The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 23), Year C. | Track II

Luke 17:11-19
On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers 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’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

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Ten lepers are healed, one comes back to Jesus to say “thank you”. When hearing this story, it’s hard not to hear your mother in ear asking, “did you remember to say thank you?” after receiving a gift. At first glance this story seems simple enough, it’s about grace and gratitude. I’m guessing that what stuck out to you the most were the nine lepers who didn’t come back to Jesus to thank him. It seems odd that after such a life-changing miracle only one out of the ten would think to turn around to say “thank you”. As is usually the case in the Bible, there is a truth that anyone can grasp immediately; this is indeed a story and lesson about gratitude. However, as is usually the case with the Bible, the gratitude we need to be showing is not what we necessarily expect.

Let’s make a few observations and clarifications about this story. Let’s start by restoring some of the dignity of the 9 lepers. It’s hard to believe that they were particularly ungrateful for their miraculous healing. Much like the Samaritan who returned, they were probably overjoyed—and after being declared clean by the priests, they were rushing to rejoin their families. While showing themselves to the priests, they would have made a thank offering to God as part of the ritual. While they should have come back to thank Jesus personally, they would have given thanks to God, and I’m sure they would have been telling everyone about Jesus who healed them. What’s important to observe is who is being extraordinarily faithful, the one who returned to Jesus, the Samaritan.

The Samaritan in this story is doubly an outcast in society, being shunned for his leprosy and for being a Samaritan. It’s hard to overstate how seriously leprosy was shunned. Though leprosy was a catch-all for all kinds of skin diseases ranging from minor to severe, because it was misunderstood and considered highly contagious in a medical and religious sense, lepers were effectively dead. While the fear, misinformation, and shunning that happened during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s is probably the closest modern parallel, even that doesn’t capture the social death that the 10 lepers would have experienced. It is no accident that many stories of Jesus healing the lepers describes them as being “resurrected”. When they were declared to have leprosy, not only would they be forcibly removed from their homes and families, deported to caves and colonies of other lepers, they would be considered cursed by God, so unclean that even touching their shadow would defile you too. While there would be some kindness where people would leave food for them, equally as often they would suffer abuse and cruelty from those who knew that as people living on the edge of society, they were easy to exploit. In this story, the fact that a holy man like Jesus would even speak to them is a miracle as well.

Being a Samaritan made the man who thanked Jesus also an outcast. In this story even Jesus refers to him as “this foreigner”. Samaritans of course were Israelites. They worshiped the same God as the Judeans, they shared the same ancestry, the same dietary, cultural, and religious practices, and even the same languages. The only real differences between them were that Samaritans claimed that God lived on Mount Gerizim in Samaria, while the Judeans believed that God lived on Mount Zion in Jerusalem; and the Samaritans only accepted Torah rather than the later writings of the Bible (which were largely written by Judeans). The hatred between the Samaritans and Judeans, like all prejudices, really stemmed from historic power struggles, convenient scapegoating, and that there is no resentment quite as strong as another group that is almost identical to you, but you believe is slightly wrong.

This story isn’t just miraculous because of the skin diseases being cured, it isn’t just miraculous because even “this foreigner” showed miraculous gratitude, it is miraculous how God’s presence and grace crosses all divisions, restoring us to life. The story begins with the lepers standing at a distance, calling to Jesus for mercy, it ends with a man, “this foreigner”, restored to life, no longer calling to God from a distance, but thanking and praising him at Jesus’ feet. Close enough to touch.

“Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

I said at the beginning that this was a story about gratitude, and it is. But it’s not about the gratitude of the Samaritan or the apparent lack of gratitude from the other lepers who were healed. This is a story about being grateful for our neighbors; faith overcoming all our divisions.

This may feel like a foreign story. You can see how much time we had to take to explain and understand what is really happening between Jesus, the village, and the lepers. I wish it were a story about a far away place and time that reminds us to say “thank you”. But this is a story that is still happening today. It calls us to reflect on who are the lepers today. Who are the foreigners, the ones we believe are forsaken by God, the ones we shun—the ones who we consider so unclean we will not let even their shadow touch us? How can we be healed?

Much like in Jesus’ earthly life, we have created plenty of divisions and shunned those we fear or don’t understand. We pretend that our society is one built on equal opportunity for all, we claim to be compassionate by offering welfare and the occasional land acknowledgement, we insist that we believe that all lives matter. Yet we put spikes near doorways and underpasses, we cut food assistance because it’s “too expensive”, and we allow people to fall into financial ruin if they happen to get sick. When times get tough for everyone, we don’t look to our neighbors for support and common cause, we look for people to blame.

This isn’t because we are particularly wicked or hopelessly lost, it is because we are ungrateful. We do not appreciate our neighbors as we should, we need to repent and give thanks for the gifts that God has given us.

Consider for a moment a toaster. It’s a fairly common kitchen appliance that is relatively inexpensive, at least for the basic ones. If you can find one these days without “smart features”, a typical toaster will consist of around 400 parts. The copper that made the wire and the circuit board was likely mined in Chile and processed in America. The plastic likely came from oil extracted from Norway and was formed into shape in China. The tungsten that makes the heating elements probably came from Russia. The iron that makes the springs, screws, and basket for the bread was likely smelted into steel in Canada. The circuit board was probably printed in Taiwan, and it was probably all assembled together in Vietnam or China before it finally made it to your kitchen. That doesn’t even account for all the designers who made it attractive on your countertop, engineers who made it actually toast evenly, safety regulators who made sure it doesn’t burn your house down, on and on. You can look at almost any object in your home, and it will testify to countless people working together. A toaster is one example, even a silly one, of how we are not independent of one other. We do not regularly appreciate that our food, our clothing, our medicine, even our entertainment, language, and culture are all testaments to humanity working together.

If we were truly grateful for the gifts God has given us, we would be most grateful for our neighbors. Despite the undeniable truth that we need each other not only to survive, but to make this life and the life to come joyous, we show profound ingratitude. We set up divisions and look for excuses to cast people out, we deny people the dignity of a good life because we determine some more valuable to the global market than others. We say we care about children and the elderly, yet we do not pay teachers and care workers well, we expel “foreigners”.

It doesn’t have to be this way. As disciples of Jesus, we know who to thank for all the gifts of this life, and we know who to turn to for help. Jesus healed the lepers and acknowledged the Samaritan’s gratitude because God’s grace is for everyone. God doesn’t live on Mount Gerizim, or Mount Zion, or Mount Rushmore. God belongs to no single nation, people, or culture. God has made this world for us and for all people, that we all may share in His gifts. There are no foreigners, just neighbors we do not yet love. It is our task to turn around and thank God, to let our faith overcome all divisions. When we do accept God’s grace and truly love all our neighbors, then the world will be healed. There is much still to overcome, it will take faith not only in God but in each other, but it is that faith that will make us well. Amen.