NOTES for Luk 17:12-19
It is worth asking why only the Samaritan returned to thank the Saviour for healing him. Why did the others take the miracle for granted?
Perhaps the answer lies precisely in the fact that the man who returned was not a Jew but a Samaritan. After all, the healed man understood perfectly well that before him stood a Jew who owed him nothing, and that if this Man healed him, it would be purely out of mercy: he knew very well how Jews regarded Samaritans.
The healed Samaritan understands perfectly well that he has received something wholly undeserved. His fellow sufferers, who are Jews, may consider themselves to be in a different position. It is hard to say what they thought about the causes of their illness. In any case, they probably believed they had a right to help, to healing, to God's intervention in their lives: they belonged to God's people, they were believers, and God had given them all the promises that had been heard since the time of Abraham. Perhaps they saw their healing as something to be expected. It is quite possible that they not only rejoiced but also thanked God for healing them; yet deep down, perhaps, they still regarded their illness as a mistake or an injustice that God had now finally put right through this Prophet unknown to them.
Perhaps the healed Jews understood their healing as the restoration of something that rightfully belonged to them. Of course, if it had been solely and simply a matter of healing, of deliverance from illness, the situation would have been open to more than one interpretation. But what was at issue was the manifestation of the Kingdom, which made the healing possible. And here their confidence, grounded in their own religious devotion, played a cruel trick on the healed Jews: they decided that they had shared in the Kingdom's healing power as a matter of right.
This is how religion sometimes deceives a person, giving them confidence where in fact nothing depends on them, prompting them to demand where they can only ask. It was simpler for the Samaritan: his religion did not give him that kind of confidence. He returns to give thanks for undeserved healing. And he finds himself at the threshold of the Kingdom, which it will not be difficult for him to cross.