Luke 17:11-19 Commentary

This is a great text for those of us preaching in Canada since it happens to be Thanksgiving weekend. Of course, it’s a good text for all of us around the world, but the thing that sets this leper apart from the other nine was his act of gratitude. What better theme for the holiday?

I came across this painting, “Ten Lepers” by James Christensen while preparing for this week. Christensen captures the scene as the lepers are on their way to the priest and have realized that they are healed. I’ll be referring to the painting throughout this commentary.

First off, notice the bells and noise makers on sticks that many of the lepers are carrying. These, along with shouting “Unclean, unclean!” (Leviticus 13.45-46) were how they alerted people to stay away. According to the law, they were responsible for keeping themselves separate—in other words, they had to protect others from themselves. Imagine what that does to one’s identity and sense of self. As those verses in Leviticus make clear, separation and isolation were their fate. No wonder the former lepers are full of such joy at the prospect of their healing!

Jesus initiates the miracle by telling them to go and show themselves to the priest. An examination by a priest was required by Levitical law (chapter 14) for anyone who was no longer suffering from a disease that made them unclean. As shown in the painting, the nine are well on their way, eager to continue this ritual process. Interestingly, the law required the priest to come to them (another protection mechanism), but Jesus sends them to the priest. Jesus knows they are no danger, they are already made clean by Christ.

All of them had a modicum of faith. We know this because they obeyed Jesus’s command to go—they cried out for mercy and then did what Jesus said to do. They are healed, the miracle is worked, while they are acting on that faith. And look at the joy on the nine’s faces! Yes, I think Christensen gets it right, these lepers are full of joy as faith in Jesus and his promises bears its fruit. It is likely they continued on their way to the priest in order to be fully restored to their communities.

But there is one at the back of the pack, the one looking over his shoulder in the direction they have come. He is holding up his hands as though wondering, “Who is this man who has healed us? How can this be?” To me, his face depicts the biblical “fear of God” best categorized as a type of overwhelming awe and awareness of God’s grandeur. He turns back to Jesus and where he once proclaimed “Unclean!” about himself, he now shouts praises to God.

In comparing the nine to the one, the nine are headed to the priest to say, “Look at me!” whereas the one headed back to Jesus is essentially shouting, “Look at God! Look at God!” When he gets back to Jesus he continues in this same vein, falling on the ground to lay at Jesus’s feet in an act of worship. As he lays down as humbly as he can, he gives Jesus thanks.

There appears to be another difference between this man and at least many of the other lepers. The one who decides to start his new life with gratitude is a “foreigner”—someone kept separate and looked down upon. It is yet another reminder of the ways our categories exclude when God includes. Jesus asks a rhetorical question, wondering where the other nine are, emphasising the outsider status in comparison to the nine.

The healed leper’s gratitude is a reflection and act of his faith, which is strengthening through its expression. Jesus says so, telling him to “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” This last verb is in the perfect tense, meaning that it will have lasting consequences: this is only the beginning! One’s joy at being healed might wear off if being grateful for that healing doesn’t become a key expression. And as we see from the leper, gratitude is expressed by changing course and making our thankfulness to God public. He did not settle for saying thanks in prayer: he did something about it. Amen.

Textual Point

Given that all of the lepers practiced some faith by heeding Jesus’s command to go, what are we to make of Jesus’s words in verse 19 when he says to the one who returned, “…your faith has made you well”? It might help to know that in the Greek, “well” isn’t a noun but a verb—no less than the verb having to do with being saved. “Faith” is what is saving/making the man well in the sense that it has also led him to return to the one who healed him to give thanks. What sets this man’s faith apart from the others is that it has changed the pattern of behaviour to be first and foremost about gratitude towards his Redeemer.

Illustration Ideas

Again, here is the 2002 painting “Ten Lepers” from American artist James Christensen.

I learned about leprosy from Paul Brand and Philip Yancey’s book Fearfully and Wonderfully Made and if you haven’t read it, I recommend it because understanding the extent to which leprosy cuts a person off from their community but also from themselves, only adds to the awe of the miracle of restoration that Jesus brings to these ten. For instance, leprosy kills nerve endings and sabotages the body’s systems and mechanisms for self-protection and awareness. (You can read examples of what I mean in the book.) So not only does God restore the person to their communities, God restores the person to themselves.