Living in the Spirit
October 8, 2016

Scripture Reading: Luke 17:11-19

On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!’ When he saw them, he said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were made clean. –Luke 17:11-14

Leprosy was a very scary disease in the first century. Considered contagious, leprosy drove people to be leery of loved ones even to the point of shunning them. People avoided strangers with leprosy altogether. Thus in our scripture today, the lepers kept their distance even from the one they hoped would cure them. The lepers recognized the perception that they were a danger to others. We know a lot more about leprosy today and even have ways of treating it. We have not yet defeated the disease of fear.

Fear is a natural response in most animals. It heightens our sense of self-preservation, which is not a bad thing. The problem with fear arises when those natural instincts make us irrational in our reactions. Proverbs 9:10 states that The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. When fear pushes us to take off our shoes and approach the burning bushes* that await us, our knowledge of God increases and our irrational fears, drawn from the world, decrease.

Identifying all humans in our world as neighbors leads us to take the steps necessary to move from fear of the unknown to understanding and knowing. Community policing is an excellent example of this idea. We cannot limit the scope of understanding and knowing to the police. We must each take off our shoes and approach the burning bushes illuminating our prejudices so that God can cleanse us and free us from the irrational fears that are deterring the realizations of God’s love ruling the earth.

Prayer: God of Justice and Mercy, enable us to confront our prejudices opening the door to the healing of our nation, world. Amen.

*See Exodus 3

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized 
Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council 
of Churches of Christ in the United States of American. Used by permission. All rights 
reserved.