Where Are the Other Nine? - Luke 17:11-19 Allowing for Long-term Gratitude

Where Are the Other Nine? – Luke 17:11-19

Allowing for Long-term Gratitude

This healing story in Luke’s gospel involves an encounter between Jesus and ten lepers, nine Jews and one Samaritan.  A physical miracle occurs as ten men who suffer with a debilitating disease destroying their skin and internal cells and resulting in a slow and painful death are healed.  While archeologists and biblical scholars debate the empirical causes and symptoms of leprosy in the Ancient Near East, they concur that the disease was thought to be a form of defilement and ritual uncleanness.  The thinking of the time insisted that formidable personal sin contributed to a person’s contraction of leprosy. Arguably, the more definitive cause of the disease would have been the character defects that separated these men from God thereby resulting in a broken relationship with Him.  Thus, the greater miracle would be their restoration of relationship with God; their newfound physical wholeness symbolizes their reconciliation with God. 

Feared to be contagious, lepers were banished from regular social interactions.  They were to live in leper colonies.  Were they to commingle with normal people, they were to announce loudly and persistently their presence as a warning to others.  Hence, this healing story includes the social and human relational challenges of Jesus’ willingness, in defiance of Old Testament regulations and social norms, to listen to the plea of ten lepers, one of whom is a Samaritan.  From the lepers’ standpoint, they did not have anything to lose and only something to gain.  There was not a cure for this disease in biblical times.  Inexplicably, word reached them that healing was possible if they encountered Jesus of Nazareth.  These lepers left their deathbeds and doggedly pursued this possibility.  After the physical healing, the question remains whether they were really healed of the underlying disease of sin.  Only one leper expresses joy and thanksgiving as a demonstration of his intent to lead a new life.  Ironically, it is the Samaritan who immediately offers gratitude.  Jesus’ fellow Jews return to their personal affairs without even saying, “Thank you.”  As I previously read this passage, I silently condemn these ingrates for their failure to articulate or demonstrate any thanksgiving for God’s grace and love.  However, I increasingly appreciate the reality that when Jesus asks, “Where are the nine,” I am one of them.

Luke’s gospel always records where Jesus is relative to Jerusalem.  He opens this story by telling us that Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem and travels along the border between Samaria and Galilee.  This detail refers to the racial and ethnic strife between Jews and Samaritans.  The former group considers the latter group to be “half breeds.”  The Assyrians sacked the Israelite people in 722 BCE.  The subjugated Israelites who remained in the capital of the Northern Kingdom intermarried with their conquerors.  They were designated as “Samaritans” to distinguish them from “full blooded” Israelites who remained faithful to the covenant with the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the patriarchs.  Both groups despised each other.  Luke positions Jesus who personifies God’s unfailing and unconditional love within this historic racial and ethnic conflict.  Jesus is the One who share grace, mercy and compassion with anyone who believes.  Hence, Luke utilizes this story to teach his audience that the love of God in Christ transcends human limitations and divisions.

In a village which was probably a Samaritan one as it includes a mixed group of lepers, Jesus hears their cries from a distance.  The lepers observe the social conventions of the day.  They keep their distance yet still cry aloud for Jesus’s attention.  Their call of desperation to Jesus reminds me of the four lepers in 2 Kings 7 who lied at the city gate.  Living and dying within a famine, the lepers ask themselves, “Why stay here until we die?”  They rose and went to the camp of the Arameans to seek food, relief and life.  The lepers in this story act with a similar motivation.  They ask Jesus to have pity on them.  They request the grace and gift of His healing power. 

Jesus instructs them to go show themselves to the priest.  His directive accords with Old Testament law stipulating the necessity of priestly confirmation to enable a previous leper to return to normal social interactions.  “As they went, they were healed.”  Notice their obedience precedes the miracle.  The lepers receive the healing for which they pray after they demonstrate their willingness to follow the Word of God as Jesus speaks.  You recall Naaman, commander of the army of Syria, did not receive healing of his leprosy until he obeys the prophet’s instructions to dip seven times in the Jordan River. (2 Kings 5) These healings demand obedience to the Word of God.  In your prayer requests, do you ask God if there is something He requires?

Upon realizing he had been healed, the Samaritan returns and falls at Jesus’ feet.  The Samaritan who had been a leper praises God in an equally loud voice.  As a sign of wholehearted and enduring thanks, he throws himself at Jesus feet and thanks Jesus for the healing.  Imagine the Samaritan’s exuberance.  What might he have said to Jesus?  Consider the amazement of the disciples and crowd.  Did any to them think, “Why did Jesus waste this healing on a Samaritan?”  What did the residents of the adjacent Samaritan village think when they heard of Jesus’ willingness to heal one of their brothers?  Did this miracle heal any of the racial and ethnic strife between these groups?

Jesus asks, “Were not all ten healed?  Where are the nine?  Has no one returned to give praise to God but this foreigner?”  Jesus characterizes the Samaritan as a “foreigner.”  Is He too embracing the cultural and ethnic strife that persists in the region?  Does Jesus note this difference to admonish the Israelites who observed the miracle?  Nine of the lepers are Israelites who seemingly took God’s miraculous power, grace and love for granted.  Being descendants of Abraham and heirs of the covenant with God, these healed former lepers may have mistakenly assumed they deserved the miracle particularly if Jesus would heal a Samaritan.  Given that the Samaritan received a gift of a lifetime, he rightly should have returned and given thanks.  “Well, at least that half breed had enough home training and manners to say thanks.”  Nevertheless, the miracle undoubtedly gave the audience both Israelites and Samaritans a new perspective on their relationship with each other.  Why would Jesus, a Jewish healer, be so merciful to a Samaritan?  Does God absolutely love everyone, His chosen people and Gentiles?  With both groups staking claim to the patriarchs and covenant as the Samaritan woman at well informs Jesus (John 4), the healing undoubtedly left both to them with a new and enlarged understanding of God and God’s love.  Still, there is the primary question, “Where are the nine?”