In the wake of Martin Luther King’s assassination…

Jane Elliott a primary school teacher in a small town in America…

conducted an experiment with her grade three students…

to try to help them understand the nature of prejudice.

She announced to the class that people with blue eyes were genetically inferior––

the lack of melanin made them stupid––

so they shouldn’t expect to be treated the same as brown-eyed people.

And, for the rest of the day, they weren’t.

They were talked down to.

They weren’t allowed to use the playground equipment.

Other brown-eyed students began to pick on them.

They started to lose confidence and make mistakes––

they began to look and behave as if they were ‘inferior’.

The next day, Jane Elliott reversed it.

The blue-eyed students––

having experienced it the day before––

were not as nasty as the brown-eyed students had been to them.

Then Jane began to unpack the exercise with the children––

all of whom were white––

and explain to them what it was like for black children in America.

Despite the fact that such an exercise would never be allowed now…

for ‘ethics’ considerations…

and that it has been heavily criticised by some psychologists for its potential to cause long-term damage…

many of her students never forgot that lesson.

Many years later, at a class reunion, most of them returned to thank Jane…

and tell her what a difference it made to their lives…

and the way that they were raising their own children.

 

If we have never experienced prejudice…

and I mean real prejudice––

not the confected sort that certain sections of the shouty media get up in arms about…

claiming that their voice is being silenced…

as they scream down a radio microphone…

or type out their latest newspaper column;

no, I mean real prejudice…

the day-in, day-out sort…

affecting your sense of self and your place in the world;

the sort of thing that Aboriginal people…

or Muslims…

experience in this country;

if we have never experienced what they do––

if we have never lived through it or with it––

then it’s hard to imagine what it’s like;

or what it does to you.

 

Which also makes it hard for us to understand this morning’s reading from Luke’s Gospel.

Because…

in first-century Palestine…

that’s what it was like to be a “leper”.

According to Israelite custom… 

those labelled lepers were excluded from the community. 

They had to leave their homes, their families, and their villages––

leave behind everything that gave them meaning and worth.

They were unable to work or worship.

They had to go about in torn clothes with unkempt hair…

and, if approached, they were meant to cry out: “Unclean, unclean”!

Can you imagine living like that?

 

And it wasn’t because they had some contagious disease.

Back then, they didn’t know about bacteria, viruses, or diseases.

Remember, theirs was a pre-scientific and pre-medical culture.

But, more than that…

what’s called “leprosy” in the Bible isn’t what we know as leprosy today.

True leprosy is an invasive, degenerative condition…

caused by a particular bacterium that affects the cartilage, causing deformity; 

and affects the nerves, causing paralysis.

It doesn’t just affect the skin––

and certainly not in a superficial way.

Yet, what people knew as “leprosy” in the first century was just that––

it was a superficial skin condition.

In fact, almost any blemish of the skin could be deemed “leprous”…

any sudden hair loss…

even a bit of reddened, flaky skin.

Dandruff would qualify––

so would acne!

But, it was a condition that only men seemed to get—

not women.

Yet, it could also affect clothing… 

even buildings!

In other words, what was known as “leprosy” back then wasn’t a disease.

It was a perception.

It was a perception that someone wasn’t right.

It was a perception that someone didn’t look normal…

and anyone who wasn’t normal was dangerous–– 

they were seen as a threat to the whole community.

So they were labelled “impure”… 

they ceased to be a person of worth…

and they ceased to belong.

To be a “leper” was to be excluded, ignored, and devalued.

So, more than anything, “leprosy” in the Bible was a debilitating social disorder.

Not only were you excluded, ignored, and devalued… 

but your condition came to define you.

If people looked at you, that’s all they saw…

and they didn’t really care what happened to you.

 

That would have been the experience of the ten men in this morning’s story from Luke’s Gospel. 

Ten lepers.

Ten people excluded and treated as worthless…

standing at a distance–– 

just like they were supposed to.

They accosted Jesus as he was entering some little village, crying out…

“Have mercy on us!”

Now, that could have been just a request for a handout.

After all, given their predicament, food would have been quite hard to come by.

And, in response, Jesus did nothing dramatic––

there was no spitting and mud-making… 

and no touching.

He simply said, “Go and show yourselves to the priests”.

That’s all!

Now, he didn’t say that because priests were healers.

Rather, they were the inspectors and guardians of purity.

It was their job to exclude people who were perceived to be a threat…

and it was their job to declare them clean and no longer a threat.

So, in sending the ten to the priests, Jesus was effectively saying… 

“I’m telling you that you’re healed…

that you’re whole…

that you’re valuable and worthwhile.

Now, go and show the priests to have it confirmed”. 

 

Well, as the author constructs the scenario, they all went on their way…

and, while he says that all ten “were made clean”…

one of them returned to Jesus rather than going to the priests––

if, in fact, that’s what the other nine actually did.

And then the author drops the narrative clanger––

the one who came back was a Samaritan.

For a start, he couldn’t have gone to the priests in Jerusalem…

because they would not have received him.

The Samaritan came back to Jesus because he had nowhere else to go––

he had no one else to whom he could go––

in order to be declared clean and whole, publicly.

But, more than that, the original audience would have been shocked––

not because the Samaritan’s response was to praise God––

they would have been shocked that the Samaritan was healed at all.

To the original audience, he would have been considered an outcast—

someone of questionable morals…

an unredeemable sinner…

someone who was despised, hated, and treated as dirt…

even without being a leper.

 

In other words, what the author is saying through this story is… 

that no one is beyond God’s reach;

no one is outside of God’s care––

no matter who they are…

no matter how they are perceived…

no matter how they appear.

God doesn’t reject, abandon, or despise anyone.

God doesn’t care about the boundaries that we humans erect––

around others…

or even around ourselves.

We might call each other things like:

stupid…

useless…

worthless…

hopeless…

or a nuisance.

And, because of that, we might even see ourselves that way.

But God doesn’t.

In God’s eyes, there are no lepers!