Jesus is travelling, as he often was,
and recruiting for the cause of freedom.
Here, in the wild borderland,
he finds ten recruits,
but nine fall away, can't face up.
When they were told to witness to authority
about their new allegiance to The Way,
only one managed to do so.
It is the same today!
Perhaps the message is
that we need to test our new recruits;
that conversion can not be trusted until,
it has been tested under stress,
or affirmed when under threat;
that an easy faith is
no faith.
When we are ready to call ourselves "Christian"
we need to have thought it through, be ready for opposition
both from those outside the walls and from many within them.
For when our ideas, these ideas, differ from orthodoxy,
"we" must be ready to provide a reasoned repost
to the inevitable criticism by present authority,
born of their realisation of the weaknesses
in the magical tales that they tell.