Lepers in Samaria and Galilee

Delivered at Immanuel Church, Tel Aviv — November 1, 2025

Readings: Luke 17:11–19 · 2 Kings 4:8–37

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Picture the scene: somewhere along the border between Samaria and Galilee, Jesus encounters ten men with leprosy. Or more accurately, they encounter him from a distance.

"Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!"

Notice what they don't say. They don't cry out, "Jesus, heal us!" They don't shout, "Jesus, cleanse us!" They use language that reaches higher — divine language. They call him "Master," and they ask not for healing but for mercy — eleēson, the same word used in prayers addressed to God himself.

These men already know something about Jesus. Perhaps they've heard the stories filtering through from village to village. Perhaps they've even encountered him before. They know enough to believe that this man can speak into their situation with divine authority.

And they stand at a distance — which is exactly what Torah required. Anyone with such a disease had to live in separation from the community. Whether these ten men followed every detail of this requirement, we don't know. But they maintained their distance. They called out. They lived in the reality of separation that this disease demanded.

The Torah-Observant Response

Jesus's response might surprise us. He doesn't touch them (as he did with other lepers in the Gospels). He doesn't pronounce them clean. He simply says, "Go, show yourselves to the priests."

They had approached him from within the Law's framework of separation. Now he responds within the Law's framework of restoration. According to Torah, when someone's skin disease healed, a priest had to examine them and officially declare them clean before they could rejoin the community. So Jesus sends them to take that first step — continuing within the same Torah-observant path they'd been walking.

As They Went, They Were Cleansed

Here's where faith enters the picture.

Jesus didn't say, "You are cleansed — now go show the priests." He said, "Go show yourselves to the priests" — and they went.

And Luke tells us simply: "As they went, they were cleansed."

Look at the faith this required. Jesus gave them a command with no visible change, no immediate proof, no guarantee they could see. And they obeyed. They trusted Jesus's word enough to act on it.

This is the kind of faith Jesus had been calling for all along — the kind his own disciples sometimes struggled to demonstrate. When the storm threatened to sink their boat, he asked, "Where is your faith?" When they couldn't heal the demon-possessed boy, he said, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed..." These ten lepers, standing at a distance, had that faith.

All ten men were healed. All ten received exactly what they asked for — mercy expressed as cleansing. All ten could now complete their journey to the priests and return to normal life.

The story could end here. Ten desperate men cry out to Jesus. Jesus responds. They're all healed. Everyone goes home happy.

But Only One Came Back

One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus's feet and thanked him.

And then Luke adds a detail that would have shocked his first readers: This man was a Samaritan.

For Jesus's Jewish audience, this wasn't just about ethnicity. Samaritans weren't simply foreigners — they were people with the wrong theology. Wrong temple (Mount Gerizim instead of Jerusalem). Wrong scriptures (only the Torah, rejecting the prophets). Wrong understanding of the covenant. They were seen as heretics who had corrupted the true faith.

Jesus notices: "Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?"

Think about what Jesus is highlighting here. Nine insiders who knew the scriptures, who grew up in the covenant community, who had correct theology — they kept going. One theological outsider, one who had the "wrong" beliefs about God, turned back.

The man with incorrect theology got the relationship right. So what made the one leper return? What did he understand that the nine missed?

The Right Posture

To answer this, let's go back in time and look at the story of the Shunammite woman in 2 Kings 4. This happened in the time of Prophet Elisha, he was travelling through the region on his prophetic work, going from place to place as God directed him. The Shunammite woman and her husband happened to meet him on a few occasions and offered him their hospitality. They weren't seeking him out for help — they recognised a holy man of God passing through their town, fed him and at some point decided to build him a room as an act of reverence and hospitality. Without being asked. Without expecting anything in return.

When Elisha asks what she needs, she essentially says, "Nothing. I'm content." It's Elisha who insists on blessing her, and through God's power, she conceives and bears a son — God's gift, precious beyond measure.

Years later, that boy suddenly dies. She travels to find Elisha. When she reaches him, she falls at his feet and won't let go. She will not settle for less than God's man coming to her house.

This woman's request is bold, and probably very emotional — she wants her dead son, God's promised gift, restored. Elisha comes and shuts the door of his room. He and his servant pray. He stretches himself over the boy. The child's body grows warm. The whole process takes time, and it's not easy for the prophet. Then, the boy sneezes seven times. He opens his eyes.

And then Elisha calls the Shunammite and says to her, "Take your son."

Watch what she does at this moment.

Does she rush to embrace her child? Does she check his breathing, examine him, make sure he's truly alive? Does she immediately begin caring for him?

No. First, she bows. She falls at Elisha's feet in worship. Before she even looks at her restored son, before she touches the miracle that has just occurred, she acknowledges the man of God.

This woman isn't a prophet; she has no special spiritual training or religious authority. But she has something more important than credentials: She has the right posture toward God.

She understands that there is nothing in all creation — not even the resurrection of her beloved child — that compares with the presence and power of God. The gift must point her to the Giver. The miracle is not the end of the story; it's an occasion for worship.

The Uncomfortable Mirror

The Shunammite woman shows us what the returning leper understood. But before we see what made him different, let's consider where we actually find ourselves in this story.

I've heard it preached many times with a familiar application: The nine who didn't return represent our neighbours, friends, and family members — the ones who claim to believe in God, who pray when they're desperate, but never show up at church or Bible study. They receive God's blessings and disappear back into their everyday lives. And we, sitting here, are like the one Samaritan who came back to worship and give thanks.

But I wonder if that lets us off too easily.

Most of the time, we are the other nine at best!

Think about it: We're trained in obedience. We're well-read in scripture. We have good instincts about daily situations. We have solid worship habits.

And yet — here's the hard truth — we can do all of this while losing focus on the main reason we're here at all.

All ten lepers were doing everything right, according to the Law and Jesus' own instructions.

The nine aren't condemned for disobedience. They got back their religious obligations and normal life. They received the gift and kept walking.

And we do this too — perhaps especially those of us who are serious about our faith. We go to church. We read scripture. We serve. We pray. We're "going to the priests" in a thousand ways, fulfilling religious obligations, doing what seems right.

But are we dwelling in God's presence? Are we bowing before the Giver?

What Made the One Different

The returning leper understood something the others missed: He had encountered God himself.

He saw his healed skin and recognised not just what had happened, but who had done it. Like the Shunammite woman, he understood the right posture — bow first, before anything else.

So he turned back. He came to Jesus, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus's feet in complete recognition of who stood before him.

This is what worship is: the proper response to seeing God truly.

And he was told: "Rise and go; your faith has made you well."

Saved, Not Just Healed

Wait — weren't all ten made well? All ten were cleansed. But notice the word Jesus uses when he speaks to the one who returned.

Luke describes all ten being "cleansed." But when Jesus speaks to this one man, he uses a different word — a word that means not just healed, but made whole. It's a word that carries both physical and spiritual restoration, the kind of complete healing that touches not just the body but the soul.

This is the same word Jesus uses throughout Luke's gospel when something deeper than physical healing has occurred — when he speaks to the woman caught in adultery, to the woman who touched his cloak, to the paralytic lowered through the roof. Each time, he's pointing to a restoration that goes beyond the visible.

All ten were cleansed. But only the one who returned was made completely whole and received something far greater than he'd imagined when he cried out for mercy: restoration to God himself.

"Your faith has saved you." Not your ethnicity. Not your religious credentials. Not your Torah obedience. Not even your correct theology. Your faith — the faith that saw past the gift to the Giver, that recognized God and responded with worship, that chose to dwell in his presence rather than simply collect his blessings.

Where We Find Ourselves

So bring everything to God this week. Bring the foolish requests and the profound ones, ask God to send you the bus when you need it, to get your beloved healthy and to keep us in peace and everything else, big and small.

But when your prayers are answered — and they will be, in God's wisdom and time — remember the Shunammite woman. Before you rush to enjoy the gift, bow first. Acknowledge the Giver.

Because the difference between being healed and being saved is this: whether we see the gift or the Giver, whether we get what we came for and leave or discover that dwelling in God's presence is what we needed most all along.

And our Lord, Jesus Christ, stands waiting patiently for us to turn around, come back, and dwell with him.

In the name of the Father, who visits us; the Son, who saves us; and the Holy Spirit, who opens our eyes to see. Amen.