God’s grace and peace be with all of you.
Our gospel reading today finds Jesus in a border place, an in-between place— the region between Samaria and Galilee. There, he is approached by people who live across a different kind of border: ten lepers, whose illness made them ritually unclean and outcasts from society. Without getting too close, without crossing the boundary that separates them from Jesus, they beg him for help. Jesus tells the ten to go show themselves to the priests. As they go to do as Jesus instructed, they are cleansed, healed of their ailment.
Of the ten, only one turns back, praising God. He kneels at Jesus’ feet. And that one is a Samaritan.
In order to understand this story, we need some background about lepers and Samaritans in the time of Jesus. In the Bible, “leprosy” doesn’t refer to the specific illness we call leprosy or Hansen’s disease today. It referred to a variety of skin ailments, including infections, eczema, or psoriasis. According to the Hebrew Bible, leprosy could also infect clothes or even buildings—probably referring to mold or fungus.
What’s more important than the scientific or medical causes underlying so-called “leprosy” in the Bible is the theological significance attached to the ailment. People with these skin diseases were considered ritually unclean. And a thing or a person who was unclean could transfer their uncleanliness, could infect other people or places or objects with uncleanliness.
For this reason, lepers were excluded from society. No one wanted to associate with them. They were forced to live outside the community, never allowed to come close. If they recovered from their ailment, they would have to present themselves to a priest, who could declare them ritually clean again, allowing them to rejoin society. Other than that, they were outcasts for life.
The ten lepers in our reading today were outcasts. They were excluded from community. They have to stay at a distance, calling out to Jesus without getting close enough to infect him with their uncleanliness.
Of these ten, at least one of them was also a Samaritan. For Jesus and other Jews of his time, Samaritans weren’t just a different group—they were enemies. We’re so used to the phrase “Good Samaritan” that we forget how outrageous that would have sounded to Jesus’ contemporaries. A Samaritan was anything but good.
The Jews and the Samaritans in the time of the New Testament had a great deal of history in common. Both groups considered themselves descendants of Abraham. Both groups viewed the Torah, the books of Moses, as definitive for their lives. But sometimes, our closest neighbors are the ones we feel the most animosity towards. It’s like ELCA Lutherans and Missouri Synod Lutherans—for all that we have in common, our differences can seem insurmountable. Or like USC fans and UCLA fans—you have so much in common, and yet you are bitter enemies!
I don’t mean to be flip about this. The animosity between Jews and Samaritans was fierce. Each side viewed themselves as the legitimate heirs of the great leader Moses. The Jewish people believed the proper place to worship God was at the Temple in Jerusalem; the Samaritans, meanwhile, worshipped God on Mount Gerizim in their own territory—that is, up until the Jewish people destroyed the Samaritan sanctuary. You can imagine how these two groups felt about each other.
So if you were there that day, when Jesus encountered those ten lepers… if you were one of the first Christians, hearing this story in the gospel of Luke… just think how you would react. One leper returns, praising God and falling at Jesus’ feet—and he is a Samaritan. A Samaritan! The outsider, the foreigner, the other, the enemy is the one who kneels before Jesus and thanks him.
Now, the point of this story isn’t that the nine were bad and the one was good. All ten believe that Jesus has the power to help them. All ten, when Jesus sends them away, follow his instructions at once. This proves that they all have faith in Jesus. They have faith that they will be healed if they do what he says.
We have a perfect contrast in our first reading, the story of Naaman. He, too, hoped to be cured of leprosy by a prophet. But when Elisha tells Naaman to wash in the Jordan River, Naaman objects. He has better rivers back home he could bathe in! His servants convince him to listen to Elisha, and sure enough, Naaman is made clean.
That doesn’t happen in our gospel reading. When Jesus tells the ten lepers, “Go and show yourselves to the priests,” they don’t argue with him. They don’t say, “We’re unclean! How can we show ourselves to the priests in this state?” They don’t demand that Jesus heal them right there on the spot. They do what Jesus instructs, going with faith that they will be healed.
All ten lepers believe that Jesus can help them. And all ten are right—they are all healed, made whole again. Presumably, the nine go on to see the priests; the priests declare them clean, and they rejoin society. No longer outcasts, no longer ostracized, they are given a new lease on life. Because Jesus healed them, their lives are forever changed for the better.
In this sense, the nine lepers did what Jesus told them to do, and they received what they asked for. They are made well, and they are able to go back to their families, their communities. Their lives begin anew.
So what lesson is there in that one leper, the Samaritan who turned back? We don’t know why he decided to return to Jesus. All we know is that he saw that he was healed, and instead of proceeding on to the priests who could declare him clean and allow him to rejoin society, he turned right around and went back to the one who had healed him.
The Samaritan, it says, began praising God with a loud voice. Now, if a Jewish person wanted to go to the most appropriate place to honor God, they would go to the Temple in Jerusalem. If a Samaritan wanted to go to the most appropriate place to honor God, they might go to their holy site, Mount Gerizim. But this Samaritan former leper praises God all the way to the feet of Jesus.
Do you see what I mean? The Samaritan understands, on some level, that God and Jesus are one and the same. That the presence of God doesn’t fall most fully on Jerusalem, or on Mt. Gerizim, but at the feet of the Galilean preacher named Jesus. To praise God and give thanks, the Samaritan returns to Jesus and falls at his feet.
The “moral” of this story isn’t a simplistic one about gratitude. As I said, all ten lepers have faith in Jesus, and all ten are healed, with no regard to their expression of gratitude after the fact. But there is a lesson in the Samaritan leper, the one who recognizes that Jesus is something more than just a prophet. The one who is not just healed but transformed by his encounter with Jesus.
Biblical scholar Karoline Lewis described this gospel text as an example of theological and biblical gratitude. She writes, “The Samaritan leper sees that he has been healed and acknowledges that healing. Once healed, it is often far too easy to move on; to offer that automatic “thanks,” isn’t it? But this story in Luke tells us that seeing is more than sight—it is seeing through God’s eyes… When you have been seen, when you have been seen by God, you cannot go on, but have to return to God so as to imagine how you are now an integral part of God’s kingdom. You turn back to give praise to God because seeing what God has done results in responding with worship and praise.”
There are many things we ask God, big and small. We pray for calm in the midst of stress, we pray for comfort when we are afraid. Sometimes, we cry out for healing like the lepers in our story today: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”
We pray with the hope and faith that God will hear us, that Jesus will have an answer for us. Today, I want to encourage you to think of something God has done. Some prayer that was answered. Again, it could be big or small. Take a moment to think of something God has done for you. [pause]
Now, think of the Samaritan who turned back. When God helps us, when God heals us or transforms us, do we go right along with our daily lives? Or do we drop everything to go back to God in praise and thanksgiving? Rather than really devoting ourselves to gratitude, how often do we say a quick “Thank you” to God in the midst of all our other tasks?
Take out your insert from your bulletin. We don’t usually use the Psalm in worship, but today we’re going to take a moment to express gratitude for the many things God has done for us. Whatever example you thought of, hold that in your mind as we read this Psalm together.
[Psalm 111]
May we remember to turn back and give thanks and praise to the God who has transformed us. Amen.
Pastor Jennifer Preaching 