Luke 17:11-19
The last time the ten lepers would have seen a priest was probably the day they were cast out. In Jesus’ time, when a priest diagnosed someone with leprosy, there was a funeral-like ritual to acknowledge that they would no longer be part of their families or community.
It’s hard for me to imagine what that would do to a person’s spirit–to be erased from family and community, to have the people you love told by a representative of God that they should pretend you are dead. It happened in Jesus’ time; it happens still today.
We know now that leprosy is caused by bacteria. It is contagious only at certain stages of the disease, and even then not highly so. Most people have natural immunity to it. Today, it is called Hansen’s Disease, and it is treated with antibiotics.
In biblical times, a whole variety of skin diseases were lumped together under the name leprosy. All of them were believed to be extremely contagious. The only way to protect the community was to cast the afflicted ones out and act as though they were dead. The Bible does describe rituals of cleansing to re-admit someone whose leprosy had been healed, so we know that sometimes leprosy was cured.
These ten lepers would have lived in an isolated group outside the walls of town, Galileans and Samaritans brought together by necessity. Did they become a community, caring for each other, creating a new kind of family? Or did the wounds of rejection get in the way of their trusting one another?
As lepers, these ten men and women were required to shout “unclean, unclean” whenever they went out in public. When they saw Jesus approaching, something–a glimmer of hope– prompted them to add another cry: “Jesus, master, have mercy on us!”
Among the many healing stories in the gospels, this one is unusual in that the lepers are not healed in the moment. Jesus simply tells them to go present themselves to the priests. We assume–and we assume they assume–they are going to the priests for the cleansing ritual that will re-admit them to society.
It is amazing to me that they went. Without any assurance of a cure, they set off on a long walk–from the border of Galilee and Samaria to the temple in Jerusalem– to face the priests who had cast them out in the first place. Where did they find the strength, the courage, the hope to walk that road and take that risk?
Even more amazing, somewhere on their journey they were healed. How did that happen? My modern mind searches for explanations. We know they may have had different kinds of skin disease, some curable. It’s possible their lesions had already healed, but they were still trapped by society’s definition of them as unclean. Maybe the infectious bacteria was rampant in the dark, damp homes where they were hidden away; once they were in the sunlight their lesions could heal. Or maybe, in that mysterious way mind, body and spirit are interconnected, the hope awakened by their journey boosted their immune systems enough to fight the bacteria. I wonder whether the healing might not have been physical but involved a new identity: even with skin lesions that remained, they were able to reject society’s definition of themselves as unclean, and claim their status as God’s beloved. Maybe there was a divine healing spirit that descended upon the group. We don’t know; it is a mystery.
The journey was an amazing one; it would also have been a difficult one. What would it mean for them to face the priests, to see their families after so many years, to try to return to an old life that was long gone?
I find myself imagining their conversations along the road. Did they talk about their anger at the priests who had declared them essentially dead, their anger at God who supposedly ordained their rejection? For some of them, anger may have become a catalyst, strengthening their determination to claim their healing. Some may have refused to acknowledge it, fearful of anger’s power, burying it deep inside to fester. Others, I suspect, felt their anger hardening into resentment, even hate.
I wonder whether some of the ten fell away from the journey, too resentful or fearful to confront the priests who had been the faces of a system that tried to erase their existence.
At some point, I imagine, the conversation would have turned to what their new lives would be like. Would their families welcome them back home? Would their children recognize them? Or would everyone have moved on in ways that left no space for a returning leper?
I wonder if some of them were so frightened by the unknown that lay ahead that they veered off from the road and headed back to their familiar leper colony. Others, perhaps, had become so comfortable with their self-definition as outcasts that they too headed back, unable to envision a new way of seeing themselves.
Surely, there would have been talk along the road about a life unconstrained by having to shout “unclean, unclean,” about the ability to move freely in society. I wonder whether some of them left the group to walk more quickly to the temple, eager to exercise their new-found independence, thinking they now could rely on themselves.
The journey was a treacherous one, as they confronted anger that threatened to harden into hate, as they faced fear of rejection and the temptation of the familiar, as they toyed with the illusion of self-reliance. Amidst all those dangers, one of the lepers–a Samaritan–turned back, not to walk away from healing but to claim it more fully. Somehow he managed to acknowledge his very real anger and still be defined by the healing power Jesus unleashed in him. Somehow he faced his fear of the unknown, trusting that God would help him build a new life. Somehow he was able to revel in his new-found freedom even as he recognized his need for help and the gift that he had been given help–from Jesus, from his friends, from God. Something–maybe the memory of a Psalm he learned at the foot of the holy mountain—awakened him to gratitude, deeper and stronger than all the dangers of the journey.
And so he came back to say thank you. He praised God with a loud voice, and then he fell down at Jesus’ feet. “Get up and go on your way,” Jesus said. “Your faith has made you well.” Gratitude has made you whole.
One of the challenges of the healing stories in the Bible is that there are so many different ways we envision healing. Sometimes we equate healing with a cure–a fix to the problem, a reversal of a diagnosis. That is too narrow a definition. Biblical healing–and healing in our own lives–is about so much more. It is about finding a way to live well even with problems we cannot fix, even with illnesses that have no cure. It is about refusing to define ourselves by our pain or limitations, or by someone else’s judgment about our worth, instead claiming our status as beloved children of God.
This story reminds me that gratitude is an essential component of healing. Gratitude pulls us out of the things that trap us inside ourselves: our resentment at the very real unfairness of the world, our fear of the unfamiliar, our temptation to pretend we can do it ourselves, our narrow vision of what our lives should be. Gratitude enables us to acknowledge our need for one another and for God as a gift, not a liability. Gratitude leads to awe and wonder, and so makes our lives bigger. Gratitude makes us whole–not perfect, not complete in and of ourselves, but part of a larger whole–part of the power of God’s love at work in our world.
We are all on a healing journey. Some of us need healing from the hurts and wounds of our past. Some live with physical limitations and pain that threaten to define our lives. Some struggle with isolation and despair. Whatever our particular needs, our healing journeys are always complicated. There are moments of miraculous breakthroughs, interspersed with times of danger. We are challenged to honor the reality of our anger, to claim it as a source of energy for action and to resist falling into resentment that narrows our lives. We bump up against our fear of change and must confront our instinct to find comfort in familiar, constraining self-definitions. We struggle to resist the temptation to pretend we can do it all on our own. We wrestle with our narrow definitions of healing, called to claim our wholeness even in the face of limitation.
As we walk this life-long healing journey, the Samaritan calls us to walk it with gratitude. Gratitude will shift our perspective and enable us to face the dangers of the journey. Gratitude will connect us with the people around us and with God’s spirit within and beyond us. Gratitude will make us whole.
Let us give thanks for Jesus who calls us to this journey. Let us give thanks for the people who walk beside us. Let us give thanks for God’s healing spirit within and around us on this journey toward wholeness. Amen.