What do you usually see as you enter a city or town? Billboards of course, and

Luke 17:11-21 The Man Who Returned What do you usually see as you enter a city or town? Billboards of course, and normally gas stations and restaura...
Author: Matilda Stokes
1 downloads 1 Views 195KB Size
Luke 17:11-21

The Man Who Returned

What do you usually see as you enter a city or town? Billboards of course, and normally gas stations and restaurants- businesses that need to be visible from the road; factories perhaps and maybe the water treatment plant and the landfill; apartments and older homes- but not the newest and nicest and most expensive properties, those are in the quieter and greener parts of town. It’s like that in the story here, as Jesus enters a nameless village, and on the outskirts of town, in a place where none of the elite would wish to live, are the lepers. They are just about the ultimate outcasts: they have a frightening disease, and to the religious mind, they must be sinners cursed by God to contracted have this terrible illness. But one advantage they do have, they are close enough to the road that they can shout out for help to travelers passing by. And in that place they would likely have a monopoly, for no other business or residence would be at hand. If people were moved by pity, they could leave a coin on a rock and pass on. And then the lepers could come to the road and receive the gift. A tough way to make a living, but they had no choice, for lepers had to maintain a certain distance from other people, could not touch others, couldn’t work or gather with any but their own kind. So

they could exist only by the mercy of the townspeople who went out of their way to help or by the kindness of those along the road. So when they called out to Jesus, he saw them, and told them to go and be examined by the priests. Only a priest had the authority to pronounce the lepers cleansed of their disease, after close inspection and various sacrifices. Now, nowhere do we read that Jesus spoke the words of power that would heal; he didn’t touch them to transfer his own strength and wholeness to them. Very simply, even simplistically, the ten lepers seemed to take Jesus at his word- with no assurance except the command of Jesus to go- and headed for Jerusalem where the priests performed their duties in the temple. And they are healed as they obey and go. Well, right there is the sermon. Except that is merely the beginning of the story. There is this one man, different from the other nine, in a couple of ways. He turned back when he saw he was made well. We shouldn’t take verse 15 to mean that he was the only man who became aware that the leprosy had left his body, but that they all knew it. He was just the only one to respond in this exuberant manner. Why did he turn back and the nine did not? Maybe because they knew they weren’t truly cleansed until a priest had said so and were in a hurry to find one. Maybe we shouldn’t think too

badly of them for their desire to hear a good report from the priest and be welcomed back into society. But this one man saw the sores dry up on his skin, and he returned to thank the one who had healed him. But what should we make of his coming back to see Jesus? A careful reading of the passage may help us to see why Jesus praised him when he returned. The man doesn’t just come back to Jesus giving thanks and praising God, he falls on his face at Jesus’ feet. There are several instances in this gospel of persons falling down or kneeling before Jesus, out of fear or from a depth of feeling as they had come to beg Jesus for something. Here the leper bows down out of gratitude, much like the woman in chapter 7 who wet Jesus’ feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair, kissed his feet and anointed them with expensive ointment. It is one of the great stories of repentance and gratitude for forgiveness. And yet, the author has written this story of the leper in a way that outdoes even the woman. He humbles himself as low as you can go: he falls on his face, all the way to the ground, and stretches out at Jesus’ feet. No other response to Jesus is so selfeffacing. It must be so, for he has lived with the world’s rejection times two: the world’s disgust and fear of his disease and the “otherness” of his race and nationality, each of them Jesus has ignored or healed. His faith and gratitude

surpass by far the nine other lepers who seem to have been Jews by birth. They are healed as well, but he alone receives the word of blessing. “Your faith has made you well,” Jesus tells him. Interesting, because he was healed before we ever knew he had faith; and the other nine were just as healed as he, and even without his faith. Interesting, too, because that word “made well” can be a word of health and wholeness, or of salvation. And interesting, because Jesus says that exact same phrase to three others in Luke’s gospel. He says it to the woman who washed and wiped his feet; to the blind man who called out to Jesus and asked to be given his sight; and to the woman who had suffered twelve years from a menstrual flow of blood. “Your faith has made you well”; “Your faith has saved you,” Jesus says, not to the paragons of faith, but to these doubly rejected: the Samaritan leper, the unclean woman, the prostitute, the beggar seemingly cursed with blindness for his sins; these untouchables, the lowest class, who lived at the outer edges of civilization. But out of faith, they come to Jesus, at the risk of more rejection and humiliation, and he blesses them. But perhaps we should see that they really have nothing more to lose, and maybe that is the lesson for us: that they come out of desperation to him for healing, and they return to him out of joy and gratitude and hopefulness, and they hear an even more profound word of

mercy and assurance, “Your faith has made you whole”; “Your faith has saved you.” In Luke’s gospel, two men, two Samaritans, two outsiders, are approved beyond all others. The first is the Good Samaritan. We know him from the parable Jesus told as the answer to a cynical question, “Who is my neighbor?” And this leper Samaritan who is a pattern to all of us of ego-less thanksgiving. The one shows us the proper and righteous way to deal with other people- even with those different from us, even with our enemies. And this leper today who teaches us how to respond to the love and kindness of God. Do these “foreigners” as Jesus calls them, represent the way we live our own lives as servants of God within the grace and forgiveness of our Lord Jesus Christ? Or are we like the nine, healed and made whole, but who do not return to give thanks and praise?

So if this Samaritan leper, as well as the other desperate outsiders, receives from Jesus healing and words of blessing and salvation, what does it mean when the Pharisees ask Jesus when the Kingdom of God is coming? How are we to understand their question and the answer he gives? In this way, I think, that the Kingdom comes as a gift to those who cannot afford it, and as the great blessing to

those who possess nothing of their own: no good works to commend them to God, and no sense of pride at their own striving to be pious, not considering virtue to be their possession. But rather, an attitude of humility to understand the futility and emptiness of honor or ego; and so they come to Jesus in perfect selflessness and gratitude. This last phrase Jesus speaks in our scripture “the Kingdom of God is among you” may also be translated, “the Kingdom is within you.” If we interpret it this second way then the question we must understand that our relationship with the Savior is such that we have no goodness in us except the mercy God has given, and that we come to him as beggars, and receive his healing as a gift. But if we say “the Kingdom is among you,” we must come to see that God’s Kingdom is not coming only when God’s people keep the Law perfectly, as many Jewish teachers had taught, but is already present. It cannot be seen in the ways we may think- with an outpouring of religious sentiment or increased church attendance, but happens and exists among us when the poor and the hungry are fed and clothed, and the broken and diseased are healed. The Pharisees, with minds made up about how the Kingdom would look, could not see that the Kingdom had come already, when even right before them the lepers were healed, and even when this one had come back with loud praise, abasing himself before the Lord. He

alone, and not the nine, and not the Pharisees, hears the blessing only God can give, “Your faith has saved you.” Here, it is not the learned and the devout who have become our examples and guides, but the destitute and humble who teach us that the Kingdom has come among us already, and who show us where it may be found.

Suggest Documents