Our readings this week are 2 Timothy 2.8–15 and Luke 17.11–19.

It's somewhat refreshing to read a story in which the foreigner, the outsider, the scrounger in search of handouts turns out to be the good guy.  That, though, is what we have in front of us in our gospel reading this week.

We meet Jesus patrolling the national border (the region between Samaria and Galilee, v11), and whilst he's there he comes across a ragtag bunch of refugees. Ten lepers: people who, probably more because of laws and norms wrapped up with national pride and identity, rather than an understanding or fear of the disease itself, couldn't be accepted in regular society.  Leviticus 13:45-46 tells us, 'Anyone with such a defiling disease must wear torn clothes, let their hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of their face and cry out, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ As long as they have the disease they remain unclean. They must live alone; they must live outside the camp.'

Outcasts, stateless wanderers, acceptable neither in the towns they come from, nor those towards which they are drawn. Outcasts who suddenly catch a glimpse of someone who may be able to help them.  Knowing their place, they keep their distance ("Unclean! Unclean!"!) - but call out asking for mercy from the one who has authority, and power.  What they are asking is not easy, some rabbinic teaching even compares the healing of a leper to raising the dead, an act thought to belong to God alone.

Jesus, as ever, when faced with those in need is not put off by difficulty; he has something that can make another's life easier, dignified, and fulfilled; he has the power to leave them feeling loved and included - why on earth would he not offer these things (as it is in heaven)?  So of course he does.  As readers of the gospels (and indeed to Luke as the writer of this gospel) that doesn't come as much of a surprise.

The surprise comes in the response - of these 10, only 1 thinks to stop to say thank you. And - verse 16, don't miss the tone - was a samaritan.  Eugh.  Why did he stand out?  Was it perhaps because he was even more of an outsider?  Because the gulf between him and his healer was wider than that of the others?  Because he had no share in the Messianic expectation that led to a belief that a cure was even possible?  Was he enabled to be grateful precisely because of his being the outsider, unblinded by a sense of entitlement or chosenness derived purely by an accident of time and space in when and where he was born?

We, of course, will never know.  All we know with certainty from this encounter is that Jesus embraced where others turned away; that Jesus gave of what he had to help those in desperate need without thought for its difficulty or cost; and we also know, thanks to the rudeness of the other nine, that - though he appreciated being thanked - Jesus didn't make that help conditional on gratitude, nationality, or anything else.

Faced by so much that's going on in the world today, and by the many responses to it, I find myself challenged by Paul's words to Timothy - in the midst of it all, in the clamour and rhetoric around pride, nationality, and need - 'Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—that is my gospel'.

Remember Jesus Christ.