Several years ago, a Roman Catholic priest who for over thirty years ministered among the lepers of Hawaii before succumbing to the disease himself was canonized a Catholic saint for his undying love and care to those then considered to be among the most wretched on the planet. Father Damien dared to attend to the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of a community that few would even dare travel to. Well our New Testament lesson ALSO involves one who demonstrated that SAME love and care to a group of lepers--the most despised group in the ancient world--but, instead of being canonized, was eventually CRUCIFIED for it. On its face, the story seems fairly simple. Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem passing through the northern region where Galilee and Samaria border each other. As he drew near to a local village, ten lepers called out to him appealing for some alms. Today, most forms of leprosy (or Hansen's Disease as it is medically called) can be controlled or even cured if caught early enough, but in Jesus's day, it was the most unfortunate affliction known to man. 

It’s probably fair to say that what AIDS with all its stigma has come to represent in THIS day and age, the scourge of leprosy was to the ANCIENT WORLD. Usually it began with white patches on the skin causing the area to become numb. Slowly, the disease ate away at the tissues and nerve endings, eventually attacking the face and limbs. Over a period of years, fingers, toes, ears, and noses would fall off, leaving its victims horribly disfigured. Hands and feet and even arms and legs became little more than stumps of rotting flesh. The roads of Palestine, particularly the entrance to towns, were haunted by such victims--young AND old--seeking charity of any kind since they could not work. A large proportion of the population suffered from it without any hope of a cure. 

But if leprosy was a PHYSICALLY debilitating disease, the leper bore deep SOCIAL scars as well. The leper became an outcast and was kept far away from the rest of society. Sentenced to a lonely life, no longer could he or she live or associate with family or friends. Once the disease was detected, the person was evicted from the community, the walls of his or her home scraped and replastered, and his or her few bits of furniture burned. In Leviticus 13 and 14, the Law commanded the leper to go bare-headed and wear special clothing. Sent away to live at the edge of town, he or she was to alert others of his condition by crying out "Unclean! Unclean!" so as to keep people away. Usually lepers were forced to band together for their own survival and protection such as we have here in Luke 17.

And if leprosy devastated one physically and socially, it bore a SPIRITUAL stigma as well. It was believed in that day that physical sickness and disease was caused by sin in one's life or in one's family, that a wasted body was the result of a wasted soul. They believed that sickness was God's punishment for moral wrongs. Thus the poor leper had to contend not only with his or her deteriorating physical condition and be ostracized from his or her family, friends, and hometown, but suffering, loneliness, guilt, and ultimately death remained the only future for this person. There was no fate worse in all the ancient world.

Dominique Lapierre, in his gripping novel The City of Joybased upon his own experience in the slums of Calcutta, India, showed how not much had changed in two thousand years regarding the plight of many modern lepers:

"A little colony had installed itself in the far reaches of the slum, in an area bounded by the railway tracks. From the outside nothing distinguished it from other quarters in the slum. The same compounds in the form of a square around a courtyard were to be found there, with the same sort of laundry drying on the roofs and the same open drains. Yet this was a ghetto of a very particular kind. No other occupants of the slum ever ventured there, for it was in this place that the City of Joy's six hundred lepers lived, squeezed ten or twelve together to each room.

India numbers about five million lepers among its population. The horror and fear inspired by disfigured faces, hands and feet reduced to stumps, and wounds at times infested with vermin, condemned the lepers of Anand Nagar to total segregation. Although they were free to go about the slum, an unspoken code forbade them to enter the houses or compounds of the healthy. By having gone to Stephan Kovalski's room, the cripple Anouar had transgressed the rule, and the infraction could have cost him his life. There had already been several lynchings, although more out of fear of the evil eye than out of fear of contagion. Though they would give alms to lepers to improve their own karma, most Indians looked upon leprosy as a malediction of the gods."

 Hence, it is out of the pain and isolation of such affliction as this that those ten lepers cry out to Jesus, “Master, have mercy on us” in the hope that he just might take pity upon them and toss a coin their way. Never in their wildest dreams did they imagine that Jesus could do anything more for them than that. But Jesus DOES do something more- quite unexpectedly, he pronounces them clean and then instructs them to go to Jerusalem and head straight to the Temple priests as is required by law when someone is healed. It is only as they depart in obedience to his command that they suddenly find themselves healed. Restored to good health, they will also be restored to their family and friends and the community that came from. No longer will they have to wear torn clothing and tattered garments; no longer would people stare at their blotched and blemished faces; no more would they have to warn people to stay clear of them with their pitiful shouts of “Unclean! Unclean!”

Of course, this required a great leap of faith on the part of them all. Had they just walked straight into Jerusalem and into the inner courts of the Temple while still bearing their disease, they all could have been put to death at once- for not just placing the health of others in jeopardy but for desecrating the most holy place in all of Judea by their mere presence there. I think what surprises me most about this account is that none of the ten dare to laugh or ridicule Jesus for what on the face of it would have seemed like an absolutely absurd statement. Rather, they take him at his word and without any question or argument--BEFORE THEY ARE EVEN HEALED--they proceed to make their way to the City of David and do what was prescribed by Jewish Law. This was truly great faith INDEED!

But then something even MORE extraordinary happens. One of the ten--a SAMARITAN by birth--stopped, turned around, and threw himself down before Jesus, praising God for what he had just received. If there was one thing worse than a leper to a Jew, it had to be a SAMARITAN leper. Samaritans were DESPISED by the Jews- they were called "goyiim" and made objects of aversion and contempt. Although Jews THEMSELVES, they were considered half-breeds, a mixed-race because Samaria bordered the Gentile world and its people often embraced Gentilic attitudes and traditions. In fact, they were hated more than the heathen Gentiles were. Thus we have in this Samaritan leper one who bore a DOUBLE stigma. Of course, the irony here is that where they might have been enemies before they had contracted the disease, IN their disease, they were forced to become brothers and sisters to one another; they were forced to rely on each other for companionship and mutual assistance in order to survive. Thus out of their debilitating condition and status as social outcasts, out of their deep loneliness and shared guilt, all previous distinctions and antagonisms disappeared.

The most revealing part of the entire episode is the surprise registered by Jesus at the Samaritan’s return, “Were not ten cleaned? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Subsequently, he says to the man, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.” What Jesus’ response tells us is that there is far more to healing than just a physical cure- that REAL healing must involve the WHOLE person, one’s ENTIRE being. Though outwardly cured, there was still something INWARD they had not been delivered from- a disease called INGRATITUDE. Where all had been healed of a leprosy that ravaged the body, only ONE--the Samaritan--had received a far greater healing INSIDE- from a leprosy that ravaged the soul. Where nine were so caught up in their cure, so absorbed in their own good fortune that they could think of no one else, only the outcast of the group had enough presence of mind to return and give praise to the Healer himself. He knew that his old life was gone, that things could never again be the same for him after having met Jesus. He had been made whole both inwardly AND out and, until the day he died, he would glorify that man who had given him a second chance, the one who had provided him with the opportunity to start all over again. There WAS no old life to return to- everything had been made NEW!

The fact is that the nine were very religious as long as they needed God. So long as they still suffered from that deadly disease--physically, socially, and spiritually—God remained their last hope and was never far from their minds. But then after their affliction lifted, other cares and needs suddenly became more PARAMOUNT; God didn’t seem quite so relevant or important to them. Of course, we see that all the time, don’t we? The doctor informs us that he’s found a malignant tumor, or we’ve been told that we’re being laid off from our job of twenty-five years at the end of the month, or we had to declare bankruptcy to get out from under crushing debt, or our spouse tells us that he or she wants a divorce after so many years of marriage, and all of a sudden we start praying to God more fervently and more often than we ever had in years. Like those lepers, we desperately cry out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on me!” But then after the crisis has subsided and things seems to be returning to normal, our tears dry up and our prayers grow silent and our appearance in church becomes more infrequent. The ultimate tragedy is that the nine lepers got the healing, but not the healer; they experienced a miracle, but not the miracle worker; they received the gift but didn’t know and love the giver. 

The Samaritan, on the other hand, had received a DOUBLE gift from Jesus. He was not only cured of his deadly affliction but loved and accepted on his own terms--as a despised Samaritan--and so he wanted to reciprocate- but with WHAT? As a beggar, he had been reduced for years to a life of poverty, wholly dependent upon the kindness of strangers. In the end, he gave our Lord the only gift he COULD, that which proved to be the COSTLIEST gift of all- his gratitude, his thankfulness, his praise, his adoration, his heart, HIMSELF. To the Samaritan, it might not have seemed like much but it was all that he had. To Jesus, however, his devotion was more valuable than all the treasures of the Middle East- it represented EVERYTHING.

Ten chapters earlier, in Luke 7, we read the story of Jesus eating at the residence of a Pharisee when a woman—perhaps a prostitute—forces her way into his home, falls down before Jesus, and then begins kissing and anointing his feet with a mixture of expensive ointment and tears. When the Pharisee objects to what he considers a most tasteless display of affection, Jesus rebukes him saying that since he had entered his house, he had not received from him so much as an obligatory kiss or even a basin of water to wash his feet with. He then says, “Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little.” The principle here is that those who have been forgiven much tend to respond with a DEEPER and MORE UNQUALIFIED love than those who perceive themselves to have been forgiven little. The Samaritan Leper had so much more to be grateful for than the other nine because Jesus’ compassion was not just limited to the Jews but encompassed Samaritans and outcasts such as himself AS WELL.

As I read this passage, I can’t help see a description of the church here, MYSELF included. You could say that at one time, ALL of us were lepers, EACH of us in our own right was once a poor beggar in need of mercy and grace and healing. But then Jesus passed our way and, taking compassion on us, declared US cleansed of OUR affliction. We found OURSELVES sinners NO MORE! He made us an offer we couldn’t refuse- the opportunity for a new beginning, the chance to start all over again with a fresh clean slate which is my definition of “grace.” Freed from our past with all its crushing guilt and nagging failures, we discovered we could smile once again and face the future with a new-found hope and optimism, knowing that even if we fall again, which we will, that God will forgive us again and again, such is his love for us. Yes, the outward disease is gone. We’ve cleaned up our act some. We don’t spend our free time getting drunk or high any more. Gone are the days when we cruised the bar scene looking for someone to pick up for the night. We don't lie or steal or cheat as much as we once did. To the surprise of a lot of people, especially OURSELVES, we’ve become respectable and our presence in church here on Sunday mornings is proof of it.

But are we WHOLE, friends? Are we, IN FACT, new? THAT'S the question. Have we been cleansed INWARDLY as well as out? Have we been delivered of our self-absorption, our self-centeredness- have we been freed from just plain SELF! Are we concerned only with our healing and in the process forgotten about the HEALER! If so, then you and I are no different than the other nine who THOUGHT they were healed but really weren't.

It is a fact that just about every church of every theological persuasion in our country is currently in the throes of membership decline. When I get together with other ministers, I hear the same complaint again and again of how they’ve tried all sorts of new programs and all kinds of new outreach into the community and yet the attendance grows smaller year after year; nothing seems to work and they seem at a loss as to what the answer is. Over the years, I’ve become convinced the answer ultimately lies, not in what or how many new programs we might successfully implement, but in the depth of love we as a congregation have for one another and for the community in which we’ve found ourselves planted. Love can be the ONLY basis, the ONLY motivation of any of our mission and evangelism, and no church-growth program in all the world can even begin to serve as a substitute for it. 

But such love can only be derived from the most profound sense of gratitude and thanksgiving one may experience, and that is to Jesus Christ for having given us that which we could not have created or earned for ourselves- our membership into the family of God. Gratitude and thanksgiving are our proper response to God's love and forgiveness in our lives. In fact, it is the ONLY thing God has ever asked of us in return, the ONLY offering we can POSSIBLY give back to him and unless our lives and Christian witness begins and ends THERE, unless all our doing and all our giving springs from hearts filled with thanksgiving for all God's benefits towards us, unless we can see beyond our own selfish needs and what it is WE want to get out of religion and the church, our churches will NEVER grow and become vital once again. Rather, we will remain just as sick and diseased as those other nine who may have THOUGHT they were healed, but who in reality WEREN'T. Let us pray...

Father, teach us to practice gratitude in our daily lives that we may honor the graciousness that lies in the heart of your dealings with us. Forgive us every form of self-centeredness that blinds us from seeing how all things are grace gifts from your hand, and deliver us from a hardness of heart that is unable to express thankfulness for even the smallest of such gifts. In Christ’s name we pray.