Hope Had A Name, Jesus Series

Title: Hope had a name, Jesus

Intro: Where are we when the miracle happens? Do we recognise the hand of God in our healing? Do we turn back?

Scripture: Luke 17: 11-19

Reflection

Dear Friends,

There is something about the number ten that stays with you. Ten fingers we count on as children. Ten commandments given on the mountain. Ten lepers who cried out to Jesus on a dusty road between Samaria and Galilee.

But it is the one who came back that haunts me still.

I have been thinking about this story from Luke 17 for weeks now, and I cannot shake it. Maybe because I see myself in those nine who did not return. Maybe because I see my family, my friends, my entire community in their hurried footsteps, rushing toward the next blessing without pausing to acknowledge the last one.

Let me take you to that road where Jesus walked. Picture it—the hot sun, the dust rising with each step, the distant sounds of village life. And then, from far off, voices crying out. Not angry voices, but desperate ones. Ten men, standing at the required distance because their disease had made them untouchable, unwanted, unclean.

“Jesus! Master! Have mercy on us!” they shouted.

They had learned to keep their distance. The law in Leviticus 13 was clear about that. Leprosy did not just attack the body; it attacked your entire existence. It stripped away your name and gave you a label instead. It took your family and left you with strangers who shared your suffering. It removed you from the temple, from the marketplace, from everything that made life worth living.

These ten men had lost everything except hope. And on this particular day, hope had a name—Jesus.

I wonder what they expected when they called out to him. A touch, perhaps? A prayer? Some elaborate ritual? But Jesus did something so ordinary it almost seems anticlimactic. He simply said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.”

Now, here is what moves me about this moment. Jesus did not heal them first and then send them to the priests for verification. He sent them while they were still sick. They had to walk in faith before they saw the miracle. They had to take steps toward healing while their skin still bore the marks of disease.

And they went. All ten of them. Scripture tells us in Luke 17:14 that “as they went, they were cleansed.” Somewhere between Jesus and the temple, between obedience and destination, the miracle happened. The scales fell away. The sores vanished. Flesh became smooth and whole again.

Can you imagine that moment? The sudden realisation that your fingers could feel again? That the numbness was gone? That you could run your hand across your face and feel healthy skin?

I think about the shouts of joy that must have erupted. The tears. The laughter. The embracing of each other. Ten men discovering they had been given their lives back.

But then something else happens in this story, something that breaks my heart every time I read it.

Nine of them kept going. Nine continued toward the priests, toward reinstatement, toward reclaiming their old lives. Only one, just one, turned around.

Luke 17:15-16 tells us: “One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him and he was a Samaritan.”

There is so much packed into these verses. This man saw he was healed. He did not just feel it; he truly saw it. He understood what had happened and Who had made it happen. And his response was immediate and complete. He came back. He praised God loudly, unashamedly. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet in a posture of absolute humility and overwhelming gratitude.

And then Luke adds that detail that would have shocked his Jewish readers: this grateful man was a Samaritan. An outsider. Someone from the wrong side of the religious divide. The one you would least expect to get it right.

Jesus asks three questions that pierce through the centuries: “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?”

These are not just rhetorical questions. They are questions Jesus asks of each one of us, every single day.

Where are we when the miracle happens? Do we recognise the hand of God in our healing? Do we turn back?

I have been a priest long enough to see this pattern repeat itself endlessly. People cry out to God in their desperation. Hospital waiting rooms become prayer rooms. Financial crises become altars of surrender. Broken relationships send us to our knees.

And God answers. Not always in the way we expect or in the timing we demand, but He answers. The cancer goes into remission. The job comes through. The marriage heals. The child comes home.