28 Sunday Year C
LUKE 17:11–19
Ten Lepers Healed
11 As Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, he passed along the borderlands between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he was going into one particular village he was met by ten lepers, who stayed at some distance from him.
13 ‘Jesus, Master!’ they called out loudly. ‘Have pity on us!’
14 When Jesus saw them he said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were healed.
15 One of them, seeing that he had been healed, turned back and gave glory to God at the top of his voice. 16 He fell on his face in front of Jesus’ feet and thanked him. He was a Samaritan.
17 ‘There were ten of you healed, weren’t there?’ responded Jesus. ‘Where are the nine? 18 Is it really the case that the only one who had the decency to give God the glory was this foreigner?
19 ‘Get up, and be on your way,’ he said to him. ‘Your faith has saved you.’
What would make you shout for joy at the top of your voice? What would make you fall on the ground—yes, flat on your face!—in front of someone?
Two explorers were lost in the South American jungle not long ago. For nine months they wandered about, not knowing where they were or how to get out. Finally, after many adventures and often giving up hope, they were found and rescued. They probably didn’t have enough energy to shout, but they will have felt like it. Certainly their relatives back home did.
You might shout for joy when the doctor told you that someone you loved very dearly had come safely through the operation, and was going to be all right after all. You might do it when suddenly all your debts were rolled away and you were given a new start in life.
Which, then, is the more surprising: the fact that one person came back, shouted for joy, and fell down at Jesus’ feet? Or the fact that nine didn’t?
Luke, once again, focuses on Jesus’ attitude to the outsider, the foreigner. Like the Samaritan in one of his own stories, this man put to shame the Jews who had been healed but who didn’t say ‘thank you’. Perhaps, once they’d seen the priest (the priest who lived locally had the responsibility to declare when people were healed from such diseases), they were afraid to go back and identify themselves with Jesus, who by now was a marked man. Perhaps, having realized they had been healed, they were so eager to get back to their families, whom they hadn’t been able to live with all the time the disease had affected them, that they simply didn’t think to go back and look for Jesus.
Luke doesn’t say that they were any less cured, but he does imply that they were less grateful. After the lesson in humility comes the lesson in gratitude. Humility, of course, is still built in: only the outsider, only the foreigner, gives God the glory, showing up the Jews whose very name reminded them to praise God (the word ‘Judah’ in Hebrew means ‘praise’).
It is not only the nine ex-lepers who are shown up. It is all of us who fail to thank God ‘always and for everything’, as Paul puts it (Ephesians 5:20). We know with our heads, if we have any Christian faith at all, that our God is the giver of all things: every mouthful of food we take, every breath of air we inhale, every note of music we hear, every smile on the face of a friend, a child, a spouse—all that, and a million things more, are good gifts from his generosity. The world didn’t need to be like this. It could have been far more drab (of course, we have often made it dull and lifeless, but even there God can spring surprises). There is an old spiritual discipline of listing one’s blessings, naming them before God, and giving thanks. It’s a healthy thing to do, especially in a world where we too often assume we have an absolute right to health, happiness and every possible creature comfort.
Jesus’ closing words to the Samaritan invite a closer look. The word for ‘get up’ is a word early Christians would have recognized as having to do with ‘resurrection’. Like the prodigal son, this man ‘was dead, and is alive again’. New life, the life which Israel was longing for as part of the age to come, had arrived in his village that day, and it had called out of him a faith he didn’t know he had. Once again (compare 5:20; 8:48; 8:50), faith and healing go hand in hand. Once again, ‘faith’ here means not just any old belief, any generally religious attitude to life, but the belief that the God of life and death is at work in and through Jesus, and the trust that this is not just a vague general truth but that it will hold good in this case, here and now. This rhythm of faith and gratitude simply is what being a Christian, in the first or the twenty-first century, is all about.
The kindly light of God led John Henry Newman throughout his long life. He was born February 21, 1801, in London, the eldest of six children in a middle-class family. His parents provided their children with a good foundational education. John was an excellent student, versed in Latin and Greek, who delighted also in fantasy and adventure. He admits, “I used to wish the Arabian Tales were true: my imagination ran on unknown influences, on magical powers, and talismans.…” Despite the fact that he came from a devout Anglican family, John rebelled against religion, even delighted in reading anti-religious texts, until meeting the Reverend Walter Mayers, an evangelical minister, who encouraged the adolescent to study his faith anew. Nine years later, after finishing studies at Trinity College at Oxford, he was ordained a clergyman in the Church of England. In 1828, at the age of twenty-seven, he was appointed vicar of the prestigious university church of Saint Mary the Virgin in Oxford. Gradually, as he perfected his preaching style, his congregation expanded to include a large number of students and fellow professors. During this period, Newman made an ongoing study of the early Church Fathers that was reflected in the beauty and clarity of those sermons, later compiled in the collection Parochial and Plain Sermons. The personal result of his studies was an increased conviction that the true Church was that of the early centuries. In 1830 he resigned his position as tutor, and soon set out on a voyage to Italy meant to calm and refresh him. There he became deathly ill with fever, but thankfully survived. That same year, upon his return to England, he began with a group of like-minded friends to write and distribute a pamphlet series called Tracts for the Times with the intent of showing the divine origin of the Church. The initial catalyst of this movement was a series of actions taken by the British Parliament, particularly the suppression of a number of Anglican dioceses. Newman and others were appalled because, in effect, such government interference relegated the Church to a mere branch of government. Thus was the Oxford Movement born. Some of his collaborators, however, began to see in the Catholic Church the purity of doctrine they sought. Newman himself set out on a thorough study of the early Church in an effort to firmly establish the Church of England in a direct line with the apostolic Church. By the time the series ended in 1841 with tract 90, Newman’s thought had so evolved that he now felt drawn unwillingly, unwittingly, toward that very Church of Rome. He resigned his pulpit at Saint Mary the Virgin and later his fellowship at Oriel College. However, he continued mulling over in his mind all the arguments he had developed. In 1845 he wrote to a friend, “Six years ago the Catholicity of the Church of Rome broke on my mind suddenly and clearly. I have never shaken off the impression, though for a long while I dreaded to allow it, lest it should be a delusion.” That October he invited the Passionist preacher Father Dominic Barberi to visit him. During the visit Newman knelt and asked to be received into the Church. Then he was off to Rome, where he studied for the priesthood and was ordained in 1847. There he joined the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri, opening an oratory in England upon his return. Back home, his time was spent writing and serving the poor in Birmingham.
The ensuing years were full of misunderstandings and opposition from his former Anglican colleagues as well as, surprisingly, his fellow Catholics, including members of the hierarchy. He was accused by some of backtracking, by others of fomenting trouble among the laity. By 1859, when he was denounced to Rome, he felt it necessary to defend himself. As he said, sometimes one can only get the adversary’s attention by shaking a fist in front of him. In his case the fist was literary. He published Apologia pro Vita Sua in 1864. This biographical sketch covered his religious history through 1845, the year of his conversion. It went a long way toward opening hearts, both of former friends and fellow Catholics, to the sincerity and integrity of his long faith journey. Despite this new understanding, Newman continued to meet with constant aggravation and confrontation. Nevertheless, he spoke out in defense of the truth, principally with his monumental work A Grammar of Assent, published in 1870. Nine years later, Pope Leo XIII made him a cardinal. This was a great honor for a great defender of the faith. However, Newman saw it more as a sign of approval and acceptance from the Church he so loved. On August 11, 1890, John Henry Cardinal Newman died at the Birmingham Oratory.
Although he had avoided personal honor in his lifetime, Newman’s thought found a certain vindication in the proceedings of Vatican Council II, where his inner vision of the man of God as one who trusted his conscience, found resource in the Scriptures, and involved himself in the life and concerns of the Church was enshrined in the Council documents. In September 2010 Pope Benedict XVI beatified this most humble servant of the Church.