, "and pray to the Lord on its behalf."
The natural instinct for the exiles, of course, might be to resent that city. It was the home to their conquerors, after all. It represents the opponent who attacked and overwhelmed your own homeland. This new city embodies the antagonist that destroyed your old city. It is enemy territory. How do you pray for its welfare?
Yes, but it is the ship in which you are now sailing. "In its welfare," the Lord explains, "you will find your welfare."
Of course, the Babylonian exile and eighteenth-century slave ships all seem pretty far removed from our congregations and their experience. Yet, on second thought, it may be that they are quite useful and instructive metaphors for precisely our experience.
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
This excerpt from Jeremiah's message is a departure from the typical context of his ministry.
Typically, Jeremiah is right in the midst of his audience. Indeed, that is part of the pain of Jeremiah's life and experience: that he is one of them. He lives among the people who are chronically sinful and unresponsive to God's word. He lives among the people who have the bull's-eye of divine judgment painted on them. He lives among the people who are threatened, attacked, and conquered by a foreign empire. And he lives among the people who are panicking and fleeing the ensuing chaos.
The salt in the wound for Jeremiah, meanwhile, is that this solidarity is a one-way street. He identifies with the people and their suffering; yet they do not identify with him. He is rejected because of his message and persecuted for his faithfulness to his unhappy calling.
In this particular instance, however, Jeremiah gets to do ministry at a distance. His audience for this particular word from the Lord is not the people among whom he lives. Rather, they are the Jewish exiles in Babylon, to whom God instructs Jeremiah to write a letter.
Now if the text were incomplete, what would we expect it to say? If all ancient copies included verses 1-4, but verses 5-7 were lost, what would we imagine to be the missing content? What would we suppose to be God's word to the exiles?
One natural guess would be a kind of I-told-you-so message. After all, for chapters of Jeremiah's book -- and decades of prophetic proclamations -- the Lord had warned the people about what was ahead for them. In vivid language, the unwelcome messengers of God had cautioned the citizens of Judah and Jerusalem about the judgment to come. It would be understandable, therefore, if the message to those who were the living proof of those predictions was a callous reminder that they had been warned.
Alternatively, we might expect the sort of turn that we witness as we turn the page from Isaiah 39 to Isaiah 40. The judgment having come, now we expect to hear God's word of comfort. And, as part and parcel of that comfort, his promise of deliverance. How soon do we get to come home? How soon will the way be made straight in the wilderness?
Neither natural expectation is realized by Jeremiah's letter, however. The tone is not the kick-them-while-they're-down effect of a recitation of the previous warnings. But neither is there a promise of imminent deliverance. Instead, Jeremiah relays to the people God's surprising counsel for the exiles to make themselves at home.
At first blush, this is almost incomprehensible to us. We live with such a strong sense of national security that, even if we fear certain kinds of attacks, none of us seriously entertains the possibility of being completely overrun in our own land and being forcibly captured and exiled to some foreign country. Yet, this was exactly the personal misery and national tragedy of the people to whom Jeremiah wrote. And to those suffering souls, what did the Lord say?
He said that they should make themselves at home. In a foreign and hostile place, in that new and involuntary location, in a land where it seemed unimaginable to sing the songs of Zion (Psalm 137:3-4), that's where the Lord said that they should plant their roots and get on with life.
God's specific instructions are a portrait of the ordinary. "Build houses and live in them," he counsels the exiles. Do your gardening, your marrying, and your child-rearing there in that place.
We recall the instructions God gave one night to their ancestors who lived involuntarily in a foreign land. To Moses' generation in Egypt, God gave instructions for a hurried meal. Don't take time for the bread to rise, eat with your coats on, have your walking stick in hand -- you're about to leave! Such was the spirit of the first Passover.
In dramatic contrast, however, God's instructions to these exiles in Babylon are not filled with images of haste, but rather images of permanence. To build a house and plant a garden is to stay a while. To get married and have children is to make yourself at home. Then, as what must have seemed like the final indignity, the exiles were told to "seek the welfare" and pray for the place that was their de facto prison.
The context of this message is not typical for Jeremiah, and the content of this message is not what we -- or its original audience -- might have expected. But we will discover that it is a message that speaks to us, as well.
2 Timothy 2:8-15
For those who hold to Pauline authorship of 2 Timothy, this epistle is widely cherished as one of the apostle's most personal and emotional. Timothy was a long-time associate of Paul, a spiritual son to him, and a companion and coworker over many miles and years. It is natural, therefore, for Paul to be personal -- and even vulnerable -- in his writing to Timothy. Furthermore, many regard this as perhaps the latest of Paul's letters, written at a time when the apostle knew that the end was at hand for him. That context, made especially poignant by the famous "come before winter" imploration (4:21), gives this letter a special quality, indeed.
Paul begins with the verb "remember" in the imperative mood. Remembering has a distinctive flavor in scripture. It rises above mere recollection, or even the sweetness of reminiscing. To remember something or someone is to take appropriate action in response to that something or someone (see, for example, Genesis 8:1, 30:22; Exodus 20:8; Luke 22:19). Furthermore, students of the Old Testament are likely to think first of the book of Deuteronomy when hearing a command to remember. Seven different times in that book, Moses commands the people to remember. (And that is in addition to the six times he commands them not to forget!) So it is that the second letter to Timothy may share a certain tone in common with Deuteronomy -- parental concern and a spiritual emphasis, expressed with a touch of farewell.
The bittersweet quality of the letter comes through again in Paul's reference to his condition. He suffers hardships, and he finds himself "chained like a criminal." We are well-accustomed to the image of Paul as a prisoner; it's a familiar part of his biography. But I wonder if he ever became accustomed to it. He was, after all, the very essence of law-abiding (see Philippians 3:5-6). What a strange experience it must have been for him, therefore, to find himself treated again and again like an outlaw. He was a man who should have been acquainted with the synagogues and schools, the leaders and the thinkers in each town where he traveled; not the police and the prisons in each town.
His spirit was not crushed, though, for he was still able to see and to affirm that "the word of God is not chained." The myopia that is native to our human ego tempts us to think that when we are personally hindered, the important work we do is also hindered. Paul was humble and faithful enough, however, to see that the work of God could go on without him. Indeed, that is very much a part of his reason for writing to Timothy -- to help guarantee that the work would continue in and through Timothy.
Meanwhile, just as Paul exhorted Timothy to do some remembering, the apostle also called upon him to do some reminding. Evidently there were members of the congregation for which Timothy was responsible who were "wrangling over words." Some circumstances of the New Testament churches -- for example, eating meat offered to idols -- can seem pretty far removed from our day and require some translation in order to apply to our situation. The circumstance of Christians wrangling over words, however, requires no imagination and no translation. Paul's observation about such behavior is a right rebuke: It "does no good but only ruins those who are listening." Have we ever seen that happen?
Luke 17:11-19
Luke, who is the most careful of the gospel writers about details of geography, reports that Jesus entered the region between Galilee and Samaria. This was a small enough buffer zone that it didn't even merit a name of its own. Yet the small geographical detail contains two points of significance for us.
First, it shows us that Jesus is moving south. In truth, he began pointing south -- that is, toward Jerusalem -- ever since he first revealed to his disciples who he was and what would happen to him (Luke 9:20-22). And so the Galilean phase of his ministry wanes as Jerusalem -- and the cross -- becomes his resolute destination.
Second, this seeming no-man's land between predominantly Jewish Galilee and the region of the hated Samaritans becomes a geographical metaphor for a human reality. At the end of the story of this healing, we discover that the one manifestly grateful leper was a Samaritan. The implication of the text is surely that they were not all Samaritans. And that means that this group of lepers was likely a combination of Jews and Samaritans.
That scene has a certain poignant sort of beauty to it.
We are familiar with the centuries-old animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans. John's gospel, for example, reveals that a Jew customarily would not share cups, plates, or utensils with a Samaritan (John 4:9). And Jesus' own disciples may betray their ethnic prejudice when they seem eager to see an unresponsive Samaritan town destroyed (Luke 9:52-55), while there is no record of any corresponding indignation over any unresponsive Jewish town.
Yet, for all the bad blood between Jews and Samaritans, these lepers had found common cause with one another. If they had all been healthy and whole, they probably would have turned up their noses at one another. But now that their respective societies had rejected them, they found acceptance with one another. They say that misery loves company. In this story, misery had brought together even a Hatfield and a McCoy.
Equally poignant is the image of these ten lepers "keeping their distance" from Jesus. This was common courtesy, of course, as well as social necessity. Yet it also paints a picture that goes beyond the confines of ancient cultures' apprehensions about communicable diseases. It also paints a picture of a certain sort of soul, which we will consider at greater length below.
Jesus' instruction for these men to go and show themselves to the priests was in keeping with the regulations of the Mosaic Law (see Leviticus 13:1-46). It was the priests who examined and diagnosed. The priests determined and announced that a person was clean or unclean.
Of course, these men had almost certainly undergone the prescribed series of examinations, and they had already known the horror of being declared unclean. Furthermore, since Luke reports that it was only "as they went" that "they were made clean," there was no obvious reason for going -- apart from Jesus' instruction to do so, that is. At first glance, therefore, they could only have surmised that a trip to the priest would just yield the same, terrible verdict as before. In this respect, their obedience recalls the episode in which the disciples cast their nets into the sea again at Jesus' command, even though their immediately prior experience suggested that the effort would be futile (Luke 5:4-5).
Jesus' adherence to the Levitical law is interesting. The Pharisees' constant haranguing of Jesus for one thing or another might leave us with the impression that Jesus was casual about the Old Testament law. His words tell us quite the opposite (Matthew 5:17-19); yet we may let the Pharisees' critique color our impression of him. Still, the one who was determined to "fulfill all righteousness" (Matthew 3:15) instructed these lepers to go and show themselves to the priests, according to the requirements of the law.
Was such an exercise of legalism necessary for their healing? Couldn't Jesus have healed these men apart from the examination of the priests? Certainly. Indeed, the story indicates that they were healed long before arriving in the priests' presence. But Jesus was the living fulfillment of the law. Of course, these erstwhile outcasts could not be welcomed back into ordinary society apart from receiving, literally, a clean bill of health from the priests.
Finally, we observe the interesting timing of the healing. It occurs neither when the men have their contact with Jesus, nor when they meet with the priests. Rather, it occurs "as they went," which may be a sermon in itself. When it happened, one of the ten returned to Jesus to thank him.
Both Luke and Jesus take pains to note that this lone expression of gratitude came from a non-Jew. Jesus calls him a foreigner, and Luke specifically identifies him as a Samaritan. We are reminded, in this regard, that the two people whom Jesus identified as having great faith were also foreigners (Matthew 8:5-11; 15:21-28). We recall that the one Israelite in the book of Jonah (i.e., Jonah himself) is the most disappointing character, while both the pagan sailors and the foreign Ninevites were exemplary in their response to God. What a shame when God's own people are the ones who are least responsive to him!
Application
We considered above the emotional challenge that was posed to the Jewish recipients of Jeremiah's instructions from God. They were told to make themselves at home in the land of their exile, to live happily ever after in enemy territory, and to pray for the welfare of their conquerors. It all seems quite impossible.
It also seems quite far removed from us. Even though it may be an interesting exercise to try to climb into their shoes and imagine their experiences and emotions, what does their circumstance have to do with us, so many thousands of miles and years removed?
Just this: You and I live in enemy territory, too.
The issue for us is no longer a matter of nations. I am not suggesting that the nation in which we live is our enemy. Rather, I am recognizing that the world in which we live is antagonistic to God and it is the domain of his enemy.
All the kingdom talk of the New Testament -- combined with our own observation that this world does not reflect the perfect reign of God -- tells us that earth is occupied territory. It was created by God, to be sure, but the kingdoms of the world have become the property of God's enemy; hence they are his to offer (see Matthew 4:8-9). Peter says that we are "aliens and strangers in the world" (1 Peter 1:1; 2:11), and Jesus was candid with his disciples that the world would hate them because they do not belong to it (John 15:18-19).
Given our location behind enemy lines, then, what should our posture and policy be? Shall we chafe at the world and resent our current address? Shall we curse the place where our enemy reigns? Shall we look for our escape?
Evidently not. Jesus' followers cannot abandon the world, for we have a saving function here -- "salt of the earth" and "light of the world" (Matthew 5:13-16). Perhaps, therefore, God's word to us is the same as his word to the exiles of Jeremiah's day. "Settle in for a long stay," he might tell us, "and pray for the welfare of the place." We're in it for the long haul, because he has a purpose for us here.
Alternative Application
Luke 17:11-19. "Keeping our Distance." We noted above one of the poignant details of Luke's account of the healing of the ten lepers. "Keeping their distance," Luke reports, "they called out, saying, 'Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!' "
See how torn they were. Jesus' reputation, and their resulting faith in him, had stirred up a hope. Perhaps the incurable could be cured by him. Perhaps he could help the helpless. Yet, how could they come to him for help? They were forbidden -- by custom, by law, by courtesy, and by fear -- to get close to anyone. And so they called out to Jesus, but from a distance.
I wonder how many, many people keep their distance from Jesus because they know that they are unclean. Peter was no leper, yet he was so uncomfortable with his own sinfulness that he wanted the Lord to go away from him (Luke 5:8). And I imagine that, on any given Sunday, we have some folks in our pews who feel necessarily at a distance from the Lord. Still, like these lepers, they call out to him from a distance for help.
The problem is that the distance is not necessary. Our disease will not infect him. Our filth will not soil him. And our condition will not repulse him.
The eighteenth-century British preacher and hymn writer, Joseph Hart, could see the souls who keep their distance. And he exhorted them: "Let not conscience make you linger, nor of fitness fondly dream; all the fitness he requireth is to feel your need of him." And, even more directly, he sang, "If you tarry till you're better, you will never come at all."
That may be just the word some frightened, unclean soul in your pews will need to hear this week.
Preaching the Psalms
Schuyler Rhodes
Psalm 66:1-12
After spending a lifetime in church, this pastor is only beginning to understand what it means to make a joyful noise to God. For years, it was the starched robes and four part harmonies of the choir harmonizing devoutly from the chancel. Sometimes it was the congregation singing, "How Great Thou Art." Sometimes it was even the laughter of children in Vacation Bible School. But always, over time, such noises were organized, controlled, and aimed at the creation of a good and stable church environment.
Then came the mission trip to a war torn country in Central America. The evil that humanity is capable of perpetrating was on graphic display in this place. Schools and hospitals were routinely burned and bombed to be sure that no advancement was made in the community. Atrocities were common, and a generation of children grew up carrying rifles instead of school books. Yet in the midst of this living horror, people came together to praise God. In the midst of destruction and death, people entered bombed out churches and gave their hearts without reservation to God! The noise was thunderous and chaotic. It was primal and full of power. And it was not particularly organized.
Making a joyful noise to God is about joy in the face of a joyless world. It's also about the noise. Be it the shouting of a people who know God up close in their suffering, or the urban beat of hip-hop youth discovering God in new and unfamiliar ways, the noise matters. The discomforting truth of this is that noise disturbs. It interrupts quiet contemplation, and it startles people out of serious prayer. Noise rips us from our meditation and presses our faces up against a world that needs God; a world that longs for the voices with which we give God praise. This world needs God's love and healing, and it needs our noisy, joyful praise as we stand ebullient for God's wholeness and justice.
So one has to ask about the joyful noise level within our faith communities: How noisy is it in your church? How truly joyful is the praise? Asking these questions of ourselves is a reality check we all need to make. Because there is no doubt that the psalmist's demand comes to us as it has to so many. "Make a joyful noise to God!"
But what if you were on the boat involuntarily? What if it were one of the infamous eighteenth-century slave ships? Could you possibly pray for the welfare of such a despicable voyage?
Despicable or not, if you're on board, you pray for smooth sailing. And such was the logic of God's word to the exiles of Jeremiah's day.
"Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile," he told them, "and pray to the Lord on its behalf."
The natural instinct for the exiles, of course, might be to resent that city. It was the home to their conquerors, after all. It represents the opponent who attacked and overwhelmed your own homeland. This new city embodies the antagonist that destroyed your old city. It is enemy territory. How do you pray for its welfare?
Yes, but it is the ship in which you are now sailing. "In its welfare," the Lord explains, "you will find your welfare."
Of course, the Babylonian exile and eighteenth-century slave ships all seem pretty far removed from our congregations and their experience. Yet, on second thought, it may be that they are quite useful and instructive metaphors for precisely our experience.
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
This excerpt from Jeremiah's message is a departure from the typical context of his ministry.
Typically, Jeremiah is right in the midst of his audience. Indeed, that is part of the pain of Jeremiah's life and experience: that he is one of them. He lives among the people who are chronically sinful and unresponsive to God's word. He lives among the people who have the bull's-eye of divine judgment painted on them. He lives among the people who are threatened, attacked, and conquered by a foreign empire. And he lives among the people who are panicking and fleeing the ensuing chaos.
The salt in the wound for Jeremiah, meanwhile, is that this solidarity is a one-way street. He identifies with the people and their suffering; yet they do not identify with him. He is rejected because of his message and persecuted for his faithfulness to his unhappy calling.
In this particular instance, however, Jeremiah gets to do ministry at a distance. His audience for this particular word from the Lord is not the people among whom he lives. Rather, they are the Jewish exiles in Babylon, to whom God instructs Jeremiah to write a letter.
Now if the text were incomplete, what would we expect it to say? If all ancient copies included verses 1-4, but verses 5-7 were lost, what would we imagine to be the missing content? What would we suppose to be God's word to the exiles?
One natural guess would be a kind of I-told-you-so message. After all, for chapters of Jeremiah's book -- and decades of prophetic proclamations -- the Lord had warned the people about what was ahead for them. In vivid language, the unwelcome messengers of God had cautioned the citizens of Judah and Jerusalem about the judgment to come. It would be understandable, therefore, if the message to those who were the living proof of those predictions was a callous reminder that they had been warned.
Alternatively, we might expect the sort of turn that we witness as we turn the page from Isaiah 39 to Isaiah 40. The judgment having come, now we expect to hear God's word of comfort. And, as part and parcel of that comfort, his promise of deliverance. How soon do we get to come home? How soon will the way be made straight in the wilderness?
Neither natural expectation is realized by Jeremiah's letter, however. The tone is not the kick-them-while-they're-down effect of a recitation of the previous warnings. But neither is there a promise of imminent deliverance. Instead, Jeremiah relays to the people God's surprising counsel for the exiles to make themselves at home.
At first blush, this is almost incomprehensible to us. We live with such a strong sense of national security that, even if we fear certain kinds of attacks, none of us seriously entertains the possibility of being completely overrun in our own land and being forcibly captured and exiled to some foreign country. Yet, this was exactly the personal misery and national tragedy of the people to whom Jeremiah wrote. And to those suffering souls, what did the Lord say?
He said that they should make themselves at home. In a foreign and hostile place, in that new and involuntary location, in a land where it seemed unimaginable to sing the songs of Zion (Psalm 137:3-4), that's where the Lord said that they should plant their roots and get on with life.
God's specific instructions are a portrait of the ordinary. "Build houses and live in them," he counsels the exiles. Do your gardening, your marrying, and your child-rearing there in that place.
We recall the instructions God gave one night to their ancestors who lived involuntarily in a foreign land. To Moses' generation in Egypt, God gave instructions for a hurried meal. Don't take time for the bread to rise, eat with your coats on, have your walking stick in hand -- you're about to leave! Such was the spirit of the first Passover.
In dramatic contrast, however, God's instructions to these exiles in Babylon are not filled with images of haste, but rather images of permanence. To build a house and plant a garden is to stay a while. To get married and have children is to make yourself at home. Then, as what must have seemed like the final indignity, the exiles were told to "seek the welfare" and pray for the place that was their de facto prison.
The context of this message is not typical for Jeremiah, and the content of this message is not what we -- or its original audience -- might have expected. But we will discover that it is a message that speaks to us, as well.
2 Timothy 2:8-15
For those who hold to Pauline authorship of 2 Timothy, this epistle is widely cherished as one of the apostle's most personal and emotional. Timothy was a long-time associate of Paul, a spiritual son to him, and a companion and coworker over many miles and years. It is natural, therefore, for Paul to be personal -- and even vulnerable -- in his writing to Timothy. Furthermore, many regard this as perhaps the latest of Paul's letters, written at a time when the apostle knew that the end was at hand for him. That context, made especially poignant by the famous "come before winter" imploration (4:21), gives this letter a special quality, indeed.
Paul begins with the verb "remember" in the imperative mood. Remembering has a distinctive flavor in scripture. It rises above mere recollection, or even the sweetness of reminiscing. To remember something or someone is to take appropriate action in response to that something or someone (see, for example, Genesis 8:1, 30:22; Exodus 20:8; Luke 22:19). Furthermore, students of the Old Testament are likely to think first of the book of Deuteronomy when hearing a command to remember. Seven different times in that book, Moses commands the people to remember. (And that is in addition to the six times he commands them not to forget!) So it is that the second letter to Timothy may share a certain tone in common with Deuteronomy -- parental concern and a spiritual emphasis, expressed with a touch of farewell.
The bittersweet quality of the letter comes through again in Paul's reference to his condition. He suffers hardships, and he finds himself "chained like a criminal." We are well-accustomed to the image of Paul as a prisoner; it's a familiar part of his biography. But I wonder if he ever became accustomed to it. He was, after all, the very essence of law-abiding (see Philippians 3:5-6). What a strange experience it must have been for him, therefore, to find himself treated again and again like an outlaw. He was a man who should have been acquainted with the synagogues and schools, the leaders and the thinkers in each town where he traveled; not the police and the prisons in each town.
His spirit was not crushed, though, for he was still able to see and to affirm that "the word of God is not chained." The myopia that is native to our human ego tempts us to think that when we are personally hindered, the important work we do is also hindered. Paul was humble and faithful enough, however, to see that the work of God could go on without him. Indeed, that is very much a part of his reason for writing to Timothy -- to help guarantee that the work would continue in and through Timothy.
Meanwhile, just as Paul exhorted Timothy to do some remembering, the apostle also called upon him to do some reminding. Evidently there were members of the congregation for which Timothy was responsible who were "wrangling over words." Some circumstances of the New Testament churches -- for example, eating meat offered to idols -- can seem pretty far removed from our day and require some translation in order to apply to our situation. The circumstance of Christians wrangling over words, however, requires no imagination and no translation. Paul's observation about such behavior is a right rebuke: It "does no good but only ruins those who are listening." Have we ever seen that happen?
Luke 17:11-19
Luke, who is the most careful of the gospel writers about details of geography, reports that Jesus entered the region between Galilee and Samaria. This was a small enough buffer zone that it didn't even merit a name of its own. Yet the small geographical detail contains two points of significance for us.
First, it shows us that Jesus is moving south. In truth, he began pointing south -- that is, toward Jerusalem -- ever since he first revealed to his disciples who he was and what would happen to him (Luke 9:20-22). And so the Galilean phase of his ministry wanes as Jerusalem -- and the cross -- becomes his resolute destination.
Second, this seeming no-man's land between predominantly Jewish Galilee and the region of the hated Samaritans becomes a geographical metaphor for a human reality. At the end of the story of this healing, we discover that the one manifestly grateful leper was a Samaritan. The implication of the text is surely that they were not all Samaritans. And that means that this group of lepers was likely a combination of Jews and Samaritans.
That scene has a certain poignant sort of beauty to it.
We are familiar with the centuries-old animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans. John's gospel, for example, reveals that a Jew customarily would not share cups, plates, or utensils with a Samaritan (John 4:9). And Jesus' own disciples may betray their ethnic prejudice when they seem eager to see an unresponsive Samaritan town destroyed (Luke 9:52-55), while there is no record of any corresponding indignation over any unresponsive Jewish town.
Yet, for all the bad blood between Jews and Samaritans, these lepers had found common cause with one another. If they had all been healthy and whole, they probably would have turned up their noses at one another. But now that their respective societies had rejected them, they found acceptance with one another. They say that misery loves company. In this story, misery had brought together even a Hatfield and a McCoy.
Equally poignant is the image of these ten lepers "keeping their distance" from Jesus. This was common courtesy, of course, as well as social necessity. Yet it also paints a picture that goes beyond the confines of ancient cultures' apprehensions about communicable diseases. It also paints a picture of a certain sort of soul, which we will consider at greater length below.
Jesus' instruction for these men to go and show themselves to the priests was in keeping with the regulations of the Mosaic Law (see Leviticus 13:1-46). It was the priests who examined and diagnosed. The priests determined and announced that a person was clean or unclean.
Of course, these men had almost certainly undergone the prescribed series of examinations, and they had already known the horror of being declared unclean. Furthermore, since Luke reports that it was only "as they went" that "they were made clean," there was no obvious reason for going -- apart from Jesus' instruction to do so, that is. At first glance, therefore, they could only have surmised that a trip to the priest would just yield the same, terrible verdict as before. In this respect, their obedience recalls the episode in which the disciples cast their nets into the sea again at Jesus' command, even though their immediately prior experience suggested that the effort would be futile (Luke 5:4-5).
Jesus' adherence to the Levitical law is interesting. The Pharisees' constant haranguing of Jesus for one thing or another might leave us with the impression that Jesus was casual about the Old Testament law. His words tell us quite the opposite (Matthew 5:17-19); yet we may let the Pharisees' critique color our impression of him. Still, the one who was determined to "fulfill all righteousness" (Matthew 3:15) instructed these lepers to go and show themselves to the priests, according to the requirements of the law.
Was such an exercise of legalism necessary for their healing? Couldn't Jesus have healed these men apart from the examination of the priests? Certainly. Indeed, the story indicates that they were healed long before arriving in the priests' presence. But Jesus was the living fulfillment of the law. Of course, these erstwhile outcasts could not be welcomed back into ordinary society apart from receiving, literally, a clean bill of health from the priests.
Finally, we observe the interesting timing of the healing. It occurs neither when the men have their contact with Jesus, nor when they meet with the priests. Rather, it occurs "as they went," which may be a sermon in itself. When it happened, one of the ten returned to Jesus to thank him.
Both Luke and Jesus take pains to note that this lone expression of gratitude came from a non-Jew. Jesus calls him a foreigner, and Luke specifically identifies him as a Samaritan. We are reminded, in this regard, that the two people whom Jesus identified as having great faith were also foreigners (Matthew 8:5-11; 15:21-28). We recall that the one Israelite in the book of Jonah (i.e., Jonah himself) is the most disappointing character, while both the pagan sailors and the foreign Ninevites were exemplary in their response to God. What a shame when God's own people are the ones who are least responsive to him!
Application
We considered above the emotional challenge that was posed to the Jewish recipients of Jeremiah's instructions from God. They were told to make themselves at home in the land of their exile, to live happily ever after in enemy territory, and to pray for the welfare of their conquerors. It all seems quite impossible.
It also seems quite far removed from us. Even though it may be an interesting exercise to try to climb into their shoes and imagine their experiences and emotions, what does their circumstance have to do with us, so many thousands of miles and years removed?
Just this: You and I live in enemy territory, too.
The issue for us is no longer a matter of nations. I am not suggesting that the nation in which we live is our enemy. Rather, I am recognizing that the world in which we live is antagonistic to God and it is the domain of his enemy.
All the kingdom talk of the New Testament -- combined with our own observation that this world does not reflect the perfect reign of God -- tells us that earth is occupied territory. It was created by God, to be sure, but the kingdoms of the world have become the property of God's enemy; hence they are his to offer (see Matthew 4:8-9). Peter says that we are "aliens and strangers in the world" (1 Peter 1:1; 2:11), and Jesus was candid with his disciples that the world would hate them because they do not belong to it (John 15:18-19).
Given our location behind enemy lines, then, what should our posture and policy be? Shall we chafe at the world and resent our current address? Shall we curse the place where our enemy reigns? Shall we look for our escape?
Evidently not. Jesus' followers cannot abandon the world, for we have a saving function here -- "salt of the earth" and "light of the world" (Matthew 5:13-16). Perhaps, therefore, God's word to us is the same as his word to the exiles of Jeremiah's day. "Settle in for a long stay," he might tell us, "and pray for the welfare of the place." We're in it for the long haul, because he has a purpose for us here.
Alternative Application
Luke 17:11-19. "Keeping our Distance." We noted above one of the poignant details of Luke's account of the healing of the ten lepers. "Keeping their distance," Luke reports, "they called out, saying, 'Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!' "
See how torn they were. Jesus' reputation, and their resulting faith in him, had stirred up a hope. Perhaps the incurable could be cured by him. Perhaps he could help the helpless. Yet, how could they come to him for help? They were forbidden -- by custom, by law, by courtesy, and by fear -- to get close to anyone. And so they called out to Jesus, but from a distance.
I wonder how many, many people keep their distance from Jesus because they know that they are unclean. Peter was no leper, yet he was so uncomfortable with his own sinfulness that he wanted the Lord to go away from him (Luke 5:8). And I imagine that, on any given Sunday, we have some folks in our pews who feel necessarily at a distance from the Lord. Still, like these lepers, they call out to him from a distance for help.
The problem is that the distance is not necessary. Our disease will not infect him. Our filth will not soil him. And our condition will not repulse him.
The eighteenth-century British preacher and hymn writer, Joseph Hart, could see the souls who keep their distance. And he exhorted them: "Let not conscience make you linger, nor of fitness fondly dream; all the fitness he requireth is to feel your need of him." And, even more directly, he sang, "If you tarry till you're better, you will never come at all."
That may be just the word some frightened, unclean soul in your pews will need to hear this week.
Preaching the Psalms
Schuyler Rhodes
Psalm 66:1-12
After spending a lifetime in church, this pastor is only beginning to understand what it means to make a joyful noise to God. For years, it was the starched robes and four part harmonies of the choir harmonizing devoutly from the chancel. Sometimes it was the congregation singing, "How Great Thou Art." Sometimes it was even the laughter of children in Vacation Bible School. But always, over time, such noises were organized, controlled, and aimed at the creation of a good and stable church environment.
Then came the mission trip to a war torn country in Central America. The evil that humanity is capable of perpetrating was on graphic display in this place. Schools and hospitals were routinely burned and bombed to be sure that no advancement was made in the community. Atrocities were common, and a generation of children grew up carrying rifles instead of school books. Yet in the midst of this living horror, people came together to praise God. In the midst of destruction and death, people entered bombed out churches and gave their hearts without reservation to God! The noise was thunderous and chaotic. It was primal and full of power. And it was not particularly organized.
Making a joyful noise to God is about joy in the face of a joyless world. It's also about the noise. Be it the shouting of a people who know God up close in their suffering, or the urban beat of hip-hop youth discovering God in new and unfamiliar ways, the noise matters. The discomforting truth of this is that noise disturbs. It interrupts quiet contemplation, and it startles people out of serious prayer. Noise rips us from our meditation and presses our faces up against a world that needs God; a world that longs for the voices with which we give God praise. This world needs God's love and healing, and it needs our noisy, joyful praise as we stand ebullient for God's wholeness and justice.
So one has to ask about the joyful noise level within our faith communities: How noisy is it in your church? How truly joyful is the praise? Asking these questions of ourselves is a reality check we all need to make. Because there is no doubt that the psalmist's demand comes to us as it has to so many. "Make a joyful noise to God!"
