Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan.”
NL Daily Devotion for Saturday, February 10, 2024
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
This last healing story for the week has a twist. It’s not about the healing, but about the response to the healing. As I’ve been saying this week, Jesus didn’t discriminate in his healing, nor let unjust laws stop him from performing these acts. Here he cures not one or two, but ten lepers, and sends them off to the priests to be declared ritually clean again. Their leprosy leaves them while they are walking toward where the priests are. Maybe they don’t all notice. Maybe they’re so shocked, they don’t quite believe what they’re seeing. Maybe they’ve been excluded from the community for so long, they can’t wait to get to the priests so they can get back to their homes and families and jobs. Whatever the reason, nine of the ten men healed keep going while the last one looks down, sees he’s no longer leprous, and is so overwhelmed with gratitude that he has to turn around and run back to Jesus and say “Thank you!”
The punch line, of course, is that the man who came back was a Samaritan. I always thought this was significant because it wasn’t the “good Jew” who was grateful, but the one the Jews rejected. The message I gleaned was that the Samaritan was really the “good” one and the others were “bad”. But now I see it a little differently. The fact is that it didn’t even matter to the Jews whether the Samaritan was a leper or not. Just by the fact of his being a Samaritan he was considered unclean anyway! Jews didn’t share utensils with Samaritans. Because of their disagreement about where God was to be worshipped—even though they pretty much agreed on everything else—Jews considered Samaritans persona non grata, if not straight up Gentiles.
So what, then, is the lesson to be learned from the Samaritan’s return to give thanks to Jesus? Maybe, since the Samaritan had nothing to lose from a religious standpoint, he was free to be grateful for the freedom Jesus had granted him from his physical separation from the community. He could go home without fear that he would spread his disease to those he loved. He didn’t need to worry about how he looked to others—his status, his standing, his worthiness. He could just enjoy his newfound freedom.
Do we find ourselves held back from just reveling in our status as beloved children of God because we want to make sure we look good to the world? Do we forget to thank Jesus for all his love and healing because we’re too busy trying to achieve “success” as defined by western capitalist society? Maybe we should look down at ourselves, notice what incredible miracles we are and have, and remember to throw up our hands and thank God for all of it.
What distracts me from gratitude to God for all that I am and have?
