Trinity 14

Luke 17:11-19 - Trinity Fourteen - September 6, 2015
The Ten Lepers

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Jesus was heading to Jerusalem for the last time.  On his way, ten lepers saw him outside a certain village and cried out to him for mercy.  Jesus had mercy by speaking his almighty word and healing all ten of them.  Only one, however, returned to thank him.  He was a Samaritan.  Jesus told him that his faith had made him well.  But weren’t all ten lepers made well?  So then, was it something other than faith by which the other nine were healed?  If not, what kind of faith did they have?  And what kind of faith did this Samaritan have that Jesus commended?  In order to relate the events of our Gospel lesson to ourselves, and examine the kind of faith that we ought to have, I’d like to consider these questions. 

First of all, yes.  All ten were healed.  They were healed by the power of Jesus’ word.  Jesus told them to go and show themselves to the priests in the temple.  This is what God required through the prophet Moses in Leviticus 13 and 14.  It’s quite the elaborate process.  But the process that God required was not a process that healed them.  It was only a process that examined whether or not they were actually free of leprosy.  And then if they were, it declared them ceremonially clean.  So, yes.  All ten lepers were healed.   They were cleansed of their leprosy even before they got to the temple.  Jesus’ word made them well. 

And yes.  All ten had faith.  By the fact that they all cried to him for mercy, we see that they all knew Jesus had the power to help them.  That’s faith.  By the fact that they all set off to do what Jesus told them to do, we know that they all took him at his word.  That’s faith.  And we can certainly assume that they were all grateful to Jesus.  We have no reason to imagine they weren’t.  And that’s faith too.  If they had doubted Jesus or rejected what he told them, they would certainly not have been cleansed.  But they believed.  And their faith made them well. 

So then, they were all made well by placing their faith in Jesus’ word.  So why did Jesus tell only this one man that his faith had healed him?  Well, perhaps we’re simply looking at this from the wrong angle.  Is it really that Jesus only said that one of them was healed by faith?  Or was it actually that only one of them heard Jesus say it to him?   

Now, this might seem like a fragile distinction.  But it’s an important one that reveals a very important lesson about the faith that saves our souls from hell and the faith that doesn’t.  When this man returned to Jesus, after all, this, of all things, is what Jesus decided to tell him: “Your faith has saved you.”  (Make well and save and heal are all the same word.)  Now, Jesus certainly wasn’t saying that this man’s thanksgiving healed him – like it was the effective ingredient in the faith that made him well.  We know that isn’t the case since he was healed even before he returned.  If someone said please may I have and then received, it would be ridiculous to say that he only got what he asked for because he afterwards said thank you.  And yet it is this thank you that Jesus commends.  And it is based on this thank you that Jesus says that his faith healed him.  This reveals something about faith.   

Those who say please generally get what they ask for.  Consider a mother who is fielding requests from her children.  Please really is a magic word.  It represents a posture of humility that acknowledges the one you’re asking as the source of what you want.  But is thank you a magic word?  Thank you doesn’t necessarily get you seconds.  Thank you is just what one says to acknowledge the one who gave him something already.  But it is this thank you, this gratitude, that Jesus calls faith above all — because it is this returning to Jesus that learns his willingness to give even more. 

The Samaritan learned something about faith that the other nine did not learn.  All ten of them learned that when things are bad, when you lack what you need, when you are helpless to help yourself, when you are cut off from those you love because of some uncleanness that defiles you — all ten of them learned that Jesus is willing to help in such need.  He is willing and eager to have mercy.  He is the master of all and has power to speak our most troubling troubles away like blowing steam from a cup of hot coffee. 

But only this one Samaritan learned that even when these troubles are solved and all is well again, that Jesus is still there and is still the only place to go.  Saying please recognizes the one you’re asking as one who just might give what you really want.  That’s what it is to cry for mercy.  But saying thank you recognizes that the one you’re thanking is good and is himself better to have than whatever it is you got.  Not to say thank you is to rate more highly the thing you got than the one who gave it. 

The nine who did not return were plenty grateful, no doubt.  They loved very dearly what Jesus gave them.  But what did he give them?  What did they get?  Let’s consider the plight they had as lepers in order to understand. 

These lepers suffered from a terrible illness.  Their bodies were essentially dying while they lived.  Their flesh would literally rot and fall off their very bones.  Leprosy is a neurological illness.  It affects the nerves in such a way that, although they knew their flesh was dying, they couldn’t feel it.  They would injure themselves with no awareness of the damage they were causing, and so would open themselves up to more and more infection.  They would have open, festering sores and be unaware of how bad off they were.  They were also hideous – a sickening sight to behold.  For this reason alone they might have been separated from the rest of their community.  They were unclean.  And God’s law confirmed it.  The law God gave to Moses required that they live alone.  And so their only companions were those who were similarly afflicted.  Cut off from the rest of the living, they were doomed to live while dying among the dying.  And lest they defile anyone else with their uncleanness, they were further required to call out the words unclean, unclean whenever they saw someone who was clean approaching them. 

But what did these poor lepers do when they saw Jesus approaching?  Did they warn him with a cry of unclean?  No, they pleaded with him with a cry for mercy.  Instead of unclean, unclean, they cried out, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. 

And he did.  He who had nothing unclean about him had power to cleanse them.  Finally, they would be welcomed back to the community that their leprosy had kept them from.  Finally, their ugly sores would be covered by fresh and healthy skin and no one would look askance at their unsightliness.  Finally, they would live a good life within the embrace of their former community.  And then on their way to be examined and confirmed as clean by the temple priests, before they even got there, they were cleansed and made whole by Jesus.  Right before their very eyes they got what they pleaded for.  They got what they wanted. 

And this is all they wanted.  They wanted the approval of the temple priests.  They wanted to be assessed and evaluated by the law and found worthy to rejoin the community in Jerusalem.  They wanted to be accepted as clean by their peers.  They got what they wanted. 

But the Samaritan did not want the same thing.  Sure, he was cleansed no less than they.  But he could not be welcomed back into their community, because he was a Samaritan.  The Samaritans were a sect of Judaism that taught that the Savior would not come to Mount Zion in Jerusalem, but to Mount Gerizim in Samaria.  They were wrong.  And the Jews were right to reject them and exclude them.  They did not know God as God had revealed himself in his word.  They had a false hope of salvation that could not bring true peace with their Maker.  No matter what this Samaritan would do, no matter how free from leprosy he was, he would never be regarded as clean in the temple where Jesus told him to go.  But by this encounter with Jesus, he learned how, despite his sectarian and heretical upbringing, he would be made clean and pure before God. 

Since he could not approach God’s dwelling in the temple, he returned to Jesus.  He is the true temple.  He is the true priest.  This Samaritan learned first hand that the false doctrine of the Samaritans was wrong.  His Savior was indeed heading towards Jerusalem.  The one who had cured him of his leprosy was on his way to be rejected by the very priest the other nine had rushed off to meet.  But this priest would not reject him.  This temple would welcome him in.  He would take his uncleanness and make it his own.  He had much more to offer than temporary wholeness and inclusion into a community of peers.  He would give him a cleanness and purity that only true faith can receive and inclusion into the communion of saints. 

When I was a kid, we used to call this the account The Healing of the Ten Leopards.  Once we discovered our childish confusion, we thought it was pretty funny.  But there’s a lesson in the pun.  The nine who rushed off to the temple were satisfied with their spots being removed.  That’s all they needed.  It solved the only problem they were aware of.  Their faith in Jesus was a faith in his power.  That is why they called him Master.  He had power to change their lives and make it better like washing spots off a cat.  He had power to give them what they really desired.  But their desires were superficial.  They wanted the leprosy gone so that they could rejoin their community.  But they needed a deeper clean than just the removal of leprous spots from the skin. 

This is what the Samaritan had realized.  He was no less healed than they.  He was no less outwardly well.  But by the fact that he remained an outcast, he came to know a deeper uncleanness.  He needed more than a Master.  He needed a Savior.  He needed more than for him to be powerful.  He needed him to be gracious.  And this is where we see a great comparison between leprosy and sin.  

Like leprosy, sin renders one dead even as he lives.  Though the skin does not fall off the bones, it is a corruption that runs to our very core.  We are born in sin so that all our spiritual powers are useless.  The one who has this leprosy of sin, like the disease, cannot always feel the damage he causes himself.  He is not totally aware of how bad off he is.  One sin leads to another as his body of flesh sinks deeper and deeper into hell.  Leprosy separated men and women from the community they loved – their friends and relatives.  But sin separates us from a much more precious community – the communion of saints and our God.  It renders us unclean before him so that we must stay far away as long as we are unclean.  And furthermore, like leprosy of the skin, the leprosy of sin is ugly.  It makes us hideous.  The works of the flesh that Paul lists in our Epistle lesson make people ugly in the light of God’s holiness. 

The lepers called out for mercy and were cleansed.  So this Samaritan returned to give thanks, trusting that Jesus would also have mercy on the uncleanness of his sinful condition.  And he did.  This is what it means to say thank you.  Anyone can humble himself and beg the Lord to please give what they desire.  But then when they have what they need, they are satisfied.  Their health returns.  Their financial trouble is resolved.  A husband quits drinking.  A child straightens out his life.  Once God helps them with such troubles, they have no cause to return.  But we do.  The God who hears our prayers for mercy in every need is the God who has much more to give and fills our deepest need. 

We return in thanksgiving because we need more.  And this is what giving thanks to Jesus consists of, as it is written in Psalm 116:

What shall I render to the Lord
For all His benefits toward me?
I will take up the cup of salvation,
And call upon the name of the Lord. (Psalm 116:12-13)

To give thanks to Jesus is to take the cup of salvation – the cup of Psalm 23 that overflows with mercy more than we can ever think we need.  Thanking God doesn’t earn something from us.  It doesn’t improve our faith.  Rather, it is by thanking our Savior that we ever return to him who cleanses us again and again.  He tells us that our faith saves us.  It receives what he gives us.  He takes our sin, our impure thoughts, our lusts of the flesh and he makes them his own under the judgment of God.  And he gives to us the purity he has lived as the spotless Lamb of God. 

This is what Jesus teaches about faith.  It saves because it kneels at the feet of our Savior God who welcomes us again and again.  He tells us to rise and go on our way.  And this does not mean to go away.  Far from it.  It is an invitation to live our lives as holy children of God cleansed from all that defiles us – baptized into the very death that washed us clean and presents us alive and whole before God.  It is an invitation to walk in the same Spirit that brought us to Jesus in the first place.  And as we fight against the works of the flesh that defile us, so we also produce fruits of the Spirit that please God in all we do. 

And as often as you fall, as often as you discover the uncleanness of your flesh that continues to stain your soul and spoil your conscience, return to where the Spirit first called you.  Return to Jesus and give thanks to him who makes you clean.  And he will.  He will never turn you away. 

Let us pray:

My Savior, wash me clean with Thy most precious blood,
That takes away all sin and seals my peace with God
My soul in peace abideth when in Thy wounds it hideth.
There I find full salvation and freedom from damnation.
Without Thee lost, defiled by sin, My Savior, wash me clean. Amen.