As Jesus continued his journey to Jerusalem, he traveled through Samaria and Galilee. As he was entering a village, ten lepers met him. They stood at a distance from him and raised their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!” And when he saw them, he said, “Go show yourselves to the priests.” As they were going they were cleansed. And 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 17.11-19)
Once again today, we are graced with a story that is particular to Luke’s gospel, found nowhere else in scripture, although it bears striking similarities to a story found in the Second Book of Kings, this one concerning a foreigner who also was healed of leprosy as was the man in the Lucan story whom we meet today. Also, this story found in Chapter 17 of Luke’s gospel carries overtones of the healing of the leper that is found in Chapter 5, resulting in some scholars considering this second healing story an expansion of the first.
Regardless of its antecedents, the story is classic Lucan in its message, containing some of the evangelist’s favorite themes, including the emphasis on divine mercy, found in the ten lepers cry to Rabbi Jesus, “Jesus, Master! Have mercy on us.” Already in Chapter 1, we find Mary extolling the mercy of God when she says to Elizabeth, “The Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is from age to age to those who fear him.” She refers to divine mercy at least three times in her so-called Magnificat, also known as the Song of Mary.
Another favorite Lucan theme also shows its face here, that of faith, the singular leper who showed gratitude praised for his faith by Jesus who says to the man, “Stand up and go. Your faith has saved you.” The same words were spoken by Jesus when he addressed the sinful woman who washed his feet with her tears at the banquet held in the house of a leading Pharisee. He said to her, “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.”
Later in the gospel, we will hear Jesus say the words again, this time to the blind man on the outskirts of Jericho who begged Jesus to have mercy on him. Healing him, Jesus says to the blind man, “Have sight, your faith has saved you.” And at the end of the gospel, we can infer much the same when Jesus says to one of the thieves crucified next to him, the one who had chastised his companion for ridiculing Jesus, “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
But perhaps the most important theme found in this story that is classic Lucan in its expression is that of the outsider who finds a reversal of fortune. At the time, no one was more of an outsider than a leper, forced to live away from others because of his disease, and humiliated every day by having to shout the words “Unclean, unclean” to warn others to keep their distance from him.
These proscriptions were found in the Book of Leviticus in the Hebrew scriptures and were rigorously enforced because of the fear of contagion from the leper, which explains why Jesus told the ten lepers to show themselves to the priests, the only way for these prohibitions to be lifted, thereby removing the status of an outsider from the now healed lepers. Only then, without any sign of the skin disease, could they rejoin the community.
But the track I would like to take with this story is yet another theme that was a favorite one of Luke, that of the foreigner who is praised by Jesus. While it might be included under the umbrella of the outcast, it deserves special attention because the tenth leper is not only an outcast because of his disease, but also because he is a foreigner. The fact that he was a Samaritan, the despised enemy of the Jews, meant he was a super outcast.
And yet, as we saw in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, this foreigner is elevated and praised by Jesus, shocking his listeners and onlookers who could not imagine a world where a Samaritan comes off as the hero in a story. Nevertheless, in both instances these foreigners are put before the crowds as models to imitate, the Good Samaritan for his love of others, this Samaritan for his great faith.
There is nothing subtle in Jesus’ words, making clear just who this tenth leper is. He says to the onlookers, “Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?” As Luke had done with the story of the Good Samaritan, he saves for last this fact of the status of the man as a foreigner, a punch to the gut to the Jewish listeners in each instance.
As is apparent in any reading of his two-volume work, the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, Luke is especially concerned about foreigners. One obvious reason, of course, is because Luke himself is a foreigner, a Gentile by birth, a native of Antioch. He is the only foreigner whose writing is included in the Christian scriptures. Obviously, he will have a special sensitivity to the status of the foreigner.
But in the rush to find an answer for his interest in the foreigner, we may overlook an important point that the evangelist is trying to make by his special attention to the outcast from another country. His real point is that anyone who calls himself a follower of Jesus should see himself as an outcast, someone who stands apart from the citizens of this world because of his beliefs and practices, often held in the same contempt as foreigners.
The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews also understood this same point, writing to his readers, “We have not here a lasting city, but seek one that is to come.” While the verse is often interpreted as speaking of the here and now versus the hereafter, the fact of the matter is it also refers to the harsh reality that followers of Jesus do not enjoy citizenship in this world, a world ruled by the powerful, the privileged, and the prosperous.
If we live as true followers of Jesus, in all likelihood we will find ourselves treated as outcasts and aliens, people not only with a different outlook, but also as people from a different world, a place at odds with this world and its ways where might makes right and where challengers to the status quo end up crucified.
It makes perfect sense, then, that Jesus’ final moments are spent on a cross erected outside the city walls of Jerusalem, strung up with two hardened criminals. In the eyes of the Pharisees and religious leaders of Jerusalem, he is just another outcast, little different from the two thieves to his right and to his left. Ironically, while he may have claimed Jewish heritage, he, in fact, was a foreigner, coming from heaven to earth, something the Pharisees failed to see in their rush to judge him as an outsider simply because his beliefs did not align with their own.
While the story of the ten lepers who were made clean by Jesus begs to be interpreted as a story of ingratitude on the part of the nine lepers who did not return to give thanks to Jesus, the fact that the only one to show gratitude was a foreigner means the story must include that reality. Otherwise, we end up removing an essential and important part of Luke’s intent.
When we allow for that fact, then we find ourselves looking at the story as one with a special concern for the foreigner, the one man praised in this story, forcing us to reconcile our understanding of the foreigner with Jesus’ high praise of the Samaritan. If we do that, then we find ourselves in a very uncomfortable place, seeing how our views of the foreigner too often diverge from Jesus’ own practice and beliefs, realizing we are far from his ways even while we call ourselves his followers.
Sadly, we live in times when the foreigner among us is criticized, castigated, and carted off for no good reason except he or she comes from another place and, as a result, is considered unworthy to share the same space that we inhabit, treated and mistreated as severely as the lepers were in Jesus’ times, made to cry, “Unclean, unclean.”
Like the rich man we have met earlier in Luke’s gospel, we sit at our tables loaded with sumptuous food while the poor man Lazarus whose face we find in the immigrant stays on the other side of our doorstep, yearning for the scraps of food that fall from our tables, and yet we turn a blind eye to him or, worse still, we demand that he be removed from our sight and sent back to where he came from, a place from which he fled, wanting only a better life for himself and for his children.
It is a sure proof of our gross ingratitude that we cannot share the safe space and the many blessings that are ours with the foreigner who has little to nothing, not even a place to call home, showing none of the mercy that God has shown to us in gifting us with more than we need and more than we deserve. Instead, we extend rebuke, recrimination, and no recourse except more pain, more persecution, and more finger-pointing onto the immigrant.
Sadly, few religious leaders have spoken out against the current climate of hostility and hot-headedness toward the foreigner in our midst, all the while claiming allegiance to the Christian way of life, failing to become the voice of Jesus that welcomed the outcast, healed the leper, and praised the foreigner who stood before him, begging for mercy.
But one leader’s voice has begun to speak loudly on behalf of the immigrant and that voice belongs to Pope Leo XIV who has stated unequivocally that refugees must not be met with “the coldness of indifference or the stigma of discrimination” upon reaching new lands in pursuit of a better life. Instead, he insists that we are to open our arms and hearts to those who arrive from lands that are distant and violent.
And to those whose myopic vision allows them to carry the banner of pro-life because of their stance against abortion, but who seem unable to recognize that we must love every human being that God has called to life, Pope Leo has restated the fundamental principle of Christianity that dignity is owed every person by unapologetically stating, “Someone who says, ‘I’m against abortion, but I’m in favor of the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don’t know if that’s pro-life.”
Of course, all of this and more is found again today in the story of the ten lepers, all of whom were healed by Jesus, one of whom–a despised Samaritan–returned to give thanks for the mercy shown him by Jesus, reminding us that as his followers we are to show the same mercy to the outcast among us if for no other reason than we ourselves also are outcasts who have been forgiven, cleansed, and healed by God, requiring us to show the same pity to those who stand before us, shunned by society and discriminated by virtue of their foreign status.
If we fail to do so, then we are as ungrateful as the nine who did not return to give thanks, Jesus’ words, “Where are the other nine?” serving as a haunting reminder of where we stand in this story of healing and of mercy, while the Samaritan kneels alone before Jesus, a foreigner whose heart is full of gratitude, the only one in the story who receives praise from the lips of the Galilean teacher, no better sign needed as to whose side Jesus stands on.
–Jeremy Myers
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