Spending time with stories about Jesus is rewarding. In rereading and contemplating the particulars the details become both important and less familiar. With today's Gospel, which is the story of Jesus Healing the Ten Lepers, the first question that comes to my mind is why ten? The number ten in the Bible is normally associated with God's authority (thinking about the Ten Commandments for example) and holiness.
How people with a perceived highly contagious disease are treated is shifted with our now new perspective. This story takes on a relevancy in a world is emerging from a pandemic. Simultaneously leprosy is not only important as a disease in this context. This skin disease was so visible and involves the decay or corruption of the body, it also serves as an excellent metaphor for some of sinfulness. Sin corrupts someone spiritually the way leprosy corrupts someone physically. From this perspective the story shows God's mercy is not only shown to those who lead a pure and spiritual life.
In this parable Jesus asks three questions “Were not all ten cleansed?", "Where are the other nine?" and "Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?”
I read the first as a rhetorical question to confirm and emphasize what the story already conveyed. The next is a question the story does not answer. And today that question haunts me in ways I had never considered before. This story's lesson, for some, is that you won't always get thanked for the good you do in this world. If this is the lesson then Jesus' question has a slightly chiding tone. Is he really giving the crowd a reminder that it is good etiquette to say thank you for a gift?
"Where are the other nine?" Well, Jesus told them to show themselves to the priests and on the way they were cleansed. Did Jesus think they should come back to him to thank God? Are they ignoring the holiness of the place where they were healed or the person that healed them? Perhaps they learned that holiness is not attached to a place or person.
There is an implicit assumption made in the way the story is told that the nine did not thank God for their healing but there could be other reasons for them not returning to Jesus. They are not Christian. They would not have seen Jesus as God. They may have thanked God in the temple or sanctuary when they went to the priest. They may have gone back to their families where they could have thanked God surrounded by those they loved. Perhaps they had forgotten this particular piece of etiquette after being isolated from their community. With his question Jesus may have wanted their personal testimonies to be shared between his followers.
The foreign leper left Jesus under different circumstances and likely took a different, likely longer, journey than the others. Perhaps the foreigner noticed the cleansing along the way and thought to return to Jesus before he went back to his native land.
What I learned from this story today was to examine my initial assumptions about a Jesus story more closely and to expand my understanding of Jesus' responses when they appear superficially puzzling.
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