Proper 23: 2 Kings 5.1-3,7-15c; Psalm 111; 2 Timothy 2.8-15; Luke 17.11-19
IN THIS Gospel, “Gratitude and ingratitude are depicted on one and the same dramatic canvas.” So wrote Rudolf Bultmann in 1968 (in his History of the Synoptic Tradition). When I read his remark, I was delighted by his ability to get straight to the heart of the Gospel. But then I began to think about Bultmann’s scholarly approach more widely, his demythologising of the Gospels. And I hesitated. He claims that the story of the ten lepers (or the grateful Samaritan — labels vary) is “admittedly secondary and [Greek] in origin”. Then, instead of explaining it, he explains it away as merely a development of Mark 1.40-45, in which Jesus heals a single leper. He concludes that Luke has “transposed [Mark’s leper] into an imaginary story”.
Bultmann calls this Gospel a “unitary composition”. I agree with him that it is “unitary”, but disagree that it is a “composition” (in the sense that Luke invented it). When he describes it as “imaginary”, though, I am staggered by his confidence in his judgement, and by the freedom with which he tackles the text.
Reading scholarship can be like cherry-picking. I pick the cherry of Bultmann’s “gratitude and ingratitude” image, but I do not want to adopt his demythologising approach to the Gospels with it. So — to use another food metaphor — am I having my cake and eating it? The search for a comprehensive system for analysing the Gospels will never, I believe, succeed. But it will never end, either. No one theory covers every Gospel situation fully, answers every Gospel question satisfactorily.
It is certainly easier, and probably wiser, to take each section of each Gospel for itself, and, yes, consider how it fits into a wider picture, but always return to the details of the story, to understand it on its own terms. Next, then, to Bultmann’s question about the practicalities, which is brilliant: “What could a Samaritan want with Jewish priests?” In all the times I have encountered this Gospel, it never occurred to me to ask that question.
Yet, I have been meditating on Luke 17.11-19 ever since I first felt the stirrings of a priestly vocation. Back then, the Church of England did not allow women to be priests. So, I had a lot of meditating to do, not only about whether my nascent vocation was real, but also about whether it was anything more than an act of presumption in the face of centuries of tradition.
After I was recommended for theological college, I was sent to someone who was to make a recommendation on whether I got an extra year of training as a “potential theological educator”. She asked me to talk about how I saw my vocation, and I turned instinctively, immediately, to this passage. I recall my tears as I expressed how I wanted to be like the Samaritan leper. I wanted to be someone who came back to say “Thank you” to Jesus.
Looking again at this Gospel, so many years later, the “dramatic canvas” on which “gratitude and ingratitude” were depicted was not about vocation at all. It must have spoken to me of vocation because guidance about my sense of “call” was what I was searching for, back when I first meditated on the story.
I was still wondering, after reading Bultmann, why a Samaritan would be sent to a Jewish priest. If I were a different kind of Christian, I might see verse 16, “And he was a Samaritan”, as an inspired afterthought of Luke’s, to make the point of the story more pointed. But I prefer to honour the text that we do have rather than speculate about the details that we might have had. This is not just intellectual cowardice. The story of the ten lepers (or the grateful Samaritan) is a real thing, complete in itself, and completely at home in Luke’s Gospel. That is a fact, and a fact that I can deal with. For all that I am suspicious of pietism, it still feels presumptuous to decide for myself which bits of the Bible are genuine and original.
Bultmann’s point about the Samaritan leper and Jewish priests may finally have helped me towards an answer. Perhaps Jesus sent all ten lepers to the Jewish priests to teach them — and us — that God’s healing makes no distinction between people in terms of nationality, only in terms of need.
