Pentecost 18 – 2025
Luke 17:11-19
Marian Free
In the name of God who leaves no one out and no one behind. Amen.
Ward 13 is the last remaining structure of the former Dunwich Benevolent Asylum on Stradbroke Island in Morton Bay. Stradbroke Island is 62 Kilometres from the mainland and 2 hours 8 minutes by boat. The Benevolent Asylum housed many different groups of people particularly those who were unable to support themselves for a variety of reasons – age, unemployment, illness or mental or physical disability. Immediately next to the Asylum and beside a swamp was a Lazaret – which housed men who were diagnosed with leprosy – a disease which, rightly or wrongly was deemed an incurable, communicable disease.
A visit to Ward 13 and the associated information centre reveals just how isolating and cruel the treatment of lepers used to be. A person, once diagnosed, was sent to Stradbroke (and later Peel) Island with no hope of ever returning home. A married man would never set eyes on his wife and children again. A child would be separated forever from her siblings and a mother from her children. Though the care of such people seems to have been reasonable, nothing would ever have made up for the stigma, the shame, the self-loathing, the pain, but above all the isolation and the sense of loss.
Leprosy which leads to the damaging of nerve endings and the disfigurement and subsequent loss of digits, hands, feet and even limbs is a dehumanising disease which for millenia created fear and disgust in the wider community. A leper not only had to deal with the disease and its consequences, but also with the reaction of those around them. In order to protect themselves, communities from ancient times have secluded and excluded not only those with the disease that we know to be leprosy, but also those with any form of obvious skin disease[1]. This is why the lepers in our gospel story this morning are keeping their distance from Jesus.
For obvious reasons, Jesus’ healing of the lepers is most often interpreted as a story of gratitude – the gratitude of the Samaritan in contrast with the apparent self-absorption of the nine. There are a few problems with this simplistic approach, perhaps the most serious of which is the implication that gratitude is an obligation. The idea that God demands our gratitude turns gratitude from a freely offered reaction to God’s love to a formal, superficial response. Gratitude that is not freely given is not really gratitude but rather the rote observation of a code of conduct. It does not come from the heart but is simply the fulfilment of an expectation.
Another problem with an emphasis on gratitude is the implied judgement of the nine who did not return and the belief that Jesus’ comment is pejorative and judgemental. Certainly, Jesus expresses astonishment and perhaps disappointment that nine of the ten did not return, but after all they were doing what Jesus told them to do.
Luke’s first readers will have noticed a number of other surprises that are at least, if not more, significant than gratitude or lack of it. Firstly, the one who did return was a Samaritan, a person who was doubly burdened by the disease and by his race, who was considered doubly unclean because of the leprosy and his exclusion from the religious practices of the Jews. He was an outsider. He did not, could not belong.
Readers would also have been surprised that it was the Samaritan, a man who not Jewish by heritage, who was the only one of the ten to identify the hand of God in his healing and therefore the only one to recognise that Jesus was God, that is, the only one of the ten to demonstrate that he truly belonged in the family of God[2].
A third and perhaps the most important surprise for the first readers of this gospel would have been Jesus’ response to the Samaritan’s declaration. Here, unfortunately, our translation lets us down. The English usually reads: “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” This leads us to the conclusion that faith and wellness are connected and to the misconception that if only we have enough faith we will be made well. In fact, it is only after the Samaritan notices that he is healed that he understands that the one who made him well is God – his healing has led to faith, not the other way around.
The Greek text makes more sense of this order of events. Jesus actually says: “your faith has saved you”. By identifying Jesus as God, the Samaritan has been saved from exclusion and has earned the salvation previously associated only with the Hebrews. In other words, the Samaritan’s faith has earned him a place in the people of God. The one who was doubly excluded – from his community and from God’s family has been doubly saved – restored to his family and friends and saved in the sense of becoming a child of God.
In my experience, it is much easier to construct a faith based on rules and expectations. Many of us want to know what to do and how to behave so that we can be sure to get it right. Such a view can lead to rote performances of gratitude and praise, a desire to please instead of a wiliness to be pleased.
The Samaritan shows us that our sense of belonging depends not on timidly, fearfully doing things that might earn us God’s good favour, but by recognising that God’s abundant love is already poured out on us and responding freely and spontaneously with joyful gratitude and praise that springs from our wonder and delight at all that God does in and for us.
Let us not be tied down by rote observance of rules, but liberated to joyfully and gratefully praise the God who has already saved us.
[1] That “leprosy” included diseases which could be cured or could be temporary, is evidenced by the fact that those who were “healed” could be reinstated into the community if the priest gave them the all-clear.
[2] In fact, the Samaritan has a unique role in this gospel as he is the only one apart from Peter, who identifies Jesus as God, a point that is often overlooked.
Swallowsrest 