Ten lepers healed. Shout about that miracle from the rooftops! In an age of readily accessible medicine, it’s easy for us to forget the high cost of sickness in Jesus’ time. So let me bring it home to you: leprosy, which might have described any number of painful and debilitating skin diseases, would also have been cause for social isolation. What a party that healing ought to have been! Maybe, like the prodigal son, the ten went home to an overjoyed father and a fatted calf. But here’s the thing: we don’t actually know what happened to most of them. We only know of the one who turned back to thank Jesus. And he was a Samaritan.
Luke’s hearers would be aware of the centuries-long history of religious enmity between the Samaritans and the Jews. But since we weren’t there, we should know that the rivalry had both religious and geographic dimensions; perhaps a bit like the Bible belt functions in our country. The region of Samaria, along with Galilee to its north, had once been part of the northern Israelite tribes who separated from the southern tribes of Judah in the 10th century BCE. Two centuries later, these northern tribes were conquered by the Assyrian empire, precipitating inter-marriage and—from a Judean perspective—ethnic and religious compromise.
Over time, Samaritans developed their own rituals and traditions, although they shared a devotion to Torah. So—to extend the Bible belt analogy—we could say that everyone in the land was reading the same holy books, but they didn’t necessarily think each other’s interpretation or faith practices were valid. In fact, the hostility was such that Galilean pilgrims would usually bypass Samaria on their way to Jerusalem, even though it added considerable time to the journey.
Which brings me back to Jesus, deliberately traveling through the unstable borderlands. From the very first sentence of the Gospel we heard this morning, listen up—”On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee” it says—we already know social norms were being challenged. Luke, of all the evangelists, includes the most stories about Samaria and Samaritans. And in the Book of Acts—the post-resurrection continuation of Luke’s Gospel—the risen Jesus imagines Samaria as a kind of threshold between the Jewish homeland and worldwide ministry. “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth,” he says to the apostles. So the story we just heard serves hints at the ultimate healing of God’s whole community, not just the people with infected skin.
I had a small healing recently. Or maybe that’s not the right word, maybe it’s more like an “I told you so” comeuppance. My son Aaron, whom many of you know, had a special guest come to his high school classroom for career day. She’s a rather charismatic young finance professional who works for my husband, and she took a day off to talk to East Oakland teens who were mostly Latino like herself. After her visit, Aaron asked his class to write their thanks to Brianna. It didn’t go all that well. “Mom,” her reported back to me, “They were so stubborn about it. I finally understand why you got so frustrated when we were supposed to write thank you cards to our grandparents.” Thanks for noticing, kiddo! I feel much better already.
Of ten healed lepers, it was only the Samaritan who returned to give thanks. That is, the one whose shared ancestry with the Galilean rabbi did not normally engender brotherly love. If anything, they were adversaries in an ancient family feud. So I suspect it wasn’t his mother or his teacher who reminded the healed leper to say thank you, because there really wasn’t a duty of gratitude between Samaritans and Jews. To thank someone is an investment: an acknowledge that we are in relationship with them, and that we are committed to continuing the relationship.
The Samaritan leper didn’t have to thank Jesus. Nobody expected it of him, and none of the others healed lepers bothered to do so. We don’t have to thank our partners and friends for their kindnesses, or the people who serve us or clean our homes or the businesses we visit. We probably don’t even need to thank grandparents for Christmas gifts, although under my watch nobody got out of the house to play with new toys until the card was written
And to be fair, thanksgiving as a social nicety has its limitations. If your mom forced you to write a card to someone, were the thanks sincere? Maybe not. But here’s the thing: like so many of our most healthy habits, we can actually fake it ‘til we make it. We can exercise our bodies to the point of discomfort, until the new activity feels good. We can say our prayers by rote, until the day when the words well up in us spontaneously. We can thank the people to whom we owe a debt of gratitude—even when it may actually feel like paying a debt—until it becomes the most joyful and natural thing to do. And as someone who has listened to many sad stories of broken friendships and marriages, I can promised you this: a little intentionality about expressing gratitude goes a long way towards preventing and healing emotional hurts
Maybe this Gospel is about something more than restored skin and renewed relationship. Although, I assure you, it’s not about anything less. Whenever any healing happens, it is surely miracle enough! In our first lesson, we met the Aramean General Naaman cleansed of his leprosy because he listened to a slave girl. “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel,” the powerful man, now both healed and humbled, said.
Maybe there’s a cosmic significance to this encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan. Maybe the Psalm is telling of it when he says “He makes his marvelous works to be remembered.” Maybe it’s echoing in the background whenever we pray “it is right to give God thanks and praise.” Maybe it’s really about a transformation of the heart. Because haven’t we all been a Samaritan, in one way or another? Recall that in the parable of the good Samaritan, which falls earlier in Luke’s Gospel, the enemy is portrayed the neighbor whom Jesus hearers are called to love.
The good Samaritan is not simply the neighbor we should love, even if we’ve been taught he’s the enemy. In his care for a wounded traveler, the Samaritan becomes the neighbor who loves us. There’s a kind of narrative development in Luke from “love your enemy” to “consider that possibility that your enemy is someone who bears God’s love to you.” The story of the Samaritan leper takes this relationship a step further: while the Good Samaritan models a genuine love of neighbor, the leper models uninhibited love of God. “When he saw that he was healed,” the Gospel teaches us, “he turned back, praising God with a loud voice.” From Luke’s perspective, it seems to be the suspect Samaritans who exemplify the great commandment both to “love your neighbor as yourself” and also to “love the Lord your God with all your heart.”
Which kind of Samaritan are you? The one who cares for the wounded, or the one who gives praise to the Lord your God?” Or are you the one who—for all the years of bitter feuding—still turns back to your sworn enemy and pauses to say “thank you?” Well, why not try out being all of them? South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, when working towards reconciliation after apartheid, taught “One of the sayings in our country is Ubuntu, which means ‘I am a person through other people.’ My humanity is tied to yours.” Like Jesus and like Desmond Tutu, the Samaritan leper shows us that we are truly healed when the relationship between us is healthy.
