The Ten Lepers Series

So you can see why the Samaritan leper is going to emerge as the other central figure in this story alongside Jesus. He has two huge strikes against him. He’s an outcast among the Jews because he’s a Samaritan and he’s an outcast among the Samaritans because he’s a leper. You probably couldn’t ask for a worse situation.

Now, the type of leprosy these people suffered with is known today as “Hansen’s Disease.” It starts with a white patch of skin that becomes numb, so much so that the victims cannot even feel a needle piercing that spot. The patch begins to spread all over the body and often manifests itself on the face, so the disease is impossible to hide. It then begins to form spongy tumors on the face and, at the same time, attacks the internal organs as well. The tissue between the bones in the hands and feet deteriorate and disappear, causing them to become deformed and unusable. At the same time, the nerve endings become numb so that the victim cannot tell when something is hurting him, like an animal biting him. And since these lepers had to live out in the deserted areas outside the city so animals would sometimes come at night and begin to chew the flesh of their infected limbs and they wouldn’t even know it. This type of leprosy is eventually fatal, but more often lepers died from diseases they incur because of their condition.

Another (less severe) type of leprosy is called “tuberculoid.” It begins much the same way as the one I just described, but it does not progress beyond the skin discoloration and would often heal over time. It was these people who were eventually able to go and show themselves to the priests and be declared “clean” and were then allowed to return home to their families and jobs.

But those suffering with the first type I described never healed at all and its probable that the lepers in our story had this fatal type so that their healing could be verified as a miracle and not just something from which they healed naturally. And so back in Luke 17:11-13, we see ten men who have been relegated to living life as outcasts and outsiders. But even as outcasts and outsiders, they recognized Jesus and had most likely heard that he could heal. So as they see Jesus approaching, they figure that they’ve got nothing to lose so they yell, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!”

It is interesting how people who have been rejected, who feel like outsiders, and those who are really hurting are drawn to Christ. These social and religious outcasts don’t question whether Jesus will accept them or even want to heal them. They just cry out to him, even though they have little understanding of who he is. In his book, “What’s So Amazing About Grace?” Philip Yancey recounts a story that happened to a friend of his who wrote,

“A prostitute came to me wretched straits, homeless, sick, unable to buy food for her two-year-old daughter. Through sobs and tears, she told me she had been renting out her daughter—two years old—to men interested in kinky sex. She made more renting out her daughter for an hour than she could earn on her own in a night. She had to do it, she said, to support her own drug habit. “At last I asked if she had ever thought of going to a church for help. I will never forget the look of pure, naïve shock that crossed her face. ‘Church!’ she cried. ‘Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They’d just make me feel worse.’”