Dreaded Illnesses and Untouchables: Psalm 18: 1-6; Luke 17: 11-19
I saw a sign the other day that said, “It costs zero dollars to be a nice person.” I think that phrase captures the entire essence and the lesson in this gospel lesson. It is almost a perfect summary. I have seen that saying around, usually people post it on facebook. And usually the people who post it on facebook are targeting it at another person they have a problem with. I can’t help but often notice, though, that the same people who post it, need to learn the lesson as well. Go figure…In this gospel story, though, we see two lessons at work: humility and gratefulness, and in many cases they go hand in hand.
In Jesus we find a strong lesson in humility. During this time in Ancient Jerusalem, there was no cure for leprosy, and many ended up dying a horrible death from it. They knew enough to realize that the disease was transferred by human contact, usually from droplets of bodily fluid such as from a sneeze or cough. It was a truly terrible disease that anyone in Jesus’ day dreaded contracting. So, the only way to prevent the spread of the disease was to cast out those infected and declare them untouchables. Those who had leprosy could not enter the city, come into contact with people or interact with any non-infected person. Likewise, non-infected people had to regard people with leprosy as untouchable and avoid going near them.
Therefore, not only did people live with the horrific and slow death of the disease, but they were ostracized, belittled, and emotionally battered by the people who lived in town as well. To contract leprosy meant a slow, agonizing death including physical and emotional suffering. That is what the people of Jerusalem had created in response to this disease. But Jesus did something different. Jesus had the humility to love and help those affected with this disease.
Jesus could have ignored or ostracized the ten lepers as well. He would have been justified, and the town would certainly have thought it right and proper. But instead, when they cried, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” Jesus responded. He healed them By the time they went to the priest to be pronounced clean and healed, all of their disease was gone. They were made perfectly whole.
The trouble for us is that people cannot be healed and made whole when we stand on the sidelines. Avoidance has never saved a soul, never helped someone struggling out of the pit, never comforted a weary spirit, never been a calling of a Christian. It reminds me of an iconic photo from 1987. At the height of the AIDS epidemic, many people treated those who contracted AIDS similarly to the lepers of Jesus’ day. They were often met with scorn, ridicule, and being excluded from society.
But there is an iconic photo of Diana, a princess, leaving the royal palaces to visit an AIDS hospital. She shook hands with the patients, held the children, and treated all of them as if they were human beings, with dignity and love. As one nurse at the hospital said, “If a royal was allowed to go in [and] shake a person’s hands, someone at a bus stop or the supermarket could do the same…that really educated people.” Jesus did much the same here. The psalm says, “In my distress I cried to the Lord; yes, I prayed to my God for help. He heard me from his sanctuary; my cry to him reached his ears.” Christ was the humble healer both of the lepers and of all humankind.
But we also see a lesson in gratefulness in this gospel lesson. Ten lepers were healed by Jesus. They were elated, they were excited and overjoyed. They could re-enter society, reconnect with families, return to a sense of normalcy. Yet in the midst of the blessing, they forgot to be humble themselves, and to be grateful. We must never be so caught up in our blessings that we forget about the one who gave the gift. We must never be so caught up in our struggles that we forget the One who can bless us richly.
Ten lepers were healed that day, but only one came back to offer Jesus thanks. He came back to Jesus shouting, “Praise God!” We are told he fell down to praise and thank Jesus for what he had done. He was a Samaritan. This is important. Samaritans were already outcasts in Jesus’ day. They were looked down upon and treated as lesser-than the Jewish people who lived in Jerusalem and the areas surrounding Samaria. Jesus’ healing of this man’s disease did not necessarily make him any less an outcast in society. And yet he was the only one who remembered to give thanks.
The others, who we must assume were Jewish and not Samaritans, who should know better, failed to come back and thank Jesus for his mercy. They were proud, and in their pride, they were ungrateful for Jesus’ healing. The one who possibly gained the least from the healing was the only one who had the humility and grace to say, “Thank you.”
And Jesus responds, “Has no one returned to give glory to God except this foreigner? Stand up and go. Your faith has healed you.” Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our lives, in our blessings, in our joy that we forget to be humble, and we forget to be grateful. Instead we must look to Jesus, who humbly and in love healed, helped, and restored even the worst illnesses, and even the farthest outcasts.
I will never forget in college once that I got the flu twice in a month, and I spent nearly an entire month sick, in bed, and barely functional. No one came around or even got near me. We were all poor college students whose health insurance had run out and were too poor to get sick. My best friend and roommate moved out of the room. My professors told me not to come to class, for it would all be excused. For that month I was pretty much isolated and quarantined. The pain of no contact, no people, nothing but illness day in and day out nearly crushed my spirit.
I cannot imagine what these ten lepers endured for the years of their sickness, of being outcast and made into untouchables. But the mercy of our Savior is deep and expansive to heal us, to help us, and to make us whole again. It costs zero dollars to be a nice person. To embrace mercy, to show mercy, and to live in mercy is a gift each day from our Holy Lord. So may we be grateful and joyful that God loves us so, and may we in turn be merciful to those around us in need of a healing touch.