Luke 17:11-19
Lesson Focus
We need to ask God to give us hears to hear and eyes to see what God is doing in the world around us.
Lesson Outcomes
Through this lesson, students should:
1. Seek to identify who the “Samaritans” and “lepers” in our society might be.
2. Seek to question who it is that we might, even unintentionally, be
excluded from the saving love of God.
Catching up on the Story
Jesus continues to make his way toward Jerusalem, where he will eventually be crucified but resurrected on the third day. Luke explicitly reminds us of this at the beginning of verse 11, and as we move forward with the narrative, he will keep telling us that this is where the story is going.
Jesus has two main conversation partners in Luke’s Gospel so far. First, there are his disciples, which often include the marginal ones in the large crowds who follow him, and second, the Pharisees and Scribes, the Jewish religious leadership. The disciples are a little slow to understand Jesus. The Pharisees, on the other hand, think they know who Jesus is, and they do not like it one bit.
The Pharisees’ dislike of Jesus stems from their belief that Jesus is making himself equal with God and from the fact that, in their mind, Jesus keeps breaking the Law. The Pharisees have a limited idea of what obedience to the Law entails. Such a narrow view has led them down a path toward self-righteousness. As we discussed last week, they are confident that God owes them something because they have been obedient. In doing so, they have neglected the crucial things of the Law and have caused “little ones” to stumble.
In the next scene in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus will explode their worldview wide open.
The Text
As we have already said, Jesus is on his way toward Jerusalem. Luke tells us that Jesus is walking somewhere between the regions of Samaria and Galilee. “The region between Samaria and Galilee” is not exactly a specific location. The ambiguity in Jesus’ location is intentional. It leaves us with a little suspense about who Jesus will encounter and how he might deal with them.
A little Jewish history is important here. First, the Jewish people and the Samaritans had some bad, bad blood. They did not like each other at all. The Jewish historian Josephus helps explain the Jewish—Samaritan antagonism.
Being a Jew, Josephus was biased against Samaritans, and some of his assertions about them are of dubious historical value. However, he articulates contemporary Jewish prejudices with greater clarity than the unexplained anecdotes in the Gospels.
In Josephus’ view, the Samaritans are Gentiles who pretend to be Jews when it is useful for them to do so—and stop pretending whenever being Jewish entails persecution and hardship (Ant. 11.341; 12.257–61). He identifies them with the foreign nations settled in Israel by the Assyrians (Ant. 9.288–291; compare 2 Kgs 17:24–41). Josephus also tells a story of a schism within the Jewish community. On the eve of Alexander the Great’s conquest of Palestine in 332 BC, Manasseh, brother of the high priest, marries the daughter of the governor of Samaria (a foreigner) and is compelled to relinquish his hereditary rights to the high priesthood. Manasseh’s Samaritan father-in-law then promises to build a rival temple on Mount Gerizim in Samaria.
Many other Jews who married foreign women followed Manasseh’s lead in abandoning Jerusalem for the new holy place (Ant. 11.302–25, 346). Josephus’ tale concedes that Samaritans worship the same God as the Jews—with the help of Jewish priests—but insists on the deviant character of their worship. This compounds Josephus’ slander that the Samaritans are natural liars (Ant. 12.10; 13.74–75).
The Jewish high priest, John Hyrcanus I, destroyed Samaria and the Gerizim temple at the head of a Jewish army near the end of the second century B.C. (Ant. 13.255–56). Violent assaults by Samaritans against Galilean pilgrims en route to Jerusalem, followed by equally violent Jewish reprisals, indicate that the vendetta was still alive a century and a half later (J.W. 2.232–46; Ant. 20.118–36). Not surprisingly, the Samaritans told a very different story about themselves and their Jewish neighbors, as mentioned in John’s Gospel (John 4:12). Josephus’ testimony helps us explain the Jewish perspective that dominates New Testament views of Samaritans (Seeman).
So the fact that Jesus was not traveling directly through Samaria is no surprise. This was an established custom for Jews making their way from the north to Jerusalem in the south.
As Jesus travels, he enters a village, and ten lepers approach him. Luke tells us that the lepers observe social norms and keep their distance. A few things about lepers here; the word Luke uses for leper is a generic term for any variety of skin diseases that would have made an individual unclean. It was thought that a condition like this that you or someone in your family had sinned.
Because being unclean kept you from full social and religious inclusion in the community, extreme measures were taken to ensure that no one else caught the leper’s ailments. So, lepers were consigned to colonies located outside the city limits. There were even protocols for how they could move through an area. They would have to announce their presence to anyone within earshot.
They would have to hold their hand over their mouth while shouting, “Unclean, unclean!” If having to live away from all your friends and family and away from the religious gatherings that gave purpose and meaning to life wasn’t enough, lepers had to announce their shame wherever they went.
From a respectful distance, these ten lepers announce their presence and call out for Jesus to have mercy on them, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”
Luke does not tell us how these lepers knew who Jesus was, but they knew enough to call Jesus “Master.” That they call him master is significant. Any other time in Luke’s gospel that “master” is used, it designates one as someone who has authority and miraculous power (Green, 623). Generally, this title is only on the lips of Jesus’ disciples.
By using such a term, the lepers put themselves in a position of submission to Jesus in the hope of receiving something from him. They believe that Jesus can do something about their situation.
So, keeping his distance, Jesus responds, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” When a skin disease cleared up, you would have to go to the local priest to show that you were clean, and he would reinstate you into full fellowship within the community.
As the lepers depart from Jesus, they are cleansed from their skin ailments. All ten of them are clean.
When one of the lepers notices that he has been cleansed and healed, he turns back and returns to Jesus. Luke tells us that he begins praising God. This unclean leper has realized something that the Pharisees have not, that Jesus is divine, or at least an agent of God’s good work in the world.
When he arrives where Jesus is, he throws himself on the ground and gives thanks to Jesus. It’s right here that Luke drops the bomb. The man is a Samaritan!
Let’s let this simmer for a minute. It may not seem like a big deal to you and me because we do not live with the struggle and animosity between the Jews and Samaritans. We might have to substitute contemporary groups into this story.
Who is it that you might believe could never receive God’s gracious salvation? Cubs fans? Cardinal fans? Democrats? Republicans? Illegal immigrants? Insert whatever group you would like into this story.
Jesus addresses the man. Jesus wants to know where the other nine lepers are, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”
We shouldn’t be too hard on the other nine; after all, they only did what Jesus had told them to do. They were on their way to the priests so they could return to healthy lives. Their healing would mean they could hug their wives, hold their children, and worship with the community again. At the same time, however, they did not possess the same gratitude toward Jesus as this Samaritan.
So What…?
What is Jesus getting at here? I think the answer comes in verse 19, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” The phrase “Get up and go” would have been understood by the original audience as synonymous with resurrection. In a way, Jesus has resurrected this man.
Additionally, Jesus proclaims that the man’s faith has saved him. The “Made you well” at the end of the verse is the term for being saved or salvation.
Never in a million years would any self-respecting Jew think that a Samaritan could receive salvation. Just like the bent-over woman from a few weeks ago, this man is now a “child of Abraham” even though he is a foreigner and Samaritan.
Here Jesus goes again, revealing the new order of things, the Kingdom of God. Here he goes again, exploding our preconceived ideas about who is in and who isn’t.
Discussion Questions
Read the text aloud. Then, instruct the group to read the text to themselves quietly. Encourage them to read it slowly, as if they were unfamiliar with the story.
1. Who are the main characters in the story? What are they doing?
2. What doesn’t make sense to you in this story?
3. Who are the people who are the outcasts of society for us? Who are our “lepers?” Who are our “Samaritans?”
4. How might the story sound if you were to replace “Samaritan” and “leper” with the groups you identify in question 3? [Perhaps have someone in your class read the story again, switching out those groups.]
5. How are we blind to see what God is doing in and through Jesus like the Jewish people who would have heard this story?
Works Cited
Flavius Josephus and William Whiston, The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1987).
Chris Seeman, “Josephus, Flavius,” ed. John D. Barry and Lazarus Wentz, The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2012).
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