Yesterday we got up at about 5 am to see the high school group off on their mission trip to Jackson, Mississippi…we heard from them last night, they are there and excited to begin their time at the John Perkins Foundation, learning about and experiencing racial reconciliation first-hand...

The Gospel is about reconciliation – with God, and with one another. It’s a message not just for the insiders, but the outsiders too—the ones who live on the margins of mainstream religious society. Luke’s Gospel, especially, talks a lot about the insiders and the outsiders…

• The religious insiders are often the Pharisees, the ones who know the law, and they try (often admirably) to keep it, the ones who grew up hearing about salvation and have never felt outside of it. Jesus hangs out with these insiders.
• The non-religious outsiders are the folks the religious people don’t mix with…the tax-collectors, the foreigners, the prostitutes, the poor, the sick and deformed and diseased, these were considered “unclean.” The mainstream religious society considered these people to be strangers—strangers to custom, strangers to ritual, strangers to all that society held as sacred. Jesus hangs out with these outsiders.

This story today mixes up the insiders and the outsiders, the mainstream and the strangers. This is the story of the stranger who gets saved, and who shows us insiders how to return thanks.

Gospel Reading: Luke 17:11-19

“On the way to Jerusalem…” In the midst of this section in Luke’s Gospel where we hear Jesus teaching a lot and telling parables, Luke does not want us to forget where Jesus is going: He’s going to his death. Jesus is traveling to Jerusalem, where he will celebrate the Passover Feast, be betrayed, and crucified.

But there is another geographic note that Luke gives us: At this point in his journey, Jesus is walking “along the borders of Samaria and Galilee,” between Samaritan and Jewish territories. Jesus was walking, traveling between two peoples: the Jews, who worshipped in the Jerusalem Temple and the Samaritans who worshipped on Mt. Gerizim.

The Jews and the Samaritans had some common religious and cultural heritage, but at this point in history an ethnic and religious rivalry had developed and they generally hated each other.

Today’s equivalent might be walking on the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip, between Israeli settlements and Palestinian areas, where even this morning two people were shot and killed. These groups don’t generally mix. Neither did the Samaritans and the Jews mix.

As Jesus walked into an unnamed village, 10 lepers call out to him. Leprosy is a chronic infection mainly in the skin, which causes disfigurement and disability. The disease has been recorded throughout history, and still ravages millions today.

The Old Testament law from Leviticus (13 and 14) held that the priest diagnosed leprosy and declared someone who had it “unclean.” That person was then isolated from the community, living “outside the camp” either alone or in colonies, wore torn clothes to mark themselves, and when they passed others, they had to yell,

“Unclean! Unclean!”

Any garment that was suspect as having been infected with leprosy was burned…this was to protect the community from the infection and keep the society clean.

So these 10 lepers who Jesus meets were considered as good as dead—dead to healthy living, dead to family, dead to society, success and relationship. Discarded, disowned, and considered disgusting. Even when they approach Jesus, they still “keep their distance” as the Law commanded.

How did they know to ask Jesus for mercy?

Luke doesn’t tell us, but most likely they had heard of his healing powers. So the 10 call out to Jesus from a distance:

“Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”

Instead of crying “Unclean!” they cry out to Jesus for mercy. Jesus commands them to

“Go and show yourselves to the priests.”

This was also in the Leviticus law: A leper who believed the infection had gone could return to the priest and, after an examination, the priest could pronounce the person clean again, after a sacrifice of atonement (Leviticus 14:20).

Jesus tells the 10 lepers to go to the priests—that’s it. They aren’t healed yet; they are cleansed “as they went.” We assume “as they went” means as they went to the priests. In other words, they need to do this on faith, that when they get to the priests, they will be healed. They are healed as they obey Jesus’ command. But I do wonder if “as they went” might mean something else…not going to the priests, but “as they went” away from Jesus.

Picture this:

• You’re a leper.
• You hear about this guy Jesus who heals people (including lepers).
• You hear he’s on the way into your town.
• You and your companions in the leper colony wait (at a safe distance) to meet him, cry out for his mercy and healing.
• Instead of touching you and healing you (like you had heard about), he says, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.”
• That’s crazy—you don’t go to the priest until you’re healed.

Maybe the 10 lepers felt like this:

• Maybe in their confusion at what Jesus did or didn’t do, they were simply on their way away from him, leaving disappointed.
• Maybe they doubted he had really done anything, or would do anything.
• Maybe this is why 9 don’t return to thank Jesus – once they are healed, then they run to the priests and to their loved ones, not realizing that Jesus is the one who healed them!

But in any case, one guy puts two and two together…One of the lepers turns back. He returns to give thanks, literally to return thanks. He returns to praise God for this deliverance, to fall at the feet of Jesus and give thanks.

His response was from the gut—heart-felt, he didn’t think much about it, he didn’t stop to consider whether this was proper or religious or the right ritual to perform—he just did it. He didn’t worry about whether God was properly accessed in the temple or on the mountain, he had met the power of God in Jesus. He praised God, he fell at Jesus’ feet and returned thanks.

Have you ever given thanks to anyone with this much abandon?
There is a powerful scene of giving thanks with abandon from the movie The Motorcycle Diaries…the movie is about the early life of Che Guavera (the movie is not about his later career as a political revolutionary).

Che and his friend are both young doctors from Argentina, road-tripping across South America in the early 1950s. The two young doctors spend three weeks serving in a leper colony on the Amazon in Peru. The colony is split by the Amazon River, with the lepers on one side and the staff/doctors/nurses on the other side. The staff cross the river to treat and serve the lepers, but they do not live with them—they are clearly segregated. And even though leprosy is not contagious while it’s being treated, the medical staff wears gloves when they interact, to symbolically distinguish the diseased lepers from the healthy staff.

Che and his friend break the “rules” of the colony and refuse to wear the gloves, and begin sharing life with the lepers…shaking hands (with no gloves), playing soccer, playing music together, living an un-segregated life with them.

On the eve of their departure from the colony, the staff throw a party to celebrate Che’s birthday, and give thanks to the two young men for their time of service. Che in turn thanks the staff, but then he remembers how much the lepers have taught him…but they are not at the party, they are across the river…a river that no one swims across, with deadly animals swimming in the dark water.

With utter abandon, Che dives into the dark murky waters and begins swimming alone across the wide Amazon. Half-way across the river, his asthma kicks in and he starts having trouble breathing. The medical staff on one side of the water are yelling for him to return—the lepers on the other side of the water realize what’s happening, and they being cheering him on as he swims toward them.

By the time he arrives the lepers are all gathered at the shore and some of them are wading out into the dark waters to help pull Che up onto the river banks, where he spends his last night before leaving Peru.

With wild abandon, he could not leave without returning to thank the ones who had taught him so much about life, love and healing. This is the wild abandon that the one leper has when he returns to thank Jesus.

We don’t get any details on the other nine lepers. In their excitement to tell friends and family that they could now return to live with them again, return to society, return to humanity, maybe they just hadn’t stopped long enough to realize who was responsible.

We don’t get the details on the nine, but we do get just one important detail on the one who turned back:

“he was a Samaritan”

Jesus calls him a foreigner, one from another race. A Samaritan from across the border, the border that was not crossed, the different people who didn’t mix with Jews…but difference didn’t matter there in the leper colony; what mattered more was the common disease they shared. This guy had learned that in leper colonies, cultural and racial barriers fade because the disease makes them all outcasts…he’s about to learn that for those who encounter Jesus, the same thing happens: Walls break down, we learn we all need God.

We hope that our high schoolers are going to see cultural and racial walls begin to break down in Jackson this week…I’m excited to see what stories they have to tell us when they return.

This Samaritan is a stranger—to the Jews, to their religious customs and rituals, a stranger to Jesus. And while the others are either running to their loved ones or running to the priests to be pronounced clean—doing what you do when you are healed from leprosy—he runs the other way in the opposite direction, he runs back to Jesus, and falls on his knees, and returns thanks.

This part of the story is an echo of the story of Naaman (2 Kings 5:1-15, our Old Testament reading today), another foreigner—an outsider, a stranger—who by God’s grace was healed of leprosy, and in the process met the God of Israel, began a relationship with the Living God.

The Samaritan leper and Naaman the leper have something to teach the insiders, the ones—like many of us—who often take God’s grace for granted. So often it’s the “strangers” to the faith who, when they encounter the Living God, remind the rest of us how fresh and new and exciting God’s grace is…and that sheer heart-felt gratitude is required in response. Sometimes I feel like new Christians in our midst have so much to teach those of us who have been Christians for a long time.

Jesus tells the Samaritan leper to “get up,” literally to rise, the same word used in the New Testament for resurrect. It’s not by chance that Jesus uses the word for resurrection, because resurrection does not begin until we begin to die. And this leper, in many ways, had died—

• died to human society and custom,
• died to pride,
• died to his racial differences.

All 10 were healed, restored to their former healthy life—even the nine who never returned to thank Jesus! But this Samaritan was not just healed, his resurrection had begun: He met Jesus, the power of the Living God, and Jesus was raising him to a new life, an eternal life, not just back to status quo, normal life, the way things were. The Samaritan leper is now becoming a new creation, and life will be nothing like “normal” ever again.

And part of experiencing resurrection is that you don’t forget who is raising you from the dead. The Samaritan remembered, and he returned, to give thanks. Meanwhile the nine others are getting on with their lives—they have forgotten about the one who can truly raise them from the dead.

God’s Kingdom was breaking in upon the domain of sin and darkness, death and disease. It still is today! Salvation for this Samaritan stranger was healing from leprosy, but salvation was also an encounter with the living God, and his Kingdom coming in Jesus:

“Your faith has saved you."

When Jesus heals, he makes people whole, physically whole and spiritually whole. The nine other lepers might be taking up their previous, “normal” lives—but this stranger had met Jesus, and he was becoming whole.

This is the story of the stranger who gets saved, and who shows us insiders how to return thanks—something we should know, but often forget.

• Maybe we forget to return thanks sometimes because we take God’s salvation for granted.
• Maybe we forget to return thanks because we get busy.
• Or maybe we take the credit ourselves.
• But maybe we forget to return thanks because we doubt if God has done anything worth thanking him for.

Giving thanks is not always easy, especially when we’re suffering. I don’t think that we’re called to always give thanks for the hard things themselves that are causing us to suffer…sometimes we’re called to lament and cry out to God. But maybe in time, after we lament and cry to God for mercy, we become able to “turn back” and give thanks for what God has done in the midst of our suffering.

Will we be one of the nine, the majority who don’t give God thanks…or will we be the ones who turn back, and fall at the feet of Jesus, and thank him?

We’re about to sing the hymn, “Come to Us, Beloved Stranger.” This is a song about Jesus, the “stranger” who comes often unnoticed into our midst, offering hope and healing…until we recognize him as friend and Savior.