Luke is a Gospel full of parables.

The parable of the Good Samaritan and the parable of the Prodigal Son are perhaps the two best known of all his parables.

And all of the parables in the Gospel of Luke share a common element.

No matter the plot, all of the parables have a twist.

They start out as stories of things everyone in Jesus’ audience knows of and are familiar with and then Jesus adds a detail or an element that turns the familiar on its head.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, it is the unexpected element of a Samaritan, an enemy of the Jewish people, being the one who is the example of what it means to be a good neighbor.

In the Prodigal Son it is the action of the father throwing a party for the wayward son who blew his whole inheritance on profligate living that is the wrench in the works of the story.

In all of the Lukan parables Jesus shows us how the Kingdom of God is not what we expect.

He shows us that God’s values are not necessarily aligned with the values we think are most important.

Now, you might be wondering why I am talking about parables, when our Gospel reading for this morning does not contain a parable.

Well, I bring up parables, because this story of Jesus and the healing of the 10 lepers feels like a parable to me.

In it we have elements that would have been familiar and common to those around Jesus, even if the elements are not so familiar to us today.

The idea that those who are healed should show gratitude to the one who healed them, would have been an expected and accepted moral to the story then just as it is now.

But like all good Lukan parables there is an unexpected twist.

There is a small detail in the story that would have been uncomfortable and off-putting to those who lived in Jesus’ time and place.

An element that reveals something about how God sees the world and what God values most.

An element that turns our values and expectations upside down and challenges us to see the world differently and as a result to change our own behaviors.

But because we are not first century Jews, I need to do a little unpacking of this story if we are to understand the twist in this story.

The twist is the short little sentence, “And he was a Samaritan.”

If this were simply a story about the need to show gratitude for the good things God does for us, then this little verse would not have been needed in this story.

It would not have mattered that 9 of the healed lepers were Jewish and one was a Samaritan.

The point could have been made without this detail.

9 lepers were ungrateful and did not show gratitude to Jesus and one was grateful.

Be like the one who was grateful and show gratitude for the good gifts God has given you.

This will make you a happier and better person.

While this may be true, I don’t think it is the main point of the story.

Or any of the stories in Luke.

Scripture is not meant to be read as a bunch of fables or fairy tales for self-improvement.

Reading and hearing Luke’s Gospel is meant to shake up how we see the world.

His Gospel is supposed to help us understand that God’s kingdom does not resemble human kingdoms nor is God’s kingdom aligned with any human kingdom.

And we, as faithful children of God, are to try to see the world as God sees the world and to act accordingly.

So, why is this little sentence, “And he was a Samaritan” so very important.

Well, remember that Samaritans and Jews were not friends.

The Samaritan people originated after the 12-tribe United Monarchy ruled by David and then Solomon split into two independent states.

The Southern Kingdom, Judah, with its capital in Jerusalem, retained a descendant of David on the throne.

The Northern Kingdom, Israel, with its capital in Samaria, was ruled by a series of charismatic leaders (1 Kings 12).

The Northern Kingdom was conquered by the Assyrians in 722 BCE, and many of its citizens were carted off to places unknown.

The Assyrians then moved residents from other conquered nations into the region.

The resulting population took its name from the capital, and so the Samaritans as a nation were born.

This nation then developed its own religious traditions emphasizing devotion to Torah and affiliation with the sanctuary on Mount Gerizim near Shechem.

As this was happening in the North, the Southern Kingdom was experiencing its own calamities.

In 587, Babylon conquered Assyria and then the Southern Kingdom, Judah.

The Babylonians took the remaining Davidic king as well as many of the country’s leading citizens into exile in Babylon.

These exiled Judeans developed new religious traditions while in exile and never lost hope of returning to their homeland and reestablishing their nation and their Temple in Jerusalem.

In 538, Cyrus of Persia conquered Babylon and the Judeans’ hope of returning from exile was realized.

One of Cyrus’ acts was to repatriate the Judahites to their homeland.

Those who returned brought with them not only plans to rebuild their nation but also plans to rebuild their Temple, in Jerusalem.

But they did not return to an empty land.

To their north were the Samaritans who in the view of the returning Judeans were no longer Jewish, but instead apostates.

Tensions quickly developed between the Samaritans who centered their worship in Gerizim and the Judeans who centered their worship in Jerusalem.

In the second century much of Galilee converted to Judaism, meaning (among other things) that it recognized the Jerusalem temple as the proper place of cultic worship.

This left the middle region of Samaria rather isolated between two Jerusalem affiliated populations.

The rivalry turned especially violent when Judeans destroyed the sanctuary on Mount Gerizim in 128 BCE.

In Jesus’ day, hostility toward Samaritans was still strong enough that Galilean pilgrims often bypassed Samaria en route to Jerusalem, even though it added considerable time to the journey.

Samaritans and Jews were enemies.

And yet in our Gospel story for today it is the Samaritan who shows gratitude.

It is the Samaritan who recognizes that Jesus is not simply a healer, but is the place in which God is found, not the Temple, and as such is the appropriate focus of his gratitude and worship.

It is the Samaritan who understands that it is in God as seen in Jesus that he should place his ultimate loyalty and faith, not in his people’s Temple in Gerizim or in his identity as a Samaritan.

The nine healed Jewish lepers miss the point and continue to place their loyalty in something less-than God, something not worthy of their ultimate faith and loyalty.

They continue to place their ultimate faith in their identity as Judeans and in the human-created Temple in Jerusalem.

This would have been shocking and offensive to those hearing this story in Jesus’ time and place.

And if they took it seriously, it would have called into question many of the values upon which they had built their lives.

Now, a little side note.

Luke is not saying in this story that Samaritans are better than Jews.

This isn’t an anti-Jewish story.

It is a story that is meant to shock the hearers into an understanding that God is not nationalistic.

God does not favor one nation over another.

And I think this is an incredibly important message for us to hear again today when the voices who want to blend Christianity and national identity into one are strident and loud.

Jesus in Luke’s Gospel repeatedly pushes back against any attempt to make him into a nationalistic Messiah.

He resists any attempt by his fellow Jews to make him into the savior of the nation of Israel.

He is there to save them, but not as a nation, but as children of God.

He is there to show them that true life is found in loving God with all their heart mind and soul and loving their neighbor as themselves.

He is there to show them that in God’s kingdom there are to be no haves and have nots.

There are no insiders and outsiders.

There are to be no margins.

Everyone is to be in the center.

There are many who see in him a figure who will restore the Jewish nation-state and create a Jewish empire in place of the Roman Empire.

And in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus categorically denies such a role.

And it is the one who is supposed to be his enemy, the Samaritan, who understands how to truly follow Jesus and worship God.

In the end the only one worthy of our ultimate loyalty, worship and gratitude is the God we see revealed to us in Jesus.

All else is temporary and not worthy of our ultimate concern.

Empires come and go, including our own.

The David kings were great and then they were not.

The Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Judeans, the Israelites, the Greeks, the Romans, and yes even the Americans have their day and then are lost to the sands of time.

But our creator, the one who made us and loves us with a love that is beyond our greatest imaginings, is eternal.

And when we show our gratitude to this God, the one who is truly worthy of our ultimate allegiance and loyalty, we begin to live differently, we begin to see ourselves a little differently, we begin to see our neighbors a little differently, we begin to see the world as God sees the world, and all the human divisions and identities that we think are so important are revealed to be insignificant and unworthy of our attention.

And we begin to love our neighbor with the same love that God loves us.

What matters most is the well-being of our neighbor and not their immigration status, or skin-color, or sexual or gender-identity, or political affiliation, or ethnicity, or religious belief or whatever other category the world might use to define them.

And we begin to do whatever we can to protect the well-being of our neighbors even when it puts us at odds with the dominant values of the world around us.

In whom or in what do you place your ultimate loyalty and devotion?

If it isn’t God and God alone, why not?

And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan.

Amen.