Ten Lepers, Tutu and Faith

Luke 17:11-19 is an interesting story. In it, Jesus heals ten lepers – but only one (a Samaritan) returns to thank him. Then (ie, post-healing) does Jesus reply to the man’s exuberant thanks:

‘Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? … Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.’

There are many interesting things here, most notably Jesus’ parting words to the Samaritan: ‘your faith has made you well.’ What is this faith? And how has it made the man well, particularly given that he had already been healed of his leprosy?

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I recently found a piece from Desmond Tutu about this story:

‘It seems odd that Jesus should appear to repeat his cure, since the story has already recorded the healing of all ten. I have thought that perhaps this Gospel story points to a deeper leprosy in the spirit, the leprosy of ingratitude. To be unthankful, to be unappreciative, is in fact to be diseased. To cleanse our spirits of depression, of self-pity and other forms of spiritual leprosy, we have to be thankful, appreciative persons.’

The sense of faith (whatever faith is) working itself out in the inner workings of our being, and shaping the nature of our motivations and desires is something that resonates with me. The healing act of Christ in the narrative occurs once in the gift of healing, and again in the outworking of the man’s response to this gift through a thoroughgoing evaluation of his own inner processes and workings. Faith, then, might be the process through which one commits to a rigorous process of self-evaluation, which can be stimulated by both the graceful and graceless actions of others. Out of this may come healing of a deeper sort – in Tutu’s imagery, healing of the leprosy of self-obsession.