Leaping lepers. That is as good an image as any for the
sight of a rag-tag bunch hustling down the road to the Temple.
Just a few minutes ago they had been the ancient cast of one of
the oldest "Survivor" dramas in history. No, they were not on
some South Pacific island, but as far as the rest of Israelite
society was concerned, that would have been preferable.
Scripture was clear: "The person with such an infectious disease
must wear torn clothes, let his hair be unkempt, cover the lower
part of his face and cry out, 'Unclean! Unclean!' As long as he
has the infection he remains unclean. He must live alone; he
must live outside the camp."(1)
The REAL "L" word, now that the election is over. Not
Liberal. Leprosy. Both what we now know as Hansen's Disease,
which destroys the nerves in the fingers and toes making them
insensitive to pain and finally leads the victims to wear their
limbs down through repeated injuries, but also any one of a
number of other skin diseases. Unclean. The Hebrew people had a
thing about skin diseases. Even sacrificial animals - goats or
sheep or doves - that happened to have a mottled or blemished
coat were routinely rejected from the Temple rituals (good thing
for the animals, I guess - it saved them from the slaughter!).
But human beings whose body's outer "coat," as it were, happened
to be blotched or mottled or visibly birthmarked were often
equally rejected. Their condition was seen as a mark of divine
judgment. They were shunted off to the fringes, out of sight, if
not out of mind. They were encouraged, when they did draw close
to an inhabited town, to cover their faces with hoods and veils.
Some of this was because their diseases were thought to be highly
contagious - although, truth be told, it was just as much because
they simply looked different. No wonder that lepers, in Jesus'
time, tended to travel in packs - it was for their own
protection. It was a pretty miserable life.
Now, here comes Jesus. By this point, his fame had begun to
spread. After all, word of someone who can routinely do the
miraculous things that Jesus did was bound to get around. Three
days before, Jesus had healed a leper. Whether these ten had
heard about that and were thinking that this might be their lucky
day is a matter of conjecture, but, from the appropriate
distance, they cry out, "Jesus, Master, have pity on us!"
Perhaps they were just looking for a hand-out. Who knows?
"Jesus, Master, have pity on us!"
And he did. But not in the way we might have expected. He
did not go over to these sad sufferers, did not lay hands on them
or offer a kind blessing. He just yells back - "Go, show
yourselves to the priests." Standard operating procedure
according to the book of Leviticus.(2) Once you have been declared
ritually unclean on account of a skin disease, the only road back
to polite society - in the unlikely event of a healing - is to go
to a priest. He will examine your skin, then put you through a
ritual of religious purification, and voilá, you are back again.
So, all ten lepers, simply on Jesus' say-so, head off down the
road, in search of a priest. No indication of any hesitancy on
their part. Off they go...even before they are healed. Amazing.
And as we know, their step of faith was certainly rewarded. As
Luke recounts it, "as they went, they were cleansed." NOW we
have those Leaping Lepers!!!
Hallelujah! Head 'em up, move 'em out. Off they ran as
fast as they could go. To see a husband, a wife, a son or
daughter, a father or mother, a grandfather or grandmother they
had not seen for who knows how long. Off they ran to see their
fields, their fishing boat, their friends. As fast as they could
go. No longer yelling "unclean," now CLEAN! Ten Lepers Leaping,
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree.
But wait. One of them is coming back. And he is yelling
something. What's that? As the text says, he was "praising God
in a loud voice." He comes right up to Jesus, throws himself at
the Master's feet...and says Thank You. Nice touch. But now the
zinger - he was a Samaritan.
Aw, Luke, why do you have to go and mess up a nice healing
story with that little detail. A Samaritan. Now, as you Bible
scholars know, during an ancient Israelite war, most of those
citizens living up north in Samaria were killed or taken into
exile. However, a few of them, who were so unimportant that
nobody wanted them, were left there. History says that the
conquering king forced people from five foreign cities to settle
in Samaria.(3) These foreigners inter-married with the natives and
they brought in the worship of their own gods. By Jesus' time,
Samaritans were considered half-breeds by the "true" Israelites.
The Samaritans had perverted the race. They had perverted the
religion. The animosity between the Jews and Samaritans was so
great that some Jews would go miles out of their way to avoid
walking on Samaritan territory. In our day, it could be the
Bosnians and Serbs in the Balkans, Hindus and Muslims in India,
Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. Sadly, it is
becoming more and more true of Christians and Muslims in all too
many places around the world.
Now, we have this Samaritan cluttering up our story. If
this were Survivor, he would have been the first to be voted off
the island. Has it occurred to anyone that it would have made no
sense for this man to go to Jerusalem for ritual cleansing?
Samaritans worship on Mt. Gerazim, and besides, he would not have
been welcome in Jerusalem anyway. As one of my friends notes,
this would be like a Buddhist walking into a Catholic
confessional and asking how many "Hail Marys" he ought to say.(4)
One way or another, the man interrupts his journey and comes back
to Jesus with his Thank You. And ever since, the other nine have
been beaten up by preachers through the centuries as incredible,
ungrateful wretches. "Remember how, when you were a kid, your
mother made you sit down and write a thank-you note to that
elderly aunt who sent you a hand-knit sweater for Christmas?
From the way some interpreters have handled this passage, you
would think that was the nine former lepers' chief offense: they
forgot to send a thank-you. Emily Post would be horrified: just
horrified!"(5) So there!
Is that the point of all this? If it is, I want to offer a
word or two in defense of the nine. First off, they did exactly
what Jesus told them to do. There is no indication of any
reluctance on their part. There is certainly no indication of
ingratitude. Jesus says GO, they GO. Sounds like obedient faith
to me.
"How about a word or two on behalf of the nine lepers who
did not return to give thanks?" That is how Martin Bell begins
his essay on this text in an intriguing collection entitled The
Way of the Wolf.(6) "What about the others? It's simple really,"
Bell writes. And then he goes on to tell of the one who was so
frightened that he could only look for a place to hide. He
describes one of the former lepers who was offended that Jesus
did not make him work harder in order to be healed. Another one
discovered pretty quickly that he did not want to be healed.
Bell imagines that one was a mother who did not return to give
thanks because she was rushing to see her children. One was so
happy he just forgot to say thanks. For one of those healed, it
was going to take a long time to repair the broken dignity -
there is something that happens to a person forced to beg and
shunned by all and still expected to say thank you.
Bell continues on about a seventh leper who was convinced
there would be a perfectly intelligible, scientific explanation
for what happened. He did not return to give thanks because he
believed Jesus had nothing to do with the healing event. And
then leper number eight did not return precisely because he did
believe Jesus had everything to do with it. To return and give
thanks when the Messiah had arrived, when the Kingdom of God was
at hand, well that would be unheard of - he was running to tell
the news. And one last leper, the ninth, Bell invites the reader
to ponder because no one really knew what happened to him or her.
If you have ten, one is bound to fade away.
It is much easier to condemn the nine rather than understand
them. Jesus knew about the ten and where they were and where
they went and why they were and who they were, and he healed them
all the same. Martin Bell concludes with the thought that
perhaps the point is not in the one who returns, but in the ten
who were healed.
Perhaps. Actually, I think that IS the point of Part One of
the story. There is NOTHING beyond the power of God. Even
something as awful as leprosy (or AIDS or cancer or heart
disease; insert what you will in there). And note that there was
no question asked of these ten about their faith in advance of
the miracle. Forget any quid pro quo's like "If you have enough
faith, this or that will happen." Nope. Jesus just did it.
Almost by long distance even. "Go, show yourselves to the
priests."
But then we come to Part Two. "One of them, when he saw he
was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw
himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him--and he was a Samaritan."
A Democrat. A Republican. Insert what you will. Good guy,
regardless.
Yes, this story has been used for generations at this time
of the year. Thanksgiving week...the time to count your
blessings, name them one by one, and thank God, just like our
good guy hero. If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on
your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep, you are richer
than 75% of this world. If you have money in the bank, cash in
your wallet and spare change in a dish someplace, you are among
the top 8% of the earth's wealthiest people. If you woke up this
morning with more health than illness, you are more fortunate
than the million who will not survive this week. If you have
never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of
imprisonment, the agony of torture or the pangs of starvation,
you are ahead of 500 million people in the world. If you can
attend this worship service, or any other religion-related
meeting, without fear of harassment, arrest, torture or death,
you are fortunate - billions of people in the world cannot.(7)
It
is not hard for us to count our blessings, is it? Most of us
could easily jot down a rather lengthy list.
But the story continues. "Jesus asked, "Were not all ten
cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return
and give praise to God except this foreigner?"
Hmm. Despite the fact that this text has been used for
years as a club to beat us into being more thankful (as if that
were really possible anyway), this is not, fundamentally, a story
about giving thanks. Rather it is about seeing something. When
Jesus chides the other nine for not returning, it is not because
he feels personally slighted because they forgot to send a
thank-you note. It is because only this man - this unbeliever,
according to conventional wisdom - has realized that his healing
is an act of God. Jesus does not say of the nine, "Was none of
them found to return and say thank you except this foreigner?"
No, what he actually says is, "Was no one found to return and
give praise to God...?"
To be honest, if there is anything for which to give thanks
this week, this may be the most important. Being able to see
what is right in front of us all the time. As one commentator
has it, "Christianity is, above all, a way of seeing...Christians
see differently, and that is why their prayer, their worship, the
action, their whole way of being in the world, has a distinctive
accent and flavor." Origen of Alexandria once remarked that
holiness is seeing with the eyes of Christ. Thomas Aquinas said
that the ultimate goal of the Christian life is a "beatific
vision," an act of seeing.(8) The Samaritan SAW something, and it
changed his life. Not only was he healed, he was made whole.
What do you see this morning? A glass half-full? Half-empty? No glass at all? William Sloan Coffin, one of our
generation's truly prophetic voices, reflects thoughtfully on the
issues that he now faces due to declining health. Coffin says:
I am less intentional than 'attentional.' I am more and
more attentive to family and friends and to nature's
beauty. Although still outraged by callous behavior,
particularly in high places, I feel more often serene,
grateful for God's gift of life. For the compassions
that fail not, I find myself saying daily to my loving
Maker, 'I can no other answer make than thanks, and
thanks, and ever thanks.'(9)
May it be for all of us. "Rise and go; your faith has made
you well." Happy Thanksgiving.
Amen!
1. Leviticus 13:45-46
2. 14:1-32
3. II Kings 17:24
4. Carlos Wilton, "How Great Journeys Begin," sermon preached at Point Pleasant
Presbyterian Church, Point Pleasant, NJ, 10/10/04
5. ibid.
6. David A. Davis, "One for Ten," sermon preached at Nassau Presbyterian Church,
Princeton, NJ, 8/24/03
7. Homiletics, "Thanks for Nothing," 11/24/02
8. Brian Stoffregen, via Ecunet, "Gospel Notes for Next Sunday," #10513, 10/3/04
9. William Sloane Coffin, Credo, (Louisville, KY : Westminster/John Knox Press, 2004), p. 173
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