11 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus[a] was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he entered a village, ten men with a skin disease approached him. Keeping their distance, 13 they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” 14 When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. 15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. 16 He prostrated himself at Jesus’s[b] feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. 17 Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? So where are the other nine? 18 Did none of them return to give glory to God except this foreigner?” 19 Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”
Luke 17:11-19 (NRSVue)
The episode in Luke 17:11–19, where Jesus encounters ten lepers on the road between Samaria and Galilee, is brief yet profoundly charged. At first glance, it appears as another miracle story, fitting into the wider pattern of healings that fill the Gospel narratives. Yet, when read with attention to its historical and social context, this passage discloses layers of meaning that extend far beyond physical healing. It speaks to issues of exclusion and belonging, authority and legitimacy, recognition and gratitude. In other words, it reveals the contested sphere of human community in which categories of purity, power, and response are constantly negotiated.
Leprosy in the ancient biblical world was not simply a medical condition. The biblical term encompassed a variety of skin diseases, but the significance of this biblical terminology rested less in pathology than in symbolism. Those afflicted were declared ritually unclean, cut off from religious and social life, and made to inhabit the physical and symbolic margins of their communities. The laws of purity in Leviticus prescribed isolation for the leper, thereby transforming illness into exclusion and disability into social death. The leper was not merely sick; they were expelled, silenced, and erased from the community’s imagination of holiness.
Against this backdrop, Luke’s account of Jesus healing ten lepers is not a neutral tale of compassion. It is an act that unsettles established systems of order. Jesus’ decision to acknowledge and restore those consigned to the margins confronts the ways purity laws and social hierarchies reinforced exclusion. His command that they go and show themselves to the priests highlights the contested question of authority: who has the power to declare clean, to restore belonging, and to speak for God? Finally, the return of the Samaritan leper to give thanks opens another horizon. Gratitude here is no mere sentiment; it is a form of recognition that destabilises existing hierarchies, conferring dignity and agency on the one least expected to embody them.
Thus, the narrative may be approached through three interrelated themes: the meaning of the margins, the question of authority, and the politics of gratitude. Together, these dimensions illuminate how this seemingly simple encounter articulates a vision of community radically different from that upheld by dominant structures in first-century Judea.
Margins: Illness, Exclusion, and the Geography of Grace
The first striking feature of Luke’s story is its geography. Jesus is travelling “through the region between Samaria and Galilee” (Luke 17:11), a liminal space not clearly defined as belonging to one territory or another. This in-between location resonates with the condition of the lepers themselves, who live at the edge of settled communities, neither fully inside nor entirely outside. Their cry for mercy is uttered from a distance, for the law forbids them to approach. In this geographical and social liminality, Luke places the stage for grace to emerge.
The margins in biblical imagination are rarely neutral spaces. They are both zones of exclusion and of potential transformation. In Leviticus, the command that lepers dwell outside the camp develops collective anxiety about purity and the boundaries of holiness. Illness threatened to blur distinctions between clean and unclean, sacred and profane. By enforcing separation, the community sought to maintain a sense of order and divine favour. Yet the very act of casting people out created a haunting reminder that the purity of the centre was secured at the cost of others’ exclusion.
A similar logic has operated throughout history: Dalits, racial minorities, and many other communities have been pushed aside in the name of race, gender, disability or social hierarchy. Their exclusion is not merely about keeping them out, but about reinforcing the privileges of those within. In this way, the centre thrives by marginalizing others – yet the biblical narrative continually unsettles this arrangement, pointing to the possibility that life and transformation emerge precisely from the margins. It is in this charged setting that Jesus encounters the ten lepers. He does not withdraw, as others might; nor does he seek to maintain the ritual distance demanded by the law. Instead, he responds to their plea. His presence at the margin reveals a reorientation of divine concern: God’s holiness is not compromised by contact with the unclean but is revealed precisely in solidarity with them. This overturns the logic of purity that defined worth by proximity to the sacred centre.
The resonance with the story of Naaman in 2 Kings 5 is suggestive. Naaman, the Syrian commander afflicted with leprosy, is directed to wash in the Jordan, a humble river that symbolises obedience rather than spectacle. Significantly, it is the little unnamed slave girl, herself doubly marginalised by gender and servitude, who sets this healing in motion by pointing Naaman toward the prophet in Israel. Her voice represents the hidden agency of the margins, where those deemed insignificant become bearers of transformative wisdom. Both Naaman’s cleansing and the lepers’ healing in Luke underscore that divine grace manifests at thresholds: at rivers, at borderlands, at the edges of human society. The margins become the very site where God’s mercy disrupts exclusionary boundaries.
In our contemporary society, the language of margins remains powerful. Migrant communities living at the edges of cities, those stigmatised by illness or disability, racial and ethnic minorities, the economically dispossessed – all experience forms of exclusion that echo the biblical leper’s condition. To recover the radical import of Luke’s story is to recognise that grace is not confined to the secure centre but emerges most powerfully where human dignity is most denied. The margins are not merely spaces of suffering; they are also the places where new forms of community can be imagined.
Authority: Law, Priests, and the Radical Alternative
The second thread in Luke’s account concerns authority. After hearing the lepers’ cry, Jesus instructs them: “Go and show yourselves to the priests” (Luke 17:14). At first sight, this might seem to affirm existing structures. According to Leviticus 14, only a priest could officially declare a leper cleansed and fit to return to the community. By sending them to the priests, Jesus appears to acknowledge the legitimacy of institutional authority. Yet the deeper irony lies in what unfolds.
The lepers are cleansed not by priestly declaration but “as they went” in obedience to Jesus’ word. Healing precedes institutional confirmation. In effect, Jesus appropriates the role of the priesthood, locating divine authority in himself rather than in established channels. His word accomplishes what the system could only ratify. This represents a profound challenge to the structures that mediated holiness in first-century Judea.
The role of priests and teachers of the law in regulating purity was central to maintaining the community’s religious and social order. It was bound up with questions of power, identity, and survival under Roman occupation. To maintain strict boundaries between clean and unclean was to preserve Jewish distinctiveness and resist assimilation. Yet this very zeal for distinction could result in the exclusion of the vulnerable. Jesus’ intervention does not dismiss the importance of identity, but it exposes how a concern for holiness can harden into structures of domination.
In touching or speaking to lepers, Jesus reconfigures the site of divine holiness. Jesus draws on his tradition to show that holiness is expressed not through separation from the unclean but through compassionate solidarity. By restoring lepers to community, he demonstrates that God’s authority is not mediated primarily through institutional gatekeepers but through the disruptive presence of mercy.
This confrontation with authority echoes through the Gospel narratives. Whether challenging Sabbath regulations, eating with sinners, or declaring forgiveness of sins, Jesus persistently embodies an alternative model of authority – one rooted in the immediacy of God’s reign rather than in the structures of religious legitimacy. The healing of lepers thus belongs to a broader pattern in which Jesus contests the monopolisation of holiness by particular groups and opens access to God’s grace for those at the edges.
The political implications of this are far reaching. Systems that regulate belonging, whether religious or secular, always serve particular interests. They decide who counts, who is visible, who is granted dignity and who should be included. Jesus’ act of healing the lepers destabilises these mechanisms, not by violent overthrow but by embodying a different vision of authority—one in which divine favour is not mediated through rigid hierarchies but encountered directly in acts of compassion and restoration.
Gratitude: Recognition, Agency, and Subversive Response
The final movement in Luke’s story shifts from healing to response. Of the ten cleansed, only one returns to give thanks. Luke emphasises that he is a Samaritan – a double outsider, both by virtue of his disease and his ethnic-religious identity. This narrative twist sharpens the challenge. Gratitude comes not from the expected beneficiaries of grace but from the one doubly marginalised.
In early days, gratitude was not simply a private feeling but a social and political act. To express thanks was to acknowledge relationship, obligation, and mutual recognition. Patronage systems depended on public expressions of gratitude to reinforce hierarchies between benefactor and recipient. Yet the Samaritan’s return in Luke operates differently. His gratitude does not reinforce the power of the healer but testifies to a new relationship grounded in recognition rather than hierarchy. By prostrating himself at Jesus’ feet and praising God, he reorients the narrative away from institutional confirmation towards direct acknowledgment of divine grace.
Moreover, his act exposes the silence of the others. The nine who do not return may have hastened to secure their reintegration into society, eager to reclaim lost status and belonging. Their silence reflects the pressure to conform to the system that once excluded them. In contrast, the Samaritan refuses to allow reintegration to erase the memory of grace. His gratitude becomes an act of resistance against forgetting, a reclaiming of agency in the face of systemic silencing.
Jesus’ response confirms the significance of this act: “Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” (Luke 17:18). The one least expected to embody true recognition becomes the exemplar of faith. Gratitude here subverts social expectations. It is not the privileged insider but the marginalised outsider who models what genuine acknowledgment of grace entails.
This dynamic echoes in contemporary life. Expressions of gratitude by those on society’s margins often unsettle dominant narratives. When refugees, for instance, speak words of thanks that highlight their agency rather than their dependency, they challenge systems that reduce them to passive recipients of aid. When survivors of illness or oppression articulate gratitude not to institutions but to the networks of solidarity that sustained them, they reframe the meaning of recognition. Gratitude becomes a political act, revealing whose voices are heard and whose are silenced.
In Luke’s narrative, then, gratitude is not an optional courtesy but a transformative act. It restores agency to the marginalised, confronts the forgetfulness of the majority, and redefines the terms of recognition. In this, the Samaritan’s response mirrors the broader subversive thrust of Jesus’ ministry: that those on the edges often see most clearly what divine grace entails.
Reimagining Community at the Edges
To conclude, the narrative of Jesus healing the ten lepers, when situated within its social and historical context, constitutes a profound challenge to prevailing structures of exclusion, authority, and recognition. The margins function as sites where human dignity is most exposed and where divine grace most decisively intervenes. Authority here is reconfigured, no longer the monopoly of institutional power but embodied in acts of mercy and restoration. Gratitude, likewise, is reframed as more than social courtesy; it becomes a practice of resistance, affirming agency and dignity for those relegated to silence.
Luke’s account thus presses towards a re-imagining of community. Belonging is not guaranteed by purity or boundary maintenance but by practices of compassionate recognition. Authority is not the prerogative of gatekeepers but is manifest wherever life is renewed. Gratitude is not reducible to civility but represents a radical act of reorientation towards dignity and grace.
These dynamics resonate with contemporary realities. Migrants confined to border camps, those stigmatised by illness such as HIV/AIDS, and communities excluded by caste, race, or poverty all embody the continuing experience of life at the margins. Institutions retain the capacity to determine who is deemed worthy or unworthy, yet gratitude and recognition remain as contested but potent practices of dignity.
Luke 17:11–19 does not simply offer a moral exemplar but articulates a vision of transformed community. It invites attention to the margins as loci where grace intrudes, where authority is unsettled, and where gratitude becomes an act of resistance. In the Samaritan’s voice of thanksgiving, the Gospel intimates that those deemed least by society may, in fact, be the first to apprehend the new reality of God’s reign.
