Digging back into palace records he unearthed the surprising story. A hundred years before the wife of the Tsar - the Tsarina - had been walking in the palace grounds in early spring. To her delight she discovered a flower unexpectedly in bloom. She called a guard to watch the spot while she went into the palace for some secateurs. Back at the palace she became caught up in other more pressing business. She never did get back to pick to that flower, but for the next hundred years guards had faithfully - but pointlessly - watched over that spot.
We are asking today, "Why do we worship?" That's an important question. We don't want to be like those guards who just did it because they had always done it - but they didn't know why!
Jesus told the Samaritan woman - the woman at the well (John 4) - that true worship is "in spirit and in truth". In other words it is based on the solid reasons of who God is and what he has done - it is based on "the truth". But it springs from the very heart of our being, where our spirit communicates with God's Spirit - it is not a thin respectable veneer, a form of nice pious words.
Jesus was making his way from Galilee in the north to Jerusalem. This led him along the border of Samaria and Galilee. He was making for a village when he was met by "ten men suffering from a dreaded skin disease" - so the Good News Bible has it. The original simply calls them "lepers", but some scholars are unsure whether the term always denotes the disease we know by that name.
Listen to what the encyclopaedia says about leprosy. "Once a disease so dreaded that its victims were isolated in so-called leper colonies, leprosy can now be controlled and its resulting disfigurements prevented. The infectious agent, Mycobacterium leprae, is a bacillus in the same family as the one that causes tuberculosis. (It was discovered in 1874 by a Norwegian physician, Gerhard Hansen, and leprosy is sometimes called Hansen's disease.) The agent is thought to be transmitted by skin-to-skin contact and nasal discharges. About 95 percent of the persons exposed to the bacterium are immune, however, so leprosy is not considered highly contagious. Because the bacterium is very slow growing the incubation period can range from 1 to 30 years, but the average is about 3 to 5 years. The organism invades the peripheral nerves, skin, and mucous membranes, damaging the nerves and causing anaesthesia. The resulting insensitivity can lead to unnoticed and therefore neglected injuries; this accounts for many of the deformities - such as loss of fingers - that occur in leprosy. Paralysis may also result; in advanced cases, numbness of the eyes may lead to blindness through trauma or infection."
But in those days there was no treatment and Jewish and Samaritan lepers alike were required to live outside their own towns and found comfort in one another's company. Leviticus directs that the leper "must wear torn clothes, leave his hair uncombed, cover the lower part of his face, and call out 'Unclean, unclean!' He remains unclean as long as he has the disease, and he must live outside the camp, away from others" (Lev.13.45).
These ten men stood at a distance and shouted, "Jesus! Master! Take pity on us!" Their usual warning, "Unclean, unclean!" became a request, "Wannabeclean! wannabeclean!" Somehow they had heard that Jesus had the power to heal. They were not just asking for pity - most people had a genuine sympathetic pity towards them. They were asking for action - for healing!
Anyone who was cured of leprosy had to be declared cleansed by a priest (Lev.14). So Jesus' direction to "go and let the priests examine you" was a clear promise that they would be healed. They were still lepers, but they had to obey his words in faith - "on the way they were made clean". They demonstrated their faith by their actions - that's when the miracle of healing occurred! The symptoms of the disease disappeared. Fresh energy was pulsing through their bodies. Their skin became new and healthy. All of them were aware of the amazing change in their physical condition.
"When one of them saw that he was healed, he came back, praising God in a loud voice."
We are not sure whether they had to go to the priests in Jerusalem or simply to those living in this area of Palestine. (One was a Samaritan and would have had to go to the Samaritan priests on Mount Gerizim.) But that requirement should not have stopped them from their immediate need to relate to Jesus their Healer. All of them could have turned around at once and come back to Jesus. They should have done it while Jesus was in easy reach. There is no saying where Jesus would have gone next while they were away - even though he was heading towards Jerusalem! Their duty to show themselves to the priests could have waited till afterwards.
But one of them turned back as soon as he he realised that he was healed. He "praised God in a loud voice" and then "threw himself to the ground at Jesus' feet and thanked him. The man was a Samaritan."
The Jews, of course, had been brought up on the Bible. They knew all about worship and about all the correct things to do. Not that the Samaritans were totally ignorant. They had been brought in by the Assyrians to caretake the northern Israelite Kingdom after the Israelites were taken into exile in 722 BC. They intermarried with the remaining Israelites and adopted the first five books of the Bible and set up their own Temple on Mount Gerizim. Much later they offered strong opposition when the Jews (the southern Kingdom) returned from exile to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple. There was a great deal of bitterness on both sides. Such attitudes had no place in a lepers' camp. But now that they were healed they had to go their separate ways and do what was required.
"There were ten men who were healed; where are the other nine? Why is this foreigner the only one who came back to give thanks to God?" The nine were interested in themselves and in their cure. They would go through all the formalities and the sacrifice that gave them the right to be accepted back into society. Jesus didn't "unheal" them. Their physical healing remained, but they lost the opportunity of publicly identifying themselves with Jesus, their God-given Healer. One writer speaks of "the worse leprosy of shameful thanklessness and superstitious ignorance" that befell them.
The original uses three healing words in this story. All were "made clean". All were "healed". But to the thankful Samaritan Jesus says, "Your faith has saved you." For he has received more than physical health but full salvation, forgiveness of sins and a place among God's children.
So we are back to our original question. Why do we worship? All of the ten had the faith to be healed of their leprosy. All showed it by their action. All would be showing themselves to the priests and offering the sacrifices to God that the Law required. All would be declared free from the disease and allowed back into society. All would continue to be involved in "worship" - the nine at the Temple in Jerusalem, the one on Mount Gerizim. But why would they worship? Their experiences would be similar, but would their motives be the same?
Listen to what Paul writes in Ephesians chapter 1: "Let us give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!… he has blessed us… he has chosen us to be his…" "Let us praise God for his glorious grace, for the free gift he gave us in his dear Son… we are set free, our sins are forgiven… he will bring all creation together with Christ as head… he has put his stamp of ownership on us by giving us the Holy Spirit… he will give complete freedom to those who are his…"
Paul punctuates what he is saying with "Praise God's glory!" "Let us praise his glory!" Paul is moved to thankfulness as he thinks of all that God has done for us. But worship is not just remembering what God has done - it is remembering who God is and submitting all of our lives to him. It is more than our relationship with God at this point of our life - it has to do with our relationship with him in all our life.
Unlike the other nine, the Samaritan leper moved from the point of "wannabeclean" to worship - praising God and laying down his life before the Lord Jesus.
Why do we worship? Because we need to acknowledge that God is the Creator and to lay down our lives before him. Because we need to acknowledge that God is the standard of what is right and to confess that we are sinners before him. Because we need to acknowledge that God is love and to receive the forgiveness he offers us in his Son, Jesus.
Worship "in spirit and in truth" is truly and honestly coming to God with this humility and openness. He has promised to meet with us as we reach out to meet with him.
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