Please read this passage before reading the homily.
This seems like a simple story. Jesus travels, heals some lepers and only one returns to thank him. Nine ungrateful and one grateful, lesson in thanksgiving taught and learned.
We might say, “Another good Samaritan”, like the one who took care of the victim of bandits. In our day we might say, “Another Muslim, black or Oriental, Mexican refugee, Jewish person, Hamas, or some other people we do not like or of whom we think little.
Jewish people and Samaritan people in the time of Jesus had a long history of bad blood, going back to the return from Exile when the people of Samaria, who were partly pagan and partly Jewish, were no allowed to help rebuild the Temple. In Jesus’ time, the Samaritans would not allow Jewish people to pass through their land to go to Jerusalem.
Suppose that all the lepers but one were Jewish. We know there was (at least) one who was a Samaritan. All ten were sent to the priests, but the Samaritan did not go, possibly because the priests, if Jewish, would not have given him the time of day or, perhaps, because he had no Samaritan priest to go to. The Samaritan came back to Jesus, recognizing that God was working through Jesus. One of the themes of the gospel is that foreigners and outcasts have the faith to recognize God’s presence in Jesus and God’s work that is done by Jesus.
This does not mean that the Jewish lepers should not have gone to the Jewish priests as Jesu had instructed them. Their faith had led them to obey Jesus. Would they have returned later we do not know.
Luke does challenge us to see in every Samaritan the working of God’s grace, mercy and love apparent in those whom we do not appreciate. Jesus welcomed the Samaritan and challenges us to welcome Muslims, blacks, Mexican refugees, Jewish people, Israelis, Hamas, Ukrainians, Russians into our relationship with God in Christ. We thank God by sharing God with all these other peoples.