Scripture
On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten men with a skin disease 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. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’s feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? So where are the other nine? Did none of them return to give glory to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” ~Luke 17:11-19
Meditation
There’s being sick, and then there’s being a leper. The newly updated version of the bible we use here at UPC has dropped that word, leper, entirely, except for two instances when it is used to identify a specific individual (Simon the leper). I think that’s because of what the word connotes, more than its technical definition. To be a leper is to be an outcast. To be a leper is to be avoided. To be a leper is to be feared, and ostracized, and seen as a hopeless case.
There’s being sick, and then there’s being the hopeless case nobody wants to be near, unable to be with family, unable to hold a job, those people for whom even the lowest rung of the social ladder is out of reach. People without a home.
Ten men with this problem—a skin disease that cast them into that category of outcast—these men approach Jesus for healing.
They know they are asking for the impossible. This healing would be a reversal of everything they know to be true and immutable about their lives.
And yet, as we know, Jesus specializes in reversals. In fact, in the gospel according to Luke, it’s kind of his specialty, as he announced way back in chapter 4, in the synagogue, when he opened the scroll of Isaiah and read,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
for the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to set free those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” ~Luke 4:18-19
To set free those who are oppressed. Jesus specializes in great reversals.
But these ten men, afflicted with just about every terrible thing because of their skin condition, approach Jesus with a kind of radical hope. First, they call him by name. This only happens three times in this gospel, and it’s always followed by a healing—one of them, a healing that extends beyond this life and into the next. “Jesus,” they call. Then, they call, “Master”—which is to say, “Lord.” They call Jesus by his name and by the title used by those who believe he is Messiah. Why? Why this radical hope, after lives filled with suffering and isolation? Maybe the news has gotten to them about Jesus’ amazing works. Maybe they see something in him—they give him a wide berth, out of habit, no doubt—but maybe, unlike other people, Jesus doesn’t flinch when he sees them coming.
“Jesus! Master! Have mercy on us!”
What would possess them to think the lovingkindness of Jesus might just be what they need, and what they can get?
Maybe it’s the geography…
This story takes place on a border, in the “borderlands.” A scholar writes,
Geography matters… Jesus, on the way to Jerusalem, “passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee,” and “entered into a certain village.” This means that this entire healing encounter between Jesus and the ten men with a skin disease takes place in a geographic borderland that is neither Samaria nor Galilee.[i] The borderlands—we learn from Chicana writer and activist Gloria Anzaldúa, whose context is the U.S.-Mexican border—are more than a geographic boundary. They are “a psychic, social, and cultural terrain that we inhabit, and that inhabits all of us.” She writes that while borders “are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them …” a “borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary … the prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants.”[ii]
The prohibited and forbidden—people. That’s what these men are, who cry out for mercy in this undefined place between places. They are made bold, I think, by the uncertainty, the liminal nature of the borderlands, a place where anything might happen. And it does.
This is one of those delayed miracles. Have you ever had one of those? You hope, you pray, you long for something, and just when it seems like the answer will always and forever be “no,” a smile, or a text, or a phone call lets you know—your prayer has been answered, after weeks, or months. Sometimes, years. In the case of the ten men with a skin disease, it happens soon after they call out to Jesus, but not immediately. Jesus, when he hears their cry, simply says, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.”
The priests. The Temple. This instruction Jesus gives the men tells us about the other result of their banishment. People with this kind of skin condition are not allowed near other people, even family. They can’t hold jobs. They can’t take part in society at any level, and that includes practicing their religion. Their condition makes them ritually unclean, and because it never goes away, the priests can never declare them ok. They are even banished from being in the place that represents the presence of God on earth.
But the men go on their way, as Jesus instructed them, and while on their way, they discover that they have been healed. Cleansed. And one of them is so overwhelmed with joy and gratitude, he immediately turns around, praising God loudly, and throws himself at Jesus’ feet, thanking him, because that’s what makes sense to him, in view of being healed. Gratitude first.
And the man is a Samaritan.
What does that mean? It means this man, if anything, was a double outcast. We’ve talked before of how Samaritans and Jews are so deeply divided, despite descending from the same family tree. The divisions created by rebellion, war, exile, and return to the land have resulted in real enmity between the two peoples. And it makes me wonder: Would a Temple priest even agree to pronounce the Samaritan cleansed? Given that a Samaritan, under normal circumstances, wouldn’t even venture into a temple that was not his holy place?
Jesus notes that ten were cleansed, but only one returns to say “Thanks.” This isn’t about social niceties. This is about the first and most basic stance humans take before God. Revelation 4 says it nicely:
You are worthy, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things,
and by your will they existed and were created. ~Rev. 4:11
God is worthy of all our thanks and praise because, without God, we don’t exist. Without God, we don’t have voices to sing praise with, or blessings to make us grateful. Everything flows from God, including this miraculous divine reversal: Those who were outcast may go into God’s house and be blessed, and be welcomed.
So, Jesus wonders aloud, where are the other nine? Did none of them return to give glory to God except this foreigner?
It’s a rhetorical question. And I don’t believe its purpose is to shame the nine who dutifully obeyed Jesus and went to the priests, just as he said. If anything, it’s probably aimed at the priests, with Jesus’ full knowledge that the foreigner in front of him probably won’t be welcome in the Temple. Yes, the cleansing of all ten men with the skin disease is absolutely a great reversal, of the kind we have come to expect from Jesus. And Jesus’ final words to the man—go, your faith has made you well—are the cherry on top. This man’s faith has made him well. The faith of the Samaritan man, that caused him, first, to call Jesus’ name, and then, to return calling out a song of thanksgiving, is real faith. It is not inferior, or sub-par. It is the source of what caused him to seek healing from Jesus in the first place, as well as what prompted him to return in gratitude.
As for the others, after they show themselves to the priests, where will they go? Why, they will go to the place they have dreamed of throughout all their years of isolation and banishment, the same place the Samaritan will undoubtedly go. They will go home. Home is really the point of all the great reversals in Jesus’ ministry.
Good news to the poor… so that they will never be without a home.
Release to the captives… so that they can return at last to the home they’ve dreamed about.
Recovery of sight to the blind—so that they can gaze upon the faces of their loved ones, and the place that welcomes them without fail.
Setting free the oppressed… so that their home will always be a safe place of welcome.
Jesus comes into our lives, too, with unfailing love and mercy, and his goal is, always, always, to bring us home. For which we are forever grateful. Gratitude first.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] Francisco J. Garcia, “Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost, Commentary on Luke 17:11-19,” Working Preacher, October 9, 2022, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-28-3/commentary-on-luke-1711-19-5.
[ii] Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Book Company, 1987), 3.