Comedian Gianmarco Soresi has a bit in his stand-up routine about how he realized when he hit his thirties how difficult it is maintain friendships. It’s the kind of comedy bit where if you take the eventual punchline away (which is exactly what I’m going to do), it makes a quite touching point.
He acknowledges that community is hard to form and keep because people’s lives are busy and taken them in different directions. Soresi, who apparently is not a religious man, realizes as he’s talking that it’s for this reason he’s actually jealous of people who are religious. “Oh!” He realizes, “That’s what Shabbat dinner is for. It’s [Jewish people] deciding that what they need is a standing date so they can spend time together.” He goes on to talk about how his Catholic father used to take him to church sometimes as a kid, and while he hated it then, now he’d do anything to see his friends once a week. Muslims, he points out, pray five times a day, and ideally several of those are with other people.
We’re onto something, us religious folks, Soresi realizes. Building community is something the church, at its best, does very well. And community is something the world is craving and has for a very long time. We see this in the story of Jesus passing through the region between Samaria and Galilee where he encountered ten people the people with diseases of their skin. The narrator is quick to point out two things. One, they have a skin disease. And two, they are keeping their distance from Jesus and, presumably, the rest of the village residents. The two are related.
The skin disease renders these people ritually unclean. This is not the same as sinful. It’s not about a broken covenant with God for their action or inaction. It’s not about needing forgiveness. It’s some other category for which we don’t really have an equivalent, but which was (and still is for some Jewish people) extremely important for their life of worship and faith. If a person was ritually unclean, than they could not participate in a number of acts of worship and faith that were important to them particularly those that took place in the temple. As long as the person carried signs of the disease they were known to be impure.
Also, this ritual impurity could be passed on to anyone or anything that touched the person with the disease. Such a touch would make the next person ritually impure and also unable to participate fully in the religious life, and so on and so on. Now, this second impurity could be washed away in a ritual cleansing as long as the disease was not passed on as well, but until that cleansing could take place, the person would be excluded from temple activities. And a person with a chronic, incurable skin disease would never be allowed to practice these parts of their faith, and would be held apart from the community indefinitely to avoid defiling others’ spiritual purity.
This exclusion from ritual and community led to the isolation of those who bore the signs of a skin disease, and that isolation is what we see at play here in the story. The people with the skin disease know not to get too close to Jesus or anyone else. They have lived long enough with this impurity and the burden that comes with it to know that their presence isn’t appreciated by others. They keep their distance; they are kept at a distance, so they don’t share their spiritual blemishes with others. They are isolated from family and friends and faith.
From a distance, they cry out to Jesus, calling him “Master.” It’s not Lord or teacher or messiah as some call out in other situations, but master, that is, one with authority over situations and other people. And they cry for mercy, not for healing. They want relief from pain of isolation. They want their life situation to be different, and they are calling out to someone who, they believe, can make that decision and make it stick. They want to be able to return to community. They want to know they can be welcomed by other people. They want to be able to return to the standing date with friends on Friday nights, the temple for worship, the community of faith. And so, keeping their distance, not wanting to ruin their chances, they called out “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” Not just pity that feels bad for them, but mercy which will change their situation.
Jesus doesn’t give them a long drawn out answer. He doesn’t even tell them if he’s going to do anything about their plea or not, really. He just tells them to go show themselves to the priests. I have to wonder if any of them grumbled – – probably because I would have grumbled. The priests had seen them – countless times. The priests had seen them and their skin condition, and the priests, in accordance with the law they had received, had told them they couldn’t come back until they were clean. I’m surprised any of them even listened to Jesus, but they did – – all ten of them. They went, and on their way they noticed that their cries had worked. They were healed, and they couldn’t wait to get to the priests to begin the process of being re-included in the community and rituals of faith.
Well, most of them couldn’t wait. One of them didn’t go right away. Jesus sounds a little frustrated in his question to the witnesses of this miracle, “Where are the other nine?” But I can’t really blame them. They are doing what he said to do. They are running (at least I imagine them running as fast as they can) to the priests to show them their healing, to ask for their cleansing, to be reunited with the community and their faith. So I can’t blame them for not turning back, but at the same time, the one who does…
The one does comes back to Jesus to praise him. He comes back to Jesus to show his gratitude. He comes back because he knows that he has been seen. I don’t think that was a throwaway line – “When Jesus saw them.” He saw their dis-ease. He saw their frustration. He saw their isolation. He saw their desperation. He saw what they endured on the edge of a community – not really belonging to either Samaria or Galilee no matter what their lineage said. He saw that they were cut out of the community and with absolutely zero fanfare, he decided to show them they mercy they craved and didn’t waste any time doing it.
This one knew that he had been heard and seen, and he couldn’t let that knowledge just pass. I don’t hold it against the others that they didn’t turn around, but this one, he is in very good company. Being seen is a motif throughout Luke’s gospel, and when it pops up it’s usually paired with a response of BOLD gratitude. In a story just a couple of chapters after this one, Zaccheus, who has climbed into a tree to see Jesus is seen by Jesus. When Jesus chooses to bless him with a visit to his home, Zaccheus responds with the promise to give away half his possessions, and four times as much as he has ever stolen from anyone.
At the very beginning of the gospel, both Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist and Mary, Jesus’ own mother, sing whole songs in response to having been seen by God. The Lord looked on them with favor, they say, and they praise God for lifting them up, for blessing them with life and with opportunity, for giving them such an important role in the community. Out of gratitude for being trusted with the good news that will save the world, they give their very bodies to God’s work and purpose of justice.
Being seen by God, being restored to community, being welcomed into the divine narrative of the healing and redemption of the world – it is more than enough of a reason to delay the trip to the priests, and turn back to be close to Jesus, to fall at his feet, to thank him for what he has done. It is his gratitude that brings him close to Jesus, that turns his life toward the Master, that lives into the mercy he received and lets it change his life. It’s in his gratitude that puts his whole body before Jesus, giving himself to the one who has given him his life.
In fact, in this story it is this demonstration of BOLD gratitude that is recognized by Jesus as an act of faith. In returning to Jesus with praise and thanksgiving he demonstrates that he knows that Jesus is the source of his healing, his new life, his restoration to community. The healing may have cleared the man of the disease that scarred his skin, but it is his gratitude that is seen as faith, faith that makes him well.
I’m not sure we always think of gratitude or thankfulness that way, and that’s OK. It’s awful hard to make every thank you to a grocery clerk, or parking attendant, or even a housemate who picked up our dishes an existential moment of gratitude. But it’s also important to take some time to reflect on gratitude and thankfulness this way. It’s important – – and we are blessed to get to do it in worship, in community – – to take some time to recognize that we are seen, we are known, and we are given the blessing of community and relationship and restoration from some source beyond ourselves.
What a joy! To be known and to be welcomed; to be included and to belong. What a gift to have been by the God we know in Jesus Christ, and what we gift we have to share with the world. That’s how we can show our BOLD gratitude, of course. Like the one who returned to Jesus, who could finally get close to him, we show our BOLD gratitude by laying our lives at his feet, by offering him our praise and thanksgiving, through our faith. We say thank you by giving ourselves, all the we have and all that we are to his purposes in the world.
His mercy, his loving sight that sees us and knows us, dis-ease and all, to calls us to him, so that we might know his love, know his community, and share that knowledge and love with the world. We are brought into his presence, and in response, with our whole lives, we can bear witness to his presence in the world.
May our whole lives – not just our words in a moment of prayer or song or even testimony – may our whole lives be laid at the feet of the one who sees us and knows us. May our whole lives be lived in BOLD gratitude toward God who welcomes us into love. Amen.
What are you grateful for today?
Scripture:
Psalm 111 & Luke 17:11-19
Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Allentown on October 12, 2025 by Pastor Stephanie Anthony