The Nine Grateful Lepers
Luke 17.11-19
The Nine Grateful Lepers
For as long as I can remember, the memory of the hymn, Now thank we all our God, has caused goosebumps down my spine. I don’t know why, perhaps it’s the words, perhaps it’s the feeling of singing it with others, belting out in competition with a good organist on an overpowering organ. Or maybe it is the sheer gratitude of being part of God’s love, gratitude for the extreme abundance I can share in, delight at being alive and joy at being in the energy of that love:
Now thank we all our God
with hearts and hands and voices…
who from our mothers' arms
has blessed us on our way
with countless gifts of love,
and still is ours today.
When I first discovered something of the background of Now thank we all our God, maybe it had something to do with the way it was told, it broke my heart, I can honestly say that the knowledge brought tears to my face.
The earliest projected date for the hymn is 1636 and the latest 1663 meaning that it was written in the context of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648). Martin Rinckart (1586-1649) was a musician, and a priest in the city of Eilenburg at the time of the Thirty-year war. As one of the last surviving priests, it was left to Martin to perform the multitude of funerals during the height of the plague and stretch his personal resources to provide for the orphaned children and refugees in his city. Martin wrote the hymn so his children would have something to sing at the dinner table. While providing shelter for other victims of war, famine, and the plague, with the Swedes besieging the city and demanding and insurmountable ransom, Martin and his family stare down at the scraps of dinner that will do very little to appease their hunger and sing together the hymn Now thank we all our God with hearts and hands and voices. The story behind the hymn breaks my heart, and the depth of Martin’s gratitude joins the goosebumps down my spine to tears down my face.
It is with the hymn Now thank we all our God humming in the background that I read Luke’s text in 17.11-19. At first, this text might lend itself to a simple message about gratitude. We can now update the ancient text on gratitude with 21st century research on the benefits of an attitude of gratitude and how gratitude can reconfigure the brain. Although the hymn Now thank we all our God is still humming like an ear wig, the invitation from the text niggles beyond gratitude. Luke’s Gospel has as a centrifugal force the experience of seeing the world differently. What exactly is it beyond gratitude that I am meant to be seeing?
Jesus is in an in-between place, he is on the way to Jerusalem, to where the climax of the gospel takes place, but he is in nowhere land between Samaria and Galilee. The in-between place is a textual clue for us, it is a space of transformation. You have heard the text preached enough times to know that lepers were more than physically unclean, they were socially and spiritually unclean too. There is no sadder oppression than when the oppressed accept the categories of their outsider status and perpetuate their own oppression. Here the lepers accept the status as total outsiders and participate in their own exclusion, shouting “unclean” in warning, ringing bells to warn people of their presence, and speaking to Jesus from a distance. The lepers call Jesus “Master” which is a term used by the disciples. Luke implies that the lepers are also disciples. As per the Torah, Jesus sends the ten to the priest, who not only confirm the physical healing but also institute the social and spiritual healing. By virtue of the priest’s declaration, the healed lepers could resume temple worship and participate in community life. The catharsis (katharizo in Greek to cleanse) happens on the way to the temple. It is here where the story is interesting and something more niggles at my attention, something I am supposed to see but do not yet see.
I have a hunch that all ten were utterly grateful for their experience of cleansing, healing, catharsis. Some Bibles add an unwelcome commentary to the translation and may demarcate this section of Luke’s Gospel 17.11-19 as “the Thankful leper”, which is why a sermon on gratitude while helpful may also be cliched because it stops the excavation into the text too soon. I have every confidence that all ten were thankful - the heading could be ten thankful lepers.
If I step into the story, I find myself running with the nine to the temple in gratitude, to sing Now thank we all our God louder than ever. I run with gratitude to the temple with the nine for very good reasons: Jesus said to go to the temple and meet with the priest. It would not occur to me to think differently or act beyond that. While the physical healing may be a welcome relief, it is the restoration to spiritual healing and joining in community that the temple and the priest offer. The priest and the temple offer the end of exclusion. I would also naturally run with gratitude to the priest and the temple for it represents a comfortable space for me, a familiar space. I have been part of the temple for so long, I can’t imagine not being part of it. In total gratitude, I would arrive at the priest in the temple and sing Now thank we all our God with my nine friends, and, if I am honest, it would take me a long while to notice that the Samaritan is missing. In truth, I might even be glad that he was left behind, his presence might be awkward, it might even spoil the celebration. It is at this point that I stop short, and the sword of the scripture begins its surgery, piercing my newly healed flesh right to the point where bone and marrow meet.
It would be guilt that would make me turn back to look for the lost leper. I would be irritated. As Luke describes, if I turned back to look for the lost leper and invite him into the temple secretly hoping he maybe had a wedding to go to, I could witness the wonder and worship of the Samaritan at the feet of Jesus. With a jolt, it may remind me of the other songs in Luke, the Gloria the angels sang at Jesus birth with the shepherds, the blessing Elizabeth sang when Jesus moved in utero. For the third time Jesus says, “your faith has saved you”. For the first time in Luke’s Gospel Jesus has said it to a man. In Luke 7.50 and 8.48 Jesus says “your faith has healed you” to a woman who anointed his feet and a woman saved from a twelve-year haemorrhage. In Luke 18.42 Jesus will say “Your faith has healed you” to a man born blind who calls him “Son of David”. Luke likes writing in doublets, two women, two men, Samaritan, and Jew. The doublets speak to the radical inclusivity of the Jesus mission.
Watching the scene unfolding with the Samaritan praising God and having the blessing announced your faith has made you well gives me pause to look and see, seeing is the goal of Luke’s Gospel. I would wonder about the Samaritan’s gift at seeing the world differently. What is it about him that he was caught up in awe and wonder and responded from the gut to turn around and go back to Jesus. Having encountered catharsis and the cosmic Christ in the in-between space beyond the confines of the church, how often do I return to the familiarity of predictable institutions, almost as a way to control the avalanche of the spiritual waters. In our spiritual journeys Jesus often asks us to step out of the boat and walk on water, an invitation to take an adventure on a path with no footprints beyond the confines of religion, what holds us back?
Perhaps it is no surprise that the Samaritan fell behind and didn’t make it to the temple. He is after all, a double loser. Even after being physically healed, he is still a Samaritan, a spiritual and social leper. I have forgotten to notice the ways that my temple, that my way of being might exclude others. I’m so used to the liturgical space and so familiar with the internal culture that my busyness can make me a bit lazy in noticing the discomfort of others. There are so many that pause at the doorway and want to come in but don’t. There are those who carry the hurt, those who don’t know the responses, those who don’t obey the rules that are so familiar to the rest of us we have forgotten to write them down, Church can be a scary place.
Today it is for the Samaritans that I sing Now thank we all our God. It is the Samaritans whose faith will save me. I need to find them, they are not in the temple, but is the Samaritans who have faith enough to heal me too. I am not alone in the search for the Samaritan who will save me, BBT searches with me too:
“ ‘Where are the nine’ Jesus asks, but I know where they are. ‘Where is the tenth leper?’ That is what I want to know. Where is the one who followed his heart instead of his instructions, who accepted his life as a gift and gave it back again, whose thanksgiving rose up from somewhere so deep inside him that it turned him around, changed his direction, led him to Jesus, made him well?’
“Where are the nine?? Where is the tenth?! Where is the disorderly one who failed to go along with the crowd, the impulsive one who fell on his face in the dirt, the fanatical one who loved God so much that obedience was beside the point? Where did that one go? Not that I am likely to go after him. It is safer here with the nine—we know the rules and who does what. We are the ones upon whom the institution depends. But the missing one, the one who turned back, or was turned away, or turned against—where did he go? Who is he, and whom is he with, and what does he know that we do not know? Where are the nine? We are here, right here. But where, for the love of God, is the tenth?”