Ten lepers

Updated 22nd September

I’ve been exploring the 132 words (in one translation) of Luke 17.11-19 with eight members of a long established but lapsed Bible Study Group from St Michael’s, Haworth.  It is the Gospel reading which we’ll be using at Harvest services in our three churches early next month.

We used a simple technique I’d picked up from Christian Aid last year designed to make sure we pay real attention to every detail.  This involves writing out as much of the story as people could remember before looking at the passage.  What impression had many past readings, studies and sermons left?  What details had we got wrong or had missed, and what are the particular significances of these?

Between us, we remembered that a journey had been taking place when ten lepers living in isolation from their communities asked Jesus for healing and were granted it.  Jesus told them to show themselves to the religious authorities to demonstrate that they were healed and could be reintegrated into society.  Only one of the ten came back praising God and saying ‘thank you’.  (One person had a feeling that a cave had something to do with it, which isn’t in the Bible passage but which is here.)

So what did we then really notice when we read the passage?  There were three things in particular.

One was how noisy it was.  The lepers lifted up their voices from a distance to call for Jesus’ mercy.  The one leper who returned used a great voice to praise. 

So, if Jesus intended passing as unnoticed as possible through potentially hostile territory towards a dangerous destination (which is what we shall notice in a moment) then this noisy attention would not have helped much.

Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, we’d totally forgotten that a Samaritan was involved.  Jesus was journeying to Jerusalem and along the edge of Samaritan territory (both of which indicated the risks alluded to in the previous paragraph).  The one who came back to give thanks was a Samaritan, and Jesus’ comment was that it was only ‘this foreigner’ (I’ve now looked it up – allo-genes which is literally ‘other-bred’ and may be somewhere between ‘mis-begotten’ and ‘people not like us’) who did so. 

So, the impression left by the way we’d been told the story so often was simply the pious message that we should remember to be thankful, but we’d not been marked by the real bite of the passage at this point that is the despised other who did so.

Finally, and most movingly for some, we noticed that they found that were cleansed in going on their way.  It wasn’t that they were cleansed and then sent to the priests.  It was in going to the priests that they found themselves cleansed. 

So, Jesus’ final words to the one who came back was ‘your faith has healed you’ (I’ve now looked it up and it is ‘you’ in the singular) and it felt to us that it was the act of calling out to Jesus’ as master and trusting him to go straight away to do as he said which is where he found healing.

Meanwhile, the picture is simply a face I’ve enjoyed finding carved into the choir stalls at St James’, Cross Roads.

Paragraphs added 22^nd September:

This whole process is potentially a really significant help in developing an indigenous preaching ministry: knowing how a representative sample of the congregation relate to a biblical passage before preaching about it.  If so, I should be engaging in it much more often.

My prompted sermon-preparation reflection so far this time is that the ‘remember to be thankful’ use of the passage has been either preached or heard so well because it ties in with Victorian and twentieth century middle class culture: people like me and respectable church-goers more generally resonate with this message.

But there is clearly another message Luke has for us which is something like ‘those whose religion we are tempted to despise (whose versions of Christianity are least attractive to us, or those who are ‘other-bred’ culturally or literally) can be where we find both examples of trust in God and some specific human qualities which we sometime lack ourselves’. 

And (although, of course, there are plenty of Christian people who embrace this second message without flinching) this has either not been preached or not been heard so well because it sits less easily alongside the habitual Victorian and twentieth century middle class instincts of many people like me in the culture from which respectable church-goers are largely drawn?