St Luke 17:11-19/Galatians 5:16-24/Proverbs 4:10-23
In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.
Did you notice, at the end of last Sunday’s Gospel, the lawyer couldn’t even bring himself to say the word, “Samaritan”? The lawyer had asked Jesus the question, And who is my neighbor?, which prompted Jesus to tell the Parable of the Good Samaritan. And when He was finished, Jesus turned the question back to the lawyer, Which is of the three men proved to be a neighbor to the man dying in the ditch?
The natural response would be, “Well, the Samaritan. Obviously.” But this is not how the lawyer answers. He says, The one who showed him mercy. The one. He couldn’t bring himself to even say the word! The word “Samaritan,” if the Jews said it at all, was used as a curse.
The Proverb says, Hear, my son, and accept my words. I have taught you the way of wisdom; I have led you in the paths of righteousness. Now the Church in her wisdom has given us today’s Gospel reading right after the Parable of the Good Samaritan. For she delights in the statues of the Lord, she shall not forget His Word.
We are slow learners. So again to the Samaritan. Once again the Samaritan is the example, the hero, the one to imitate. Only this time it is not a parable, but an actual event.
Jesus is traveling for the last time to Jerusalem. He goes there to die. As He enters the city He comes within earshot of ten lepers. The lepers had to keep their distance because their contagious disease forced them into quarantine. By law they were required to shout, “Unclean! Unclean!” in order to keep people back. Because they were constantly shouting they were frequently hoarse. Sometimes they would bang on pots or shake rattles to warn people to stay away.
And a bit like the people who saw the man who’d been mugged and left for dead in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, anyone who heard the deathly rattle of the lepers quickly got as far away as possible. We quiver at the morbid. We flee from the symptoms of death.
When Jesus arrived on the scene, instead of shouting, “Unclean!” together the ten muster the strength to shout, Iesou epistata, eleison! Jesus, Master, have mercy! A kyrie. The perpetual prayer of the Church, even as we prayed again this morning, “O Lord, keep your Church with Your perpetual mercy.”
How would you react? Other times the disciples tried to get rid of those calling after Jesus for help. What is your first instinct when a beggar comes to ask you for help? Perhaps you glance around your car looking for something small to give them? Do you hope the light changes before they get to your window? When someone says, “Can I ask a favor?” do you cringe, preparing possible excuses? Imagine that person is contagious with a deadly disease. Not many people would stay and answer the cry for mercy.
Perhaps you’d help a friend. Probably you’d help your family; although you may well prefer to hire someone else to do it. We are certainly compassionate as long as someone else is doing the dirty work. And if we can get someone else to pay for it, too, all the better. “Isn’t there some program, some government or charitable organization that can do something?” The smallest possible cost to ourselves, that’s what we’re after.
Jesus praises the man’s faith. It has saved him. But the center of this account is not the thankfulness of the Samaritan leper. It’s the Man who doesn’t see need and say, “Can’t someone do something?” Instead He says, “I will do something.” This is the One to whom faith clings.
For there are more than good intentions here. If one of us where there and the lepers were crying out for mercy, what could we do? Perhaps give them some food. Maybe a special lotion or bandages to ease their pain. But we could not fix them, cure them, save them.
The Gospel, the good news of Christ is this: God the Father looked down into our hellhole, the disaster of our world, the sickness and rebellion of fallen man, and said to His Son, “It’s time to have compassion, to bring mercy.” And the Son said to His Father, “Yes.” He sent no angel to help. He did not fly in emergency supplies and drop them down in crates. The Son came into our hellhole Himself. Like the Good Samaritan, He went into the ditch, with bandits lurking around the corner, and gave up His own room, His own animal, His own money, to rescue the dead man.
When He saw the lepers He did not run the other way, but made Himself unclean to effect their cleansing. He sends them to the priests. But He is the Great High Priest. He bids them go to the Temple. But He is the Temple made without hands, the holy dwelling of the Most High God. He comes for them. For you. He has compassion. And He does something.
Perhaps you have a secret so terrible you’ve kept it hidden for years. You’ve worried that if anyone found out they would reject you. Some of you struggle with an ongoing sin, an addiction, a lust, a resentment, a hatred, that you cannot quit. Your weakness and your shame keep you hidden in the darkness and behind closed doors. Your skin does not display your sin and shame to the world like the lepers. But the voice in your head still shouts at you, “Unclean! Unclean!”
And you are convinced that if your husband or wife, your father or mother, your children, your parishioners, your pastor, knew the truth, they would reject you, run from you like they would from a leper.
But as for the lepers, so for you: God the Son became Man, took on the form of a slave, came to breathe the deathly air of your contagion, came to know your darkness, and He does not turn away from your uncleanness. You sang, “See your sins on Jesus laid; the Lamb of God was slain. His Soul was once an offering made for every soul of man” (LSB 528:6). That includes you.
With the Lord there is forgiveness: forgiveness for your sexual immorality and impurity; forgiveness for your sensuality and idolatry; forgiveness for sorcery and enmity, for strife and jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries and dissensions, drunkenness and orgies. With the Lord there is forgiveness for everything you are and have done and been.
And the second part of today’s Gospel deals with our response to God’s forgiveness in Christ, His love and grace and mercy. Only one of the ten returns. And he was a Samaritan. This is not a throwaway line. St Luke records it for a purpose. To the original hearers, it may have been the most dramatic sentence in the whole narrative.
Imagine a story that takes place in the deep South when racial tensions were high, and when the hero is revealed, the narrator says, “And he was Colored.” The gasps from the white audience. Imagine a story in early 1940s Germany, when the hero is revealed, the narrator saying, “And he was a Jew.”
You see, Jesus keeps overturning everyone’s expectations. After His resurrection the Gospel is to be preached first at Jerusalem, then Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. Its almost as if Jesus can’t wait that long! He lets loose the mercy of God for all ahead of time. And tax collectors and prostitutes and Samaritans are the heroes, while the most pious and upright become the villains. It’s no surprise why they wanted to kill Him!
But the greatest expectation Jesus overturned was the expectation that salvation is found in what we do. His final words to the leper, Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well. More accurately, Your faith has saved you. It does not refer to the Samaritan being cleansed of his leprosy. The other nine who did not return were cleansed of their leprosy. But they did not believe.
Jesus is here speaking of a different sort of being made well, a greater salvation. He is saved not merely from leprosy, but from death and hell. He is rescued from the grave, the Samaritan is given a place with Abraham at the heavenly banquet. For Christ Jesus came not only for Jews, but also for Samaritans; He came for rich and poor, immigrants and natives, men and women, black and white, for every tribe and tongue and people and nation.
There is but one race, we are all children of Adam and children of Noah, and God makes us children of Abraham not by natural birth, but by birth from above, in Holy Baptism, where He adopts us as His children, and we have Him as our Father and the Church for our mother. You are brothers and sisters in a way that transcends even the blood lines of our birth family. You share the blood of God.
You now belong to Christ, by faith, by God’s grace, by His working, His doing. So when St Paul says in the Epistle, Walk by the Spirit, he is not issuing you a set of laws by which you obtain salvation. But in Christ, crucified with Him, buried with Him, and raised in Him, this is who you are: a person filled with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. You have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
Of course this is not yet complete, you pray daily for forgiveness, for the Old Adam still struggles within us, fighting to drag us back. Daily drown him. Run to confession. Cry out, Jesus, Master, have mercy!, everyday. Rejoice to be nourished with His Body and Blood that cleanses you from every stain of sin. For by God’s declaration you are no longer unclean but clean. You are more than a doorkeeper. You belong to Jesus.
In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.
Did you notice, at the end of last Sunday’s Gospel, the lawyer couldn’t even bring himself to say the word, “Samaritan”? The lawyer had asked Jesus the question, And who is my neighbor?, which prompted Jesus to tell the Parable of the Good Samaritan. And when He was finished, Jesus turned the question back to the lawyer, Which is of the three men proved to be a neighbor to the man dying in the ditch?
The natural response would be, “Well, the Samaritan. Obviously.” But this is not how the lawyer answers. He says, The one who showed him mercy. The one. He couldn’t bring himself to even say the word! The word “Samaritan,” if the Jews said it at all, was used as a curse.
The Proverb says, Hear, my son, and accept my words. I have taught you the way of wisdom; I have led you in the paths of righteousness. Now the Church in her wisdom has given us today’s Gospel reading right after the Parable of the Good Samaritan. For she delights in the statues of the Lord, she shall not forget His Word.
We are slow learners. So again to the Samaritan. Once again the Samaritan is the example, the hero, the one to imitate. Only this time it is not a parable, but an actual event.
Jesus is traveling for the last time to Jerusalem. He goes there to die. As He enters the city He comes within earshot of ten lepers. The lepers had to keep their distance because their contagious disease forced them into quarantine. By law they were required to shout, “Unclean! Unclean!” in order to keep people back. Because they were constantly shouting they were frequently hoarse. Sometimes they would bang on pots or shake rattles to warn people to stay away.
And a bit like the people who saw the man who’d been mugged and left for dead in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, anyone who heard the deathly rattle of the lepers quickly got as far away as possible. We quiver at the morbid. We flee from the symptoms of death.
When Jesus arrived on the scene, instead of shouting, “Unclean!” together the ten muster the strength to shout, Iesou epistata, eleison! Jesus, Master, have mercy! A kyrie. The perpetual prayer of the Church, even as we prayed again this morning, “O Lord, keep your Church with Your perpetual mercy.”
How would you react? Other times the disciples tried to get rid of those calling after Jesus for help. What is your first instinct when a beggar comes to ask you for help? Perhaps you glance around your car looking for something small to give them? Do you hope the light changes before they get to your window? When someone says, “Can I ask a favor?” do you cringe, preparing possible excuses? Imagine that person is contagious with a deadly disease. Not many people would stay and answer the cry for mercy.
Perhaps you’d help a friend. Probably you’d help your family; although you may well prefer to hire someone else to do it. We are certainly compassionate as long as someone else is doing the dirty work. And if we can get someone else to pay for it, too, all the better. “Isn’t there some program, some government or charitable organization that can do something?” The smallest possible cost to ourselves, that’s what we’re after.
Jesus praises the man’s faith. It has saved him. But the center of this account is not the thankfulness of the Samaritan leper. It’s the Man who doesn’t see need and say, “Can’t someone do something?” Instead He says, “I will do something.” This is the One to whom faith clings.
For there are more than good intentions here. If one of us where there and the lepers were crying out for mercy, what could we do? Perhaps give them some food. Maybe a special lotion or bandages to ease their pain. But we could not fix them, cure them, save them.
The Gospel, the good news of Christ is this: God the Father looked down into our hellhole, the disaster of our world, the sickness and rebellion of fallen man, and said to His Son, “It’s time to have compassion, to bring mercy.” And the Son said to His Father, “Yes.” He sent no angel to help. He did not fly in emergency supplies and drop them down in crates. The Son came into our hellhole Himself. Like the Good Samaritan, He went into the ditch, with bandits lurking around the corner, and gave up His own room, His own animal, His own money, to rescue the dead man.
When He saw the lepers He did not run the other way, but made Himself unclean to effect their cleansing. He sends them to the priests. But He is the Great High Priest. He bids them go to the Temple. But He is the Temple made without hands, the holy dwelling of the Most High God. He comes for them. For you. He has compassion. And He does something.
Perhaps you have a secret so terrible you’ve kept it hidden for years. You’ve worried that if anyone found out they would reject you. Some of you struggle with an ongoing sin, an addiction, a lust, a resentment, a hatred, that you cannot quit. Your weakness and your shame keep you hidden in the darkness and behind closed doors. Your skin does not display your sin and shame to the world like the lepers. But the voice in your head still shouts at you, “Unclean! Unclean!”
And you are convinced that if your husband or wife, your father or mother, your children, your parishioners, your pastor, knew the truth, they would reject you, run from you like they would from a leper.
But as for the lepers, so for you: God the Son became Man, took on the form of a slave, came to breathe the deathly air of your contagion, came to know your darkness, and He does not turn away from your uncleanness. You sang, “See your sins on Jesus laid; the Lamb of God was slain. His Soul was once an offering made for every soul of man” (LSB 528:6). That includes you.
With the Lord there is forgiveness: forgiveness for your sexual immorality and impurity; forgiveness for your sensuality and idolatry; forgiveness for sorcery and enmity, for strife and jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries and dissensions, drunkenness and orgies. With the Lord there is forgiveness for everything you are and have done and been.
And the second part of today’s Gospel deals with our response to God’s forgiveness in Christ, His love and grace and mercy. Only one of the ten returns. And he was a Samaritan. This is not a throwaway line. St Luke records it for a purpose. To the original hearers, it may have been the most dramatic sentence in the whole narrative.
Imagine a story that takes place in the deep South when racial tensions were high, and when the hero is revealed, the narrator says, “And he was Colored.” The gasps from the white audience. Imagine a story in early 1940s Germany, when the hero is revealed, the narrator saying, “And he was a Jew.”
You see, Jesus keeps overturning everyone’s expectations. After His resurrection the Gospel is to be preached first at Jerusalem, then Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. Its almost as if Jesus can’t wait that long! He lets loose the mercy of God for all ahead of time. And tax collectors and prostitutes and Samaritans are the heroes, while the most pious and upright become the villains. It’s no surprise why they wanted to kill Him!
But the greatest expectation Jesus overturned was the expectation that salvation is found in what we do. His final words to the leper, Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well. More accurately, Your faith has saved you. It does not refer to the Samaritan being cleansed of his leprosy. The other nine who did not return were cleansed of their leprosy. But they did not believe.
Jesus is here speaking of a different sort of being made well, a greater salvation. He is saved not merely from leprosy, but from death and hell. He is rescued from the grave, the Samaritan is given a place with Abraham at the heavenly banquet. For Christ Jesus came not only for Jews, but also for Samaritans; He came for rich and poor, immigrants and natives, men and women, black and white, for every tribe and tongue and people and nation.
There is but one race, we are all children of Adam and children of Noah, and God makes us children of Abraham not by natural birth, but by birth from above, in Holy Baptism, where He adopts us as His children, and we have Him as our Father and the Church for our mother. You are brothers and sisters in a way that transcends even the blood lines of our birth family. You share the blood of God.
You now belong to Christ, by faith, by God’s grace, by His working, His doing. So when St Paul says in the Epistle, Walk by the Spirit, he is not issuing you a set of laws by which you obtain salvation. But in Christ, crucified with Him, buried with Him, and raised in Him, this is who you are: a person filled with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. You have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
Of course this is not yet complete, you pray daily for forgiveness, for the Old Adam still struggles within us, fighting to drag us back. Daily drown him. Run to confession. Cry out, Jesus, Master, have mercy!, everyday. Rejoice to be nourished with His Body and Blood that cleanses you from every stain of sin. For by God’s declaration you are no longer unclean but clean. You are more than a doorkeeper. You belong to Jesus.
RSS Feed