They stood at a distance from him and raised their voice, saying,
"Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!"
And when he saw them, he said,
"Go show yourselves to the priests."
They all came to him with faith that he could heal them. And for all of them it was strong enough that they were willing to head off in the direction of the priests even before any miracle occurred. It wasn't until they were going, responding to the word of Jesus in faith, that they were cured.
As they were going they were cleansed.
And one of them, realizing he had been healed,
returned, glorifying God in a loud voice;
and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him.
Presumably they all realized they had been healed eventually. But this man must have realized something deeper. He must have realized that the priests could wait, that returning to say thanks took precedence over the command to have the perfunctory liturgical ceremony performed. Most probably he would get around to that eventually. Returning to the priest would allow the lepers be reintegrated into the communal worship of Israel. But that was only a shadow of what was going to be accomplished in Jesus himself. For Jesus himself was truly the great high priest, not from the priesthood of Aaron but rather of Melchizedek. And only in him would the barriers separating humanity from God and Jew from Gentile be removed.
Where are the other nine?
Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?"
Then he said to him, "Stand up and go;
your faith has saved you."
A foreigner returned, perhaps in part because he knew that he could not be fully reintegrated into the communal worship by the Levitical priesthood, and intuited that somehow Jesus was the one who could accomplish that. No doubt he didn't think these things explicitly but rather was moved by his overwhelming faith in Jesus to trust him, not just for healing, but for all good things.
Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say,
“The Lord will surely separate me from his people”;
“And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord,
to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord,
and to be his servants,
everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it,
and holds fast my covenant—
these I will bring to my holy mountain,
and make them joyful in my house of prayer;
(see Isaiah 56:3,6-7)¹
We receive many blessings from the Lord but we don't often realize the full degree of their meaning in the way that this Samaritan did. We continue on our way with the other nine, not realizing fully all that we owe to Jesus and all that his interventions reveal about who he is. There was something formulaic about the relationship of the other nine to Jesus. But the Samaritan rose to a more dynamic and personal relationship with him, and was guided by his heart, not against the command of Jesus but in addition, as revealing something more central than the words themselves conveyed.
May we too realize that we have been cleansed, and therefore all that we owe to Jesus, and realize along with that some sense of his majesty and Lordship. Thanksgiving is meant to define the very substance of our lives as Christians. It isn't just an act, or even an attitude. It is something more like a worldview, something that changes the way we look at everything else.
In all circumstances, give thanks,
for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.
1) Gadenz, Pablo T.. The Gospel of Luke (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture): (A Catholic Bible Commentary on the New Testament by Trusted Catholic Biblical Scholars - CCSS) (p. 296). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
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