2 Timothy 2:8-15, Luke 17:11-19
The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity, 13 October 2019
Keasden, Clapham, Austwick
Why did that one leper come back? Let's think about that today. But let’s first set the scene. On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. Now people saw this as dangerous territory, bandit country. A border land, where two enemy countries met. The sort of edge-place which can feel dangerous, so that folks feared walking between Samaria and Galilee in Jesus' day, with its reputation for danger, populated by edgy people, society’s castoffs. Like the lepers, these people who had been cast to the outskirts of town because they had a gruesome skin disease which people thought was contagious, and who were further stigmatised by the priests - society’s authorities - who pronounced them ritually unclean, and thus unable to be included in society. That's where the story takes place, and that's the sort of person the leper-who-came-back was.
Except the one leper-who-came-back wasn't just a leper. As well as being an outcast who people avoided because of his skin condition, he was a Samaritan, a foreigner, an enemy in that region. In the fearful hateful language of today, he wasn't just a druggy, he was an asylum-seeker druggy. And that's important in this story because it points to the reason he - alone - came back to Jesus.
Jesus, when he saw them, said to them, 'Go and show yourselves to the priests.' And as they went, they were made clean. So, notice that the healing of their skin came first. And then the priests - who had the power to validate their healing - gave them the means to get back into society.
The priests had the power to set people free, Just as housing officers have the power to give homes to the homeless, or employers jobs to the unemployed, or immigration officers legal status to refugees, priests were the ones who could inspect a leper and say, "yes, you are clean now, go free".
All but one. The Samaritan one, the one tainted not just by his skin condition but also by his race. I suggest that the reason he came back to Jesus was because unlike the others, this man could not go to the priest. His race disbarred him. The priest wouldn’t see a Samaritan, still less absolve him.
The Samaritan was trapped in a strange place halfway between healing and wholeness. Like a refugee given legal status as a British citizen but unable to find work, or someone signed-off their drug addiction but unable to get onto the housing ladder, this one leper found that Jesus' instruction left him in limbo.
Until something dawned on him. Something wonderful and liberating, something which made the trauma fade into the distance. He realised that he didn't need what the priest could offer him. He didn't need society's absolution. He didn't need the legal status or the freedom of the city or the job opportunities which the others would get. All he needed he had been given, he realised - Jesus had made him clean. We see this in the text; the only one of the ten who did this: He saw that he had been healed.
That was why he came back, praising God with a loud voice, throwing himself at Jesus' feet and thanking him. Jesus' cleansing was enough for this one man. He saw that he had been healed.
Then Jesus asked, 'Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?' He knew the answer to his own question, of course. The other nine, having being absolved by the priest, were happy to be part of society, able to get a job, or a house, or a bit of status, and forgot that God's goodness lay behind their well-being. In their excitement they lost sight of God's graceful role in their lives.
The Samaritan leper realised that he didn't need what the priest could offer him, society's absolution, that he didn't need the legal status or the freedom of the city or the job opportunities which the others would get, the Samaritan connected to something more powerful and liberating than any of these things.
Because Jesus had made him clean, the Samaritan experienced an inrush of the greatest power there is. The power of faith. His faith made him whole.
Nothing else has the power to make you whole, he realised. Nothing that money can buy or laws provide, nothing that status or power can offer. Only faith. This is good news for all who live on the edge, for all who society rejects. It is good news in this, Prisons Week, for all those cast-outs who are ministered to by chaplains and visitors in our prisons day by day. [2] It is good news for anyone who doesn't feel completely free, good news for any one of us who knows we are only part-way there. For faith grows in us each time we return to Jesus with thankful hearts.
So as we prepare to share in the bread and wine which Jesus offers us, let us prepare our hearts to accept the healing he offers us in that meal, and in our gratefulness towards him, for all he is to us and all he has done for us, let us be renewed with the greatest power of all, the power of faith. That faith - and faith alone - which can make us whole.
Notes
[1] A rewrite of The one who came back preached at Christ Church Norris Green in 2004. Also preached at Sutton Montis, 2016.
[2] Prisons Week, a week of prayer.
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