30-22. The Cleansing of the Ten Lepers
22. The Cleansing of the Ten Lepers
Luk 17:11-19 The Jews who dwelt in Galilee, in their necessary journeys to keep the passover at Jerusalem, very commonly took the longer route, leading them across the Jordan, and through the region of Peraea (the Gilead of the O. T.), that so they might avoid the vexations and annoyances, or worse outrages,[1] to which they were exposed in passing through the unfriendly land of the Samaritans. For these, at all times unfriendly to Jews, were naturally most unfriendly of all to the pilgrims who, travelling up to the great feasts at Jerusalem, did thus witness in act against the will-worship of Mount Gerizim, and the temple of Samaria in which was no presence of the living God (John 4:22). It is generally understood that now, despite the discomforts and dangers of that inhospitable route (see Luk 9:51-56; John 4:9), our Lord, with the band of his disciples, on this his last journey to the holy city, took the more direct and shorter way which led Him straight from Galilee “through the midst of Samaria” to Jerusalem. Certainly the words of the original, “And it came to pass as He went to Jerusalem, that He passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee,” may bear this meaning; in our Version they manifestly bear it. At the same time there may very well be a question whether the Evangelist does not rather mean that the Lord passed between these two regions, having one on his right hand, the other on his left, and skirting them both. This will explain the otherwise unaccountable mention of Samaria before Galilee. He will then have journeyed due eastward toward Jordan, having Galilee on his left hand, and Samaria, which is therefore first named, on his right: and on reaching the river, He will either have passed over it at Scythopolis, where we know there was a bridge, crossing it again by the fords near Jericho[2] (Jos 2:7), or will have kept on the western bank till He reached that city, where presently we find Him (xviii. 35).
“And as He entered into a certain village, there met Him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off.” Their common misery had drawn these poor outcasts together (2Ki 7:3). It had done more. It had caused them to forget the fierce national antipathy which kept Jew and Samaritan apart; for a Samaritan had found admission into this forlorn company. In this border land such a fellowship may have been more natural than elsewhere. There has been already occasion to speak of the nature and meaning of leprosy in the law of Moses; that it was the outward symbol of sin in its deepest malignity,—and therefore as involving entire separation from God; not of spiritual sickness only, but of spiritual death, since absolute separation from the one fountain of life must needs be no less. These poor outcasts, in obedience to the commandment (Lev 13:46), “stood afar off;” and out of a deep sense of their misery, yet not without hope that a healer was at hand, all of them in earnest now to receive the benefit, however at a later period some were remiss in giving thanks for it, “lifted up their voices and said, Jesus, Master, [3] have mercy on us!”
“And when He saw them, He said unto them, Go, show yourselves unto the priests.” Most instructive is it to observe the differences in our Lord’s dealing with the different, sufferers and mourners brought in contact with Him; the manifold wisdom of the great Physician, varying his treatment according to the varying needs of his patients; how He seems to resist a strong faith, that He may make it stronger yet (Mat 15:23-26); how He meets a weak, faith, lest it should prove altogether too weak in the trial (Mark 5:36); how one He forgives first, and heals after (Mat 9:2; Mat 9:6); and another, whose heart could only be reached through, an earthly benefit, He first heals, and then pardons (John 5:8; John 5:14). There is here, too, no doubt a reason why these ten are dismissed as yet uncleansed, and bidden to go show themselves to the priests; while that other, whose healing was before recorded (Mat 8:2-4), is first cleansed, and not till afterwards bidden to present himself in the temple. Herein was a keener trial of their faith. With no signs of restoration as yet upon them, they were bidden to do that which implied that they were perfectly restored,—to take a journey, which would have been ridiculous, a labour in vain, unless Christ’s words and promise proved true. In their prompt obedience they showed plainly that at least some weak beginnings of faith were working in them, the germs of a higher faith, which yet in the end were only perfectly unfolded in one of them.[4] They showed this, for they knew very well that they were not sent to the priests, that these should heal them, it being no part of the priests’ functions to cure, but only to pronounce cured; they cleansed, not in the sense of ridding the leper of his disease; but only, after this had disappeared, as restoring him with ceremonial washings and offerings to the fellowship of the congregation.
There was also here a stronger temptation to ingratitude. When they first felt and found their benefit, they were not in the immediate presence of their benefactor; more probably, already out of his sight, and some little way upon their journey;[5] we know not how far, being only told that “as they went, [6] they were cleansed;” it was not therefore an easy and costless effort to render their thanks to Him. Some, indeed, suppose that the return of the one “Samaritan, whose heart was stirred with a lively gratitude to his Healer, did not take place till after he had accomplished all which was commanded him; that he had been to Jerusalem—that he had offered his gift—that he had been pronounced clean—and, this his first duty accomplished, that he then returned to render thanks to the author of his benefit; the sacred narrative leaping over large spaces of time and many intermediate events for the purpose of bringing together the beginning and the end of this history.[7] But certainly the impression which the narrative leaves is different;—that, having advanced some very little way on their commanded journey, so little that no time would be really lost by the return, perhaps in the very village itself, they were aware of the grace which had overtaken them; they knew themselves cleansed; and then this one turned back in the fulness of a grateful heart to give glory to God and thanks to his great Healer and Saviour; like the Syrian Naaman, who, delivered from the same hideous disease, came back with all his company, beseeching the man of God to take a blessing at his hands (2Ki 5:15); the residue meanwhile enduring to carry away the benefit without one grateful acknowledgment rendered unto Him who was its author and its source, and to whose feet the slightest labour would have brought them. A sin only too common! for, as Bishop Sanderson says, with allusion to their former crying: “We open our mouths wide till God open his hand; but after, as if the filling of our mouths were the stopping of our throats, so are we speechless and heartless. “[8]
It gives a special significance this miracle, and explains the place which it finds in that Gospel which is eminently the Gospel for the heathen, that this thankful one should have been a Samaritan, a stranger therefore by birth to the covenants of promise, while the nine unthankful were of the seed of Abraham. It was implied in this that the Gentiles (for this Samaritan was no better) were not excluded from the kingdom of God, nay rather, might find a place in it before others who by nature and birth were children of the kingdom; that the ingratitude of these might shut them out, while the faith of those might give to them an abundant entrance into all its blessings.
Even He who emphatically “knew what was in man,” who had already so often proved his ingratitude, seems to have marvelled at the height of the ingratitude here: for He asks, “Were there not ten cleansed?” or father, “Were not the ten cleansed—but where are the nine? There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger.” Him now He dismisses with a second and a better blessing; the earlier had reached but to the healing of his body, and he had that in common with the unthankful nine; but gratitude for a lower mercy obtains for him a higher, a blessing which is singularly his, and reaches not merely to the springs of bodily health, but to the healing of the very fountains of his spiritual being. That which the others missed, to which their bodily healing should have led them up, and would, if they had received it aright, he has obtained; for to him, and to him only, it is said, “Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole.”[9]
How aptly does the image which this history supplies set forth the condition of the faithful in this world! They too are to take Christ’s word that they will be cleansed, that in some sort they are so already (John 15:3); for in baptism they have the pledge and promise and the initial act of it all. And this they must believe, even while they yet feel in themselves the leprous taint of sin,—must go forward in faith, being confident that in the use of his Word, and of his Sacraments, and all his appointed means of grace, slight as they may seem to meet and overcome such mighty mischiefs, they will find that health, which according to the sure word of promise is already theirs; and as they go, believing this word, using these means, they are healed. And for them, too, a warning is here—that they forget not the purging of their old sins (2Pe 1:9)—nor what those sins were, how hideous; how loathsome; in this only too like those nine, who perhaps did not r. eturn as men who would do their best to obliterate the very memory of all which once and so lately they had been. Let those who now are clean through the word spoken to them, not fail to keep in memory the times of their past anguish,—the times when everything seemed defiled to them, and they to everything; when they saw themselves as “unclean, unclean,” shut out from all holy fellowship of God and men, and cried out in their anguish, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” Let them see to it, that they forget not this; but let each remembrance of the absolving word which was spoken to them, with each new consciousness of a realized deliverance from the power and pollution of sin, bring them anew to the Saviour’s feet, giving glory to God by Him; lest, failing in this, their guilt prove greater than even that of these unthankful nine. For these carried away only temporal mercies unacknowledged; but we should in such a case be seeking to carry away spiritual; not, indeed, that we should succeed in so doing; since the spiritual mercy which is not evermore referred to its Author, sooner or later inevitably ceases from him who hopes on any ether conditions to retain it.[10]
Footnotes
[1] Josephus (Antt. xx. 6, 1) gives an account of the massacre by the Samaritans of a great number of Galilaean pilgrims, which happened a little later than this.
[2] So Wetstein: Non via recta et brevissimâ septentrione versus meridiem per Samariticam regionem iter fecit, sed cum confinia Samariae et Galilaeae venisset, ab itinere deflexit versus orientem, ita ut Samariam ad dextram, Galilaeam ad sinistram haberet; et Jordanem Scythopoli, ubi pons erat, videtur transiisse, et juxta ripam Jordanis in Peraeâ descendisse, donec e regione Jerichuntis iterum trajiceret.
[3] Ἐπιστάτα. The word is peculiar to St. Luke (5:5; 8:24, 45; 9:33, 49). It is instead of the κύριε of St. Matthew.
[4] Calvin: Quamvis enim foetidam adhuc scabiem in came sua conspiciant, simul tamen ac jussi sunt se ostendere sacerdotibus, parere non detrectant; Adde quod nunquam, nisi fidei impulsu, profecti essent ad sacerdotes: ridiculum enim fuisset ad testandam suam munditiem, leprae judicibus se offerre, nisi pluris illis fuisset Christi promissio, quam praesens morbi sui intuitus. Visibilem in carne suâ lepram gestant, unico tamen Christi verbo confisi mundos se profited non dubitant: negari igitur non potest eorum cordibus insitum fuisse aliquod fidei semen... Quo magis timendum est, ne et nobis contingat scintillas fidei in nobis micantes extinguere.
[5] Calvin suggests another reason, which may have kept them away: Ut morbi memoriam extinguerent furtim elapsi sunt.
[6] We learn from Tertullian (Adv. Marc. iv. 35) that the Gnostic Marcion saw in this healing of the lepers by the way, this taking, upon Christ’s part, of the work out of the hands of the Levitical priests, a contempt cast, and intended to be cast, by Him on the Mosaic institutions: Hie Christum semulum [legis] affirmat praevenientem solennia legis etiam in curatione decem leprosorum, quos tantummodo ire jussos ut se ostenderent sacerdotibus, in itinere purgavit, sine tactu jam et sine verbo, tacitâ potestate, et sola voluntate; and again, Quasi legis illusor, ut in itinere curatis ostenderet nihil esse legem cum ipsis sacerdotibus. It is needless to observe that there was no such passing of them by, since the priests’ work was not to cleanse, but to pronounce clean.
[7] Calvin halts between this opinion and that which follows: Mihi tamen magis probabile est, non nisi audito sacerdotis judicio ad gratias agendas venisse... Nisi forte magis placet diversa conjectura, simul ac mundatum se vidit, antequam testimonium expeteret a sacerdotibus, ad ipsum auctorem pio et sancto ardore correptum venisse, ut sacrificium suum a gratiarum actione inciperet.
[8] Bernard: Importuni ut accipiant, inquieti donec acceperint, ubi acceperint ingrati. Calvin: Sic inopia et esuries fidem gignit, quam occidit saturitas.
[9] Calvin: Servandi verbum quidam interpret. es ad carnis munditiem restringunt; verum si ita est, quum vivam in hoc Samaritano fidem commendet Christus, quaeri potest quomodo servati fuerint alii noverm; nam eadem promiscue omnibus sanitas obtigit. Sic ergo habenduin est Christum hie aliter sestimâsse donum Dei quam soleant profani homines, nempe tanquam salutare paterni amoris symbolum vel pignus. Sanati fuerunt novem leprosi, sed quia Dei gratiam impie obliterant, ipsam sanitatem inficit et contaminat eorum ingratitudo, ut quam decebat utilitatem ex ea non percipient. Sola igitur fides dona Dei nobis sanctificat, ut pura sint, et cum legitimo usu conjuncta in salutem nobis cedant.... Servatus est suâ fide Samaritanus.. Quomodo? certe non ideo tantum, quod a leprâ curatus sit (nam hoc et reliquis commune erat), sed quia in numerum filiorum Dei acceptus est, ut paterni amoris tesseram ex ejus manu acciperet.
[10] Chemnitz (Harm. Evang. 125): Remittit nos Filius Dei ad ministerium Verbi et Sacramentorum in Ecclesia; et quemadmoduni hi sanati sunt dum iverunt, et mandato Christi obtemperarunt, ita et nos dum in Ecclesia Verbum Dei audiinus, absolutione et Sacramentis utimur, vult nobis Christus peccata remittere, nos sanare, ut in coelesti Jerusalem mundi coram Deo compareamus... Omnes nati sumus filii irae, in baptismo remittitur nobis ille reatus, sed non statim in coelos abripimur: verum dicit nobis, Ite, ostendite vos sacerdotibus. Leve quid ut videtur injungit. Utut autem leve sit, sequitur tamen enarrabile bonum, quia is qui nobis hoc prsecipit, est omnipotens Deus, qui ex minimis maxima producere potest. Cf. Augustine, Quaest. Evang. ii. 40.