Somebodiness

As Jesus was entering a village, ten lepers met him. . . One of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying God in a loud voice; and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. He was a Samaritan. Jesus said in reply, “Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?” Then he said to him, “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.” (Luke 17. 11, 15-19)

Scripture, as a rule, is like a deep well, never running dry, always providing a fresh drink to quench a person’s thirst. This is an important point to remember anytime we are privileged to partake of a page of the holy text. While there is a tendency to slurp down in a few gulps the first cup of water we draw, finding it sufficient to slack our thirst, we may find it beneficial to drop deeper into the well, where cooler water with fewer contaminants runs.

Such is the case with the text we hear today, a familiar story to all of us, retold regularly at Thanksgiving services, where we are reminded to be grateful people. The story of the ten lepers, all of whom were healed by Rabbi Jesus, but only one of whom returns to give thanks, offers a sturdy springboard for soliloquies or sermons on appreciating the good things we have received.

And that point is always a good reminder, the same point taught to most of us by our mothers who said to us when we were young children and someone gave us something, “What do you say? Say thank you.” Generally, the rule stuck, although an argument could be made that fewer moms are now teaching their children the lesson, living as we do in an age defined by expectation and entitlement, believing we are owed something, and failing to express appreciation for the things we have been given. 

So, another call for gratitude is always a good thing and, without a doubt, the obvious theme of the text that the evangelist Luke offers in telling the story of the ten lepers that are healed by Rabbi Jesus. As we hear Rabbi Jesus say at the end of the encounter, “Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?” 

Hearing those words, there is little else to be said, the only possible response on our part being embarrassment and regret if we find ourselves more like the nine who failed to give thanks than like the one who returned to say thank you to Rabbi Jesus for the good done to him by the miracle worker of Galilee. No more ink needs spilled, a full sermon found in those five words, “Where are the other nine?”

Today, then, I propose we go deeper into the text, finding below the surface a point as challenging as the call for gratitude, but a point often overlooked because of a failure to spend time with the text. This time we sip from the cup of Scripture, allowing ourselves to taste fully of the content, savoring the richness of the text, finding in it a directive as strong as that of being grateful for what we have received.

And that message is below the surface, already present at the start, when Luke tells us that Rabbi Jesus was traveling through Samaria on his way to Jerusalem. Samaria, as we know, was considered by the Jews to be a place of half-breeds, not pure-blooded Jews like those in Judea. The animosity between Samaria and Judea had centuries to grow, differences exaggerated, distinctions elevated. 

The reason was simple. When the Jews were deported during the conquest of the Northern Kingdoms in the eighth century, non-Jews migrated into the area and established a foothold in the region. When some of the exiles returned from Assyria, they married these Gentiles that now lived in the region, a capital offense in the eyes of the Jews in the Southern Kingdom, resulting in the Samaritans being considered of a lower-status, enemies to the way of life of the true Jews in Jerusalem and its environs.

In short, Rabbi Jesus was in foreign territory, if not on enemy terrain, so far as the Jews of Judea were concerned. He knew it. He even refers to the singular leper who returned as “this foreigner,” making clear he understood how his Jewish compatriots considered the man. He was not one of them, not of their people, the “other.”

Given the emphasis of location in the story, then it is but a small step for us to ponder its significance, unless we want to stay with the simple solution that it happened to be where Rabbi Jesus was that day. However, we want to remember that Luke is not shy about praising Samaritans. We saw it earlier in the story of “the Good Samaritan” and we find it again here in the story of “the Grateful Samaritan.” 

It can’t be considered as coincidental, not really, especially in light of Luke’s gospel being written to and for a Gentile, that is non-Jewish, audience. That a non-Jew should find himself elevated in both stories is significant and serves as a signal for special attention from us. In short, by pointing to a Samaritan in both stories as receiving praise, while others with status of one sort or another do not, suddenly turns nobodies into somebodies. Those shunned and shoved to the sidelines occupy front and center roles in the Lucan texts.

If anything, Luke is consistent, always showing Rabbi Jesus flipping things inside out, making the last first and the first last. Already at the start, a peasant girl is called to be the mother of the son of the Most High God. Shepherds, people with almost the lowest status in those times, are summoned to the site of the birth of the child. The poor are called blessed by Rabbi Jesus. And here in this story, once again, an outsider is portrayed as the singular example of someone who does the right thing, while others in the story do not.

So, the entirety of the gospel–both volumes of Luke’s text–can be seen as challenging us to consider the real possibility that those we consider nobodies are, in fact, somebodies; and those we might consider somebodies–those with power, position, and prestige–are, in fact, nobody of real, superior moral character. 

As Mary says to her cousin Elizabeth when she visits her, “The Mighty One has thrown down the rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the lowly.” Had we been listening closely in those early pages of the text when Mary appeared, we would have heard in her words one of the central foci of this gospel as it unfolds.

In effect, this is a radical redefining of status. And we should not doubt for a moment that those surrounding Rabbi Jesus were shocked to their shoe soles by the switcheroo. Almost everything they had assumed about the social order was drawn into question, borders opened, differences erased, walls bulldozed.    

The end result, if we allow ourselves to be open to such a world, is that suddenly we see people in a different light, especially those who too often are unseen. Here again, Luke is trying to tell us something important in the text when he writes that the ten lepers “stood at a distance from Jesus and raised their voices . . . and when he saw them, he said, ‘Go show yourselves to the priests.’” 

Proscribed by law from approaching healthy people, lepers were required to stay at a distance, away from others, out of sight. Their sickness physically and psychologically cast them outside the walls of the city, resulting not only in their physical deterioration, but also in their psychological destruction, finding themselves to be nobody in the sight of others, forced to live alone and apart, isolated from the rest of humanity. 

But Rabbi Jesus saw them, a reaction that resulted in their resuming a place in the human family, seen as persons, not as a disease; seen as worthy, not as unworthy; seen as deserving compassion, not as undeserving. So often, we find Rabbi Jesus seeing others that nobody notices, especially the foreigner, the forlorn, and the forgotten. He sees somebodies where others see nobodies.

And why did he see them, while others did not? Because the Most High God saw them. They were his children as much as anybody else was. And because God saw them, Rabbi Jesus saw them. And because Rabbi Jesus saw them, we who follow in his footsteps also are called to see them, whoever they are, wherever they are, whatever their distance from us, whether in setting, or status, or situation.

If we choose not to see them, the only other option–one chosen by many–is to step over them, convincing ourselves that they are distant from us, different from us, deficient compared to us. It is no accident that Luke follows the story of the rich man and Lazarus at his doorstep with the story of the ten lepers. Unlike the rich man who stepped over Lazarus on his way to his next sumptuous meal, Rabbi Jesus stops and sees the lepers, in this way transforming them from nobodies into somebodies, a task that becomes ours as we walk through the world, attempting to imitate the Rabbi and his ways.

When we are able to do it–to see the foreigner, understood as the one who is not like us–then we have taken the first step towards rebuilding community instead of walls, towards reclaiming dignity for the other instead of prejudice, towards removing distance instead of keeping away those who are different. Of course, the next step after seeing them is to help them, to heal them, and to hold them close so that they never suffer alone or in isolation again.

One of the lesser known speeches of Martin Luther King, recovered only in 2010 from a recording, was the one that he gave to the students at Glenville High School in Cleveland on April 26, 1967. He had come to Cleveland to report on the Montgomery bus boycott and to raise money for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He also came to register voters and to plan protests against the prejudice that pervaded parts of the country. 

Perhaps most importantly, in his speech he reminded the black students of Glenville High School that they were somebody. Addressing them, Dr. King said: “I would like to suggest some of the things that you must do and some of the things that all of us must do in order to be truly free. Now the first thing that we must do is to develop within ourselves a deep sense of somebodiness. Don’t let anybody make you feel that you are nobody. Because the minute one feels that way, he is incapable of rising to his full maturity as a person.”

A short while later in the speech, he explained to them, “We must feel that we count. That we belong. That we are persons. That we are children of the living God. And it means that we go down in our soul and find that somebodiness and we must never again be ashamed of ourselves. We must never be ashamed of our heritage. We must not be ashamed of the color of our skin. Black is as beautiful as any color and we must believe it.  And so every black person in this country must rise up and say I’m somebody.”

In a real way, the episode in Rabbi Jesus’ life that we hear today expresses the same belief. The Samaritan–segregated from Jewish life as much as any black person in the South during Jim Crow was separated from society–returned to express gratitude to Rabbi Jesus because he alone understood that the Rabbi had seen him as somebody, and in seeing him, had restored more to him than just his health.

–Jeremy Myers