10 men want pity.

Jews and Samaritans fundamentally disagreed about theology and practical ways to live it out. But near one town at the border between the two groups was found a group of 10 men that everyone was against. They were, the text of Luke 17 tells us, “lepers.”

It means they had one of a variety of contagious skin diseases, the kind that even before anyone knew about contagion, everyone avoided. Because God said to avoid them.

In the Old Testament, in Leviticus 13, we read that people who have...