School buses. So much of my childhood revolved around old school buses, back and forth, up and down East North St., over in Greenville, year after year.
Back then high school students drove the buses, and that was always interesting, they would race each other up and down East North St. gunning the engines.
The bus engines all had these mysterious devices called governors that kept the buses at about 40 mph, tops, going downhill, if the wind was blowing the right way.
The buses revved and choked and roared like lions pacing in their cage, as they raced each other, holding up traffic all the way, lines of cars backed up behind stock car racing school buses.
Those buses were like dogs choking on their chains trying to break free, back and forth.
Those boys were always trying to run the engines so hard that the governors would break, snap right off, and then they would fly free, yellow orange streaks of greased lightning.
And one day it happened, one bus broke free, and it was like an angel chorus of loud praise, a roaring engine unchained. They kept that bus secret for a long time just in case they ever needed an extra fast bus.
Who ever knew that school buses were so exciting? Up and down East North Street year after year.
Trying to break free. Longing to break free. Despairing of ever breaking the chains.
Ten men with leprosy, crying for mercy, who are healed by Jesus. Set free from the chains.
Only one came back praising God with a loud voice, thanking Jesus.
And the clincher is that not only was he a leper, he was a foreigner, a Samaritan, a heretic, a double stigma, double discrimination.
Of all people who should be angry and bitter, he was the one whose faith saved him, who sang out in praise and thanks, truly set free. It wasn’t the disciples, or the pious, or the experts. It was the most broken, the most rejected, the most excluded. Ouch.
God shows up in surprising ways, in the least expected, in the most unlikely, and the ones who show us the freedom of God, the ones who show us the grace that sets us free, the ones who reveal the faith that saves, they are the ones I would prefer to ignore or hate. Ouch.
To encounter God in the person of Jesus is to be set free, to have an experience of freedom that sings out with praise and thanksgiving.
We don’t know what happened to the other nine.
But there was the one who returned like a roaring engine set free.
He is the invitation, the example, the hope, the promise, the challenge.
These chains are going to snap right off.