Lesson: Luke 17:11-19

When I was growing up, handwritten thank you notes were very important. It’s hard to explain to my kids why an email or text just didn’t work for most folks in my parents’ generation. Even though my grandmother would be appalled, I, too, wonder why a truly sincere thank you in any form, even in person – isn’t ample thanks. Is there really just one right way to say thanks?

You might think so from this Sunday’s gospel reading. We start with ten lepers. Ten lepers living on the edge of town, separated from their families, their livelihood, all normal activities and company. Ten lepers who have to shout a warning wherever they go that they’re unclean, because of the community’s fear of their disease. The ten may or may not have had what we know today as Hansen’s disease, but they are lepers in that they are the ultimate outcasts.

Jesus is on the road to Jerusalem. When the ten lepers hear that Jesus the miracle worker is in the neighborhood, they come as close as they dare and call out. Jesus tells them to go to the priest, because just as it took a priest to confirm that someone had leprosy, it also took a priest to declare that someone was healed. As the lepers head off to do as Jesus tells them, they’re healed of their disease. Imagine the joy; imagine the relief! As soon as the priest gives the okay, they can return to their families, to worship in the temple, to being productive members of their community. They’re no longer outcasts! They were probably jumping and whooping and high-fiving all the way to the priest.

The twist in the story is that at this point in Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, he’s on the border between Galilee and Samaria, communities that were divided by generations of hatred and suspicion. Jews considered all Samaritans ritually unclean and would travel miles out of their way to avoid having any contact with them.

The focus now shifts from the ten to the one. Only one of the ex-lepers returns to say thank you. This passage is often interpreted as dealing with the importance of gratitude – I’ve interpreted it that way myself. It’s even one of the lectionary passages for Thanksgiving Day. But notice that the healing didn’t depend on gratitude. The nine who didn’t say “thank you” were healed just the same. I suspect that they felt profoundly grateful even if they didn’t express it. Which means making gratitude the centerpiece of this text is a bit like focusing on whether your thank you note is handwritten or a text. I’m guessing Jesus wasn’t really waiting around to be thanked in the right way at the right time.

The one who turned back to praise God and thank Jesus was a Samaritan. Before Jesus heals the lepers, they’re just ten lepers, no distinctions. But once the ten all have been healed, the Samaritan, alone, remains unclean. The old divisions kick into play again. There’s no cure for being a Samaritan. He may not even be welcomed by the priest. Perhaps that’s why he doesn’t follow the others.

It is only to the Samaritan that Jesus says, “Your faith has made you well.” Four people in the Gospel of Luke hear those powerful words from Jesus: “Your faith has made you well.” Each is, in his or her own way, an outcast: either a sinner or ritually unclean. Each healing is followed by a conversation about the Kingdom of God – what life and the world look like under God’s rule.

Ten were healed. One was “made well.” Maybe Jesus is talking about a different kind of wellness. Maybe he meant that deep-seated human divisions are a much more serious malady than even leprosy – that our souls can be far sicker than our bodies and yet many of us do nothing to heal the breach. Maybe he wasn’t commenting on the lack of gratitude of the nine who didn’t return as much as on the system that would accept them and reject the Samaritan. Maybe he was commenting on all the systems that create a “Them” that we can despise because they are not “Us”: race, class, political party, religion, ethnicity, immigration status, gender, education, or identifying as LGBTQ, just to name a few.

We’ll never know exactly what Jesus meant. But it’s safe to say that, to Jesus, “wellness” does not include going back to a life of “Them” and “Us.” “Where are the nine?” asked Jesus. The nine were right back where they came from, safely on the right side of the border, healed of their exterior problems but locked back into their prejudices. Healed, but not well. One commentator notes that we are healed not to stay the same, but to live differently, breaking down divisions in society that exclude people because of all the categories that create a “Them” and an “Us.”

We might need this kind of healing even more than we need to be reminded to be grateful.

Author, poet, and activist Wendell Berry wrote, “Healing is impossible in loneliness; it is the opposite of loneliness. … To be healed we must come with all the other creatures to the feast of Creation.”