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 identical dramatic canvas.” So wrote Rudolf Bultmann in 1968 (in his History of the Synoptic Tradition). When I read his remark, I used to be delighted by his ability to get straight to the guts of the Gospel. But then I started to take into consideration 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, as an alternative of explaining it, he explains it away as merely a development of Mark 1.40-45, by 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’s “unitary”, but disagree that it’s a “composition” (within the sense that Luke invented it). When he describes it as “imaginary”, though, I’m staggered by his confidence in his judgement, and by the liberty with which he tackles the text.
Reading scholarship may be like cherry-picking. I pick the cherry of Bultmann’s “gratitude and ingratitude” image, but I are not looking for to adopt his demythologising approach to the Gospels with it. So — to make use of one other food metaphor — am I having my cake and eating it? The seek for a comprehensive system for analysing the Gospels won’t ever, I feel, succeed. But it would never end, either. No one theory covers every Gospel situation fully, answers every Gospel query satisfactorily.
It is actually easier, and doubtless wiser, to take each section of every Gospel for itself, and, yes, consider the way it suits right into a wider picture, but at all times return to the small print of the story, to know it by itself terms. Next, then, to Bultmann’s query in regards to the practicalities, which is sensible: “What could a Samaritan want with Jewish priests?” In all of the times I actually have encountered this Gospel, it never occurred to me to ask that query.
Yet, I actually 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 didn’t allow women to be priests. So, I had a variety of meditating to do, not only about whether my nascent vocation was real, but additionally about whether it was anything greater than an act of presumption within the face of centuries of tradition.
After I used to be beneficial for theological college, I used to be sent to someone who was to make a suggestion on whether I got an additional yr of coaching as a “potential theological educator”. She asked me to speak about how I saw my vocation, and I turned instinctively, immediately, to this passage. I recall my tears as I expressed how I desired to be just like the Samaritan leper. I desired to be someone who got here back to say “Thank you” to Jesus.
Looking again at this Gospel, so a few years later, the “dramatic canvas” on which “gratitude and ingratitude” were depicted was not about vocation in any respect. It should have spoken to me of vocation because guidance about my sense of “call” was what I used to be looking for, back after I first meditated on the story.
I used to be still wondering, after reading Bultmann, why a Samaritan can be sent to a Jewish priest. If I were a unique form of Christian, I would see verse 16, “And he was a Samaritan”, as an inspired afterthought of Luke’s, to make the purpose of the story more pointed. But I prefer to honour the text that we do have quite than speculate about the small print that we might need had. This is just not just mental cowardice. The story of the ten lepers (or the grateful Samaritan) is an actual thing, complete in itself, and completely at home in Luke’s Gospel. That is a fact, and a undeniable fact that I can take care of. For all that I’m suspicious of pietism, it still feels presumptuous to choose for myself which bits of the Bible are real and original.
Bultmann’s point in regards to the Samaritan leper and Jewish priests may finally have helped me towards a solution. Perhaps Jesus sent all ten lepers to the Jewish priests to show them — and us — that God’s healing makes no distinction between people by way of nationality, only by way of need.
