Jesus and the Desperados (Reflections on Pentecost 18, Year C 2022)

 

"Cleansing the 10 Lepers" James Tissot (French 19th Cent.)

“Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” (Luke 17:19) 

Jesus seems to have a thing for desperados. In the Gospel lesson for Pentecost 18, Year C (Luke 17:11-19), we find Jesus and his posse in a border town. Luke says they enter a village in “the region between Samaria and Galilee” (v. 11). I guess this was one of those indeterminate, liminal places on earth that don’t quite qualify as one place or another. 

I’m kind of familiar with border towns having grown up in Southern California. In my misspent and reckless youth, just about everyone knew you could get lots of cool stuff cheap by crossing the US/Mexico border into Tijuana. You could score lots of illegal stuff there, too. There were bars where Gringo college and high school kids hung out where no one asked for ID, and no shortage of shady characters offering all sorts of illicit forms of recreation. 

Of course, one mustn’t judge all of Mexico by Tijuana any more than one could judge all the US by National City on the north side of the border. These border spaces aren’t representative, and they tend to get a bad rap—a sort of mystique as the places of the outlaws or the outcasts. It’s not surprising that Jesus runs into a whole gang of lepers while travelling through these parts. 

There weren’t fences or customs kiosks in the territory between Galilee and Samaria, but pious Jews knew where the line was, and they avoided the towns that sat on it. Good folks don’t hang out in border towns. 

I have to make a quick digression in case you need a refresher course on the history of the region. Way back in the 10^th century BCE, right after the death of King Solomon, there was a big feud over who would take over Israel. This resulted in a civil war which ended with the nation splitting into two countries—Israel in the north and Judah in the south. About two hundred years later, courtesy of a long series of weak, impious, and corrupt kings, Israel fell to the brutal Assyrian conquerors. These guys, as brutal conquerors are wont to do, forcibly relocated a bunch of folks from other parts of Mesopotamia into the region. The Israelites inter-married with these foreigners (You’ll note Jesus calls the grateful leper a “foreigner” in verse 18) and adopted some of their customs. The Judeans considered that these folks had perverted the true religion and polluted the gene pool. Some time around the second century BCE the folks living in the northern part of Israel, the Galileans, decided that the Judean religion was really pretty cool after all, and decided to return to the more ancient traditions. This created, geographically, a sort of Jew-Samaritan sandwich with traditionalists in the north and south and Samaritans in the middle. Some Galileans found the Samaritans so distasteful that, when making pilgrimages to Jerusalem, they’d rather detour miles out of their way into the foreign lands east of the Jordan than cross through Samaria. 

But Jesus doesn’t see the borders. He never has a problem crossing into places where “decent folks” fear to go. Here in the un-named border town, he’s approached by a gang of outcasts. The leper gang is, it appears, made up of both Jews and Samaritans. You know the old saying, “Misery loves company.” When your skin is inflamed and most everybody finds you gross, disgusting, and obviously cursed by God, when nobody wants to get close to you, you might want to hang with the people who are dealing with the same problem. Religious differences don’t matter when you’re sick. Everybody who suffers belongs to the Church of I Want to Get Well. 

The gang of lepers are desperados—they’re desperate to get some help. They’ve heard of Jesus, and they know him by name. Even though they may have formed a sort of community of outcasts on the border, their main goal is to leave it. There are, after all, some communities which serve their purpose and need to be abandoned. Even if you can find great sympathy and fellowship for a time, the place on the border is not a permanent home. It’s better to be home than to be in a hospital or rehab center. It’s better to be free than to be in jail. It’s better to be part of the world than to live on its margins. 

Jesus, who doesn’t see national or denominational differences, is willing to heal the ten lepers. He tells them to show themselves to the priests, the ritual which must be done before re-entry into the community is established. The ten desperados do as they’re told. It’s an act of faith. It makes them clean. 

I don’t, as a general rule, believe in “faith healing,” at least not to the exclusion of doctors and modern medicine. All the same, I will pray for wholeness and health for anyone, and I do so on a regular basis given the life I lead. I don’t believe that anyone is ever really healed without faith. Like the lepers in the story, every desperado needs to believe in wellness. You’ve got to have trust and vision to see beyond your illness. If you can’t imagine wellness, you can’t get well. 

The highlight of the story, however, is the one effusive act of gratitude made by the Samaritan leper. You’ve got to love this guy. He gets it. The other nine lepers may have been cured of their disease, but only the Samaritan was “made well.”  He’s the only one who has crossed the border into the territory of the living. Time in the borderland should change us, don’t you think? Knowing the accepting, healing, and welcoming power of Christ has to have some effect on us. I mean, if we’re not thankful for what God has done, if our vision doesn’t change, if we don’t grow more patient, more joyful, more understanding—were we really made well? 

Think about it. And thanks for looking in on me this week.