A while ago, I was meditating on Luke 17:11-19.
Maybe you remember it.
It’s the story of a group of ten men with leprosy whom Jesus heals. Since leprosy was considered highly contagious, as a means of quarantine, the purity laws of first-century Judea required lepers to keep themselves away from other people. So, as Jesus enters their town, they scream out at the top of their lungs to get his attention.
Jesus responds, not by approaching them or touching them, but simply by telling them to go to the priest and get a physical examination. According to Mosaic law, to be readmitted into Jewish society, a person healed of leprosy must be examined by a priest to be declared leprosy-free.
So when Jesus tells these disease-ridden gentlemen to head down to Jerusalem and see the priest, they might have become a bit excited. Excited enough that they didn’t notice when they were healed, except for one.
Now here is where it gets fascinating. The nine Jewish men were so excited about seeing the priest and getting their lives back that they couldn’t think about anything else. Typical men on a mission. However, the one Samaritan didn’t have the same excitement as they did. Of course, he was excited about being healed, but he was dreading what came next. For him, heading to the Jerusalem temple was just going to be another rejection. Samaritans were not allowed in the temple. They weren’t quite gentile but they weren’t quite Jewish.
Suddenly, this newly healed Samaritan man realizes something. He has a divine revelation: there was a priest, closer than Jerusalem, whom even a Samaritan could approach.
This Samaritan returns to Jesus, and Jesus recognizes his gratitude, but the Samaritan’s action reveals his understanding. And that is such good news to us because Jesus is our High Priest too.
“Now the main point of what we are saying is this: We do have such a high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven,” (Hebrews 8:1, NIV)
