Wednesday November 15, 2017
Can disobedience be a sign of greater faith? Judging by today’s parable, it must be so. Jesus commanded the ten lepers to go and show themselves to the priests. All ten of them obediently went their way, for they had enough faith to trust the words of Jesus and to act accordingly even when their prayer was not immediately answered. Thanks to their faith, they found themselves healed on their way. It is possible that nine of them went on, perhaps in complete obedience to what Jesus asked them to do, to present themselves to the priests as the Law had required. But one of them—a Samaritan—decided to turn back and return to Christ to thank him. In doing so, he disobeyed Jesus’s command. But in his apparent disobedience was an act of faith and a greater obedience—he showed himself to the eternal high priest whose approval alone mattered to him. Nothing or no one else mattered to him in his moment of healing except the one who healed him. He would break the Law in order to show his love and respect to the Law Giver, and in doing so, he fulfilled the heart of the Law.
Perfect obedience to the Law can sometimes make us ungrateful children of God.
