Last May when I was in Kansas for my grandmother’s funeral, my cousin shared with us a letter my father had written to her mother, his great aunt, when he was ten. The letter was a thank you letter following a summer visit to Kansas. My father wrote: “Dear Aunt Lee. Mom is making me write this letter to you. I told her that you would not be expecting a thank you letter from me, because you know me and you know that thank you letters are not my thing. But mom is making me write you this letter anyway. Thank you for letting me come visit. Love, Glen.
I struggled with the sermon this week, because this Gospel story about Jesus felt to me like my dad felt about being forced to write a thank you note. When I write sermons, I always try to figure out what is the good thing Jesus is doing for us in the passage. This week the thing Jesus is doing felt like, “Jesus says, you better say thank you.” And that just didn’t feel like Jesus. But I think this morning on my drive in, after a week of agonizing, I finally figured something out. So here’s what I have, it’s a little rough, but I’m going to walk you through my journey through the passage this week, and see what I came up with as to what Jesus is saying in this story.
“On the way to Jerusalem.” Such a simple statement, on the way to Jerusalem. This story is no more than a stop along the way. A thing that happened at a rest stop, a road side station, just a quick pause on a part of a larger journey. On the way to Jerusalem, like one might be on the way to Detroit, or on the way to Chicago. Just a pause on the way to a destination.
But Jerusalem is not just a destination. It is not just a place to end a journey. Since chapter nine, Jesus’ mission has been clear. Jesus was going to Jerusalem to die. And in dying the very idea of death itself would be destroyed. Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem, yes. But more importantly, Jesus was on the way to bring salvation, life, and healing to the whole world. Jesus was on the way to resurrection.
But to reach Jerusalem, Jesus had to get from Galilee to Judea. And in between was Samaria. Now Samaria, if you remember, was outsider territory. It was a place to be avoided by all good, God-fearing Israelites. Samaritans and Jews were mortal enemies, each totally convinced of the other’s unworthiness. This was not Jesus’ first encounter with Samaritans. Just a few chapters earlier, he told that unlikely parable of the Good Samaritan who cared for his neighbor. And in Acts, we will hear how the Good News of Jesus Christ spread outward. Not content to stay in Judea, the Holy Spirit led the apostles from Jerusalem into Samaria, and throughout the whole world. But we’re not there yet. We’re here. In the region between Samaria and Galilee. An in-between space only Jesus was convinced it was ok to go. Neither Samaritans nor Jews would ever enter such an uneasy space, a space that could too easily be inhabited by the other. But throughout Luke’s Gospel, we have seen Jesus always going into the spaces that others would not go. The space between Pharisees and tax collectors, the space between townspeople and men possessed by demons, the space between the healed and the hurting. On the way to Jerusalem, on the way the space between the living and the dead, Jesus first walked through the region between Galilee and Samaria, because boundaries are of human origin, they have no meaning in the Kingdom of God.
When you walk through border regions, you are bound to come across others who have been relegated to spaces where most will not go. Border regions have been throughout history the gathering places of the outcast, the outsider, the looked down upon. In first century Palestine, there was no group more outsider than lepers. Leprosy was thought to be a highly contagious and terrifying disease. Those suspected of having leprosy were cast out of their communities, forced to live on the outskirts away from so-called healthy people. Jewish law required lepers to keep their distance, and if approached by someone, to shout “leper, leper,” so that all would know to steer clear. The group of lepers in this story did everything by the law. They were on the outskirts of a village, and as they approached Jesus they kept their distance, as the law required, shouting their requests from afar, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”
But there is something unique about their request. This is the only time in Luke’s Gospel when Jesus was addressed as “master” by someone other than the disciples. Every other time Jesus was called “master,” it was a disciple who was called him that. So there is something unique about this group of lepers. We see in the way they addressed Jesus, that they knew he was more than just someone wandering through borderlands, he was someone who transcended borders.
When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” This was not an idle command; it was exactly how one would be allowed back into a community. Remember how I said people with leprosy had to live outside of villages, away from other people. But first century medical science was not as advanced as it is today, so sometimes people diagnosed as having leprosy really had some other, completely harmless, skin ailment. Something that would clear up in a while on its own. So if that happened, the way to leave the leper colony and rejoin the world again, per the Jewish law, was to show oneself to a priest. The priest would examine the person and determine if they were in fact healed from their ailment. And if they were, the person would then be allowed to come back into the community. So when Jesus said, “Go and show yourselves to the priests,” all he’s saying to them is, “go and get yourselves checked again.”
Which, ok, is weird, because these guys, we can presume, really did have leprosy, and no amount of “checks” was going to change that fact. But, having already addressed Jesus as master, they dutifully did as they were told. Unlike Naaman from our first reading, who begged and whined for a more interesting healing story, these ten just went, as requested, to present themselves to the priests.
What follows is maybe the least interesting healing miracle in the Bible. “And as they went, they were made clean.” In most healing stories, the healing is the big plot point, it’s the climax, that moment when the entire narrative turns. But this really isn’t a healing story at all; it’s a story about something else. So when the healing occurs, it is just a point in the narrative. A detail that is necessary to reach the exciting part. “And as they went, they were made clean.”
But one of them, “when he was 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.” When I read this, I thought the same question that Jesus asked him, “Were not ten made clean?” Why did none of the others come back, just “this foreigner”? Why did only the Samaritan return?
Part of what’s going on here is this gradual expansion that we’ve seen throughout all of Luke’s Gospel, of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. The message of Jesus, the salvation Jesus brings, is not just for those who follow Jesus, not just for the Israelites, but for the whole world. The Samaritans, those whom would have been seen on the outside, are not just a part of the Kingdom of God, but are a central part. They are people that we can and should emulate, until they become we. The Samaritan was the exact last leper the crowd would have expected to return, and yet here he was, the one who came to praise and give thanks.
I thought a lot this week about the Samaritan, and why he came back. And I wondered if his outsider status let him be open to this change in his story that the others couldn’t see. Having leprosy certainly blurred the lines of in and out, but in a group with nine Jews and one Samaritan, I wonder if he was an outsider even amongst the lepers. And so, as they were walking along, heading to show themselves to the priests, were the others so fixed on their destination that they didn’t even know that a healing had taken place? Could it be that the others didn’t return, because they didn’t even know that they no longer had leprosy? All ten were made clean, we know that. But maybe the other nine didn’t know. When I picture this scene in my head, I see the ten walking along the road to the priest. When suddenly the Samaritan notices that he has been healed. And so surprised is he, that he takes off running back in the other direction. The other nine are so focused on the journey that they don’t even notice his absence until several minutes later, when one of them pipes up, “Hey, where’d that other guy go off to?” But he was kind of an outsider anyway, and they are focused on the task at hand, so they keep on their way, totally unaware that the miracle that had caused him to run off had happened to them too. What if this whole story would have ended differently, if the Samaritan had told the others, hey look, open your eyes, we have been healed!
I was annoyed with Jesus though. And here’s the part I struggled with. Why was Jesus so hard on the other nine? Jesus felt like my demanding grandmother, you better say thank you. But here was my revelation on Raymond Road this morning. I thought about something I’ve preached several times before, that sometimes parables are descriptive rather than prescriptive. Meaning, sometimes we want the parables to say, “do this, or this will happen,” when really they say, “here’s what’s happening.” What if this healing story is like that as well? Because the thing about gratitude is, it really does change us. It really does heal us. It really does make us different, healthier, more contented people. What if the fact of this parable is the gratitude shown by the Samaritan really was part of his healing process? What if some part of him, not physically, but deep inside, really was healed by this act of gratitude? What if he had to let go of his own sense of injury, and that only happened by turning around and giving thanks to God.
The good news in this story, as far as I see it, is all ten were made clean. Jesus changed their story. They had been outsiders, now they were not. They had been lost, but Jesus found them. They had been sent to the edge of the world, but Jesus walked through that edge place and brought the edge into the middle of the Kingdom. This is how Jesus works. Not for anything they did, but simply because of Jesus’ love for outsiders, Jesus went to the places where they would be, and brought them back. That is the good news for the parts of us who are outsiders. For the parts of us that feel left outside, ostracized, pushed away. Jesus comes into those places and demands us to show ourselves, because we have been healed.
The challenge though, is do we notice? Do we know that we have been healed? Can we see the thing that God has done in our midst, in our very lives? The Samaritan had a clarity about himself that the other nine could not have, because they were too focused on their own journey.
Dear people of God, let this Samaritan be the clarion call for you. Let him do for you what he maybe didn’t do to his companions. Let him announce the good news of your healing to you. Look up, pay attention. You have been healed. So get up, go on your way, but don’t be silent. Be the Samaritan for others. Your faith, the faith God has in you, has made you well. Amen.
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