Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost + October 9, 2016
Text: Luke 17:11-19
Today’s Gospel tells us of one of the many healings which Jesus did. The recipients were ten men of Jewish descent. We know this because Jesus directs them to show themselves to the priest in Jerusalem.[1] As people with a Jewish background, they were familiar with the spiritual significance of leprosy—that it made them unclean and therefore unfit to participate in the life of God’s people, much less be at the temple.[2]
But what if the ten men whom Jesus healed had been Greeks or Assyrians, who knew nothing about the God of Abraham? Certainly we see healings happen today for those who know nothing or care nothing about the God who made heaven and earth. Unbelievers receive the same kinds of bodily healing that Christians receive, at the hands of the same medical professionals.
Yet if you were to ask someone who’s not a Christian where their healing came from, they might credit the doctor, or medicine, or a breakthrough procedure. The point is that God, who created them and preserved their life, gave them healing and they didn’t return in thanks to Him.
On the other hand, there are many who do see God’s hand in the good things we have on earth. In America, our national motto is, “In God We Trust,”[3] and when our leaders address the nation after troubling times, they end with “God bless America!” Speaking of that phrase, during World War II, Irving Berlin’s song, “God Bless America” became famous.
“God bless America, land that I love/ Stand beside her and guide her/ Through the night with the light from above”
Berlin praised God for watching over and guiding this country. What’s interesting though, is that Irving Berlin was a Russian Jewish immigrant. Yet, he penned a song that Jews, Christians, and even Muslims can sing without reservation.
Even the spiritual but not religious can give thanks to God for His temporal blessings. But what we should look at is what makes the Samaritan unique so that Jesus praises His faith?
It’s a matter of knowing where the blessings really come from. Ten lepers received the gift of cleansing, but on their way, one of them was given the understanding of faith. Nine of them continued to the temple and the priest, but one turned around because the Holy Spirit gave Him insight to see something more. He was given the bigger picture of why God showed him mercy. It was because the One who healed Him was on His way to Jerusalem.
In Psalm 121, the people of God would sing, “I lift up my eyes to the hills, from where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” For God’s people of old, this meant the place where the Passover Lamb was sacrificed and where prayers and sin offerings were daily made for the people of Israel. But the Holy Spirit has opened our eyes to see that when Jesus climbed the hill of Golgotha, bearing His cross and carrying the sins of the world, He was the true Passover Lamb and all-sufficient sin offering which God made for sake of all people.
In the Law, it was commanded of lepers, “He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp.”[4] So it was for the ten lepers, but the Holy Spirit opened the one’s eyes to see that God accomplishing a more perfect cleansing in Jesus. As the Apostle to the Hebrews wrote, “Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood.”[5] When God brought this to fulfillment it was the High Priest Himself who went outside the camp, whom God made to be sin who knew no sin—so that all who believe in Him might become clean, even the righteousness of God.[6]
So it is through Jesus Christ that God made peace with this sinful world. It’s through the peace of the cross that God deals graciously with humanity. The Lord says that His Father “makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.”[7] It isn’t because we’re such faithful folks that God blesses America. It isn’t because we deserve better medical care that He gave us skilled doctors. It isn’t because one couple did something right that they have kids while another is barren.
God gives His blessings through the cross, so that all would come to know what sort of love He has for His creatures—every single person. “God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” “It was not because you were more in number than any other people…but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath He swore.” [8] For those enlightened by Holy Spirit to know Christ, we are able to see how God gives His blessings even to the unthankful and the wicked.
That is also our source of comfort when the apparent blessings don’t come. There were certainly more than ten lepers in all of Israel at that time, but Jesus didn’t relieve all of them.[9] There were many who died on the same day as Lazarus of Bethany, but only he was restored to his family. If we could only praise God at the times when it’s going well, we would have many silent hours, wondering what God is thinking.
Without the cross, we can’t be sure that we have a gracious God. That’s because the only information we would have to go on is whether things are good or bad. Unless we hear from the Word that the Lord loves us and that He is faithful to His promises, we might just fall into despair. But Christ crucified and risen is the guarantee from God that not only gives us reason to glorify him for undeserved blessings today, and also a certain hope for all eternity. As St. Paul writes, “He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?”[10] When our eyes are fixed on the One who went up to Jerusalem, we’re confident of God’s fatherly love and trust that He will provide and support us whatever this passing life brings.
So with our Samaritan brother in the faith, we give glory to God not just for the gifts He gives today, but even more for His beloved Son who offered up His life for the world. In Christ, we will glorify God even beyond the grave. Amen.
[1] Leviticus 13 details this under the Law of Moses.
[2] Leviticus 13:45-46
[3] Adopted in 1956, possibly in response to the political threat of Communism which had ties to atheism.
[4] Leviticus 13:46
[5] Hebrews 13:12
[6] See 2 Corinthians 5:21
[7] Matthew 5:45
[8] Romans 5:8, Deuteronomy 7:7-8
[9] See Luke 4:16-30
[10] Romans 8:32
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