Scripture reading: Psalm 111.

Sermon text: Luke 17:11-19.

Note: The description of Samaritan history comes from the sermon Living in Freedom on 4 July 2010.

Even the most single-minded individuals sometimes follow a diversion.

Today’s sermon text occurred during Jesus’ trip to Jerusalem for His final time. St. Luke began to describe this journey as early as chapter 9 of his book; of the 24 chapters of the Gospel of St. Luke, 10 of them involve this journey. Jesus knew this trip would end with His death and resurrection, but He never forgot His responsibility to those who needed His power in their lives. Even on His way to His execution, Jesus continued to heal the sick and teach the people willing to listen.

St. Luke didn’t specify the name of the village in which this event occurred. Several villages dotted the border between the Jewish- majority area of Galilee and Samaria to the south. The 2 groups rarely mixed, for very good historical reasons.

The Samaritans actually claimed Jewish ancestry. After the Assyrian king Sargon II conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 B.C. and destroyed the city of Samaria, he deported the Jewish survivors from the area and replaced them with colonists from beyond the Euphrates River. After the colonists suffered God’s punishment for their idolatry, the Assyrians brought some Jewish priests back from exile to teach the newcomers about the Jewish religion. The Jews and the new colonists intermarried, producing the Samaritans of Jesus’ time.

The Jews who returned from exile in 539 B.C. never recognized the Samaritans as Jewish, and neither did their descendants. The Samaritans opposed the reconstruction of the Temple by the returning Jews, filing a complaint with the Persian king Cambyses II that delayed the Temple’s construction for decades. The Samaritans also opposed Nehemiah’s reconstruction of Jerusalem’s walls. You can read the book of Nehemiah for that story.

Later in history, the Samaritans found themselves on the receiving end of Jewish revenge. During the period of the Jewish Hasmonean kingdom (140 B.C. to 37 B.C.), the rivalry culminated in the conquest of Samaria by king John Hyrcanus I. Hyrcanus  destroyed the Samaritan temple in c. 111-110 B.C. and forced the Samaritan population to convert to Judaism. Even after nearly 150 years, the Samaritans had never forgotten their humiliating defeat and their lost glory.

These events led both Samaritans and Jews to keep their distance from one another. However, no human conflict can keep God from working in the life of a person needing His grace.

The 10 lepers in this story found themselves ostracized from society by their disease and by the ritual laws of Judaism. The Mosaic Law prohibited lepers from mixing with ordinary people in order to prevent the spread of the skin disease. According to the Law,  anyone diagnosed with leprosy by a priest was considered unclean and therefore had to live outside inhabited areas. Leprosy tore those infected from their families, friends, and life as they knew it. The leper could not approach anyone and touch them; lepers had to cry “Unclean! Unclean!” whenever someone approached them. No leper could hope for a normal life unless a priest declared him healed of the disease. Unfortunately, few people ever recovered from leprosy. Most lepers died a horrible death.

The lepers outside this village certainly didn’t expect to recover from the disease. At some point in their illness, each most likely held out hope that he would awaken one day and find clear skin instead of pollution and scars. We don’t know how long their infections had existed, but we can safely assume most of these men had lost all hope of finding relief.

Yet, someone in the group learned that Jesus had entered the area.

Word of Jesus’ miracles had swept through Galilee. People had heard of the healings, the feeding of the 5,000, and of the raising of Jairus’ daughter and the widow’s son in Nain. A glimmer of hope peeked through the despair of the lepers. Someone in the group devised a plan; if no one else could help them, certainly Jesus could — if He would. The lepers gathered near the village entrance to see Jesus. At some point, the lepers began crying to Jesus: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”

Jesus didn’t approach the lepers (although He had touched at least one leper; see Matthew 8). Instead, Jesus told the lepers, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” Any leper seeking to prove his recovery, according to the Law, would present himself to the priest to hear the words of blessing.

Now, the lepers needed to make a choice. Would they accept Jesus at His word, or would they insist that He touch them? The lepers accepted Jesus’ word, “and as they went they were cleansed.”

We don’t know when the lepers realized what had happened. We do know this: these men left Jesus as lepers, and they arrived at home of the village priest as healed men. Lest someone wonder if this miracle could have occurred at all, remember: St. Luke was a physician. St. Luke knew leprosy — but he also had believed in Jesus. St. Luke knew a miracle when he heard of one.

On their way to the priest, one of the men realized he had received healing. “When he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks.”

Who was this man? We know he believed in God; we know he had obeyed Jesus when He said to go to the priest. If we stopped with this sentence, we’d believe a Jew had returned to confess Jesus as his Messiah.

St. Luke then continued the story with the punch line: “Now he was a Samaritan.” Of all the men Jesus healed, only a Samaritan returned to worship Him.

Jesus responded to the Samaritan’s worship with wonder. “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” We would believe the Jews would have praised God, but they never stopped running to the priest. Only the Samaritan returned to give Jesus the praise and worship He deserved.

When Jesus saw the Samaritan’s faith, He went beyond healing his leprosy: “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.” The Greek word for “made you well” also refers to salvation. This man sought healing from leprosy; he received far more as his worship demonstrated his belief in Jesus as Messiah and as Lord. Don’t allow yourself to hang on whether the Samaritan experienced salvation as we do, with the Holy Spirit coming into his heart and such. Jesus told several people in the Gospels that faith had saved them. We must accept Scripture as we find it.

This story has brought hope to countless believers in history and continues to bring hope to us today. This story also gives us several lessons as we live in the world daily.

For one thing, the lepers outside the village represented one of the greatest needs of humanity: The need for acceptance.  Nothing else could have forced 9 Jews and a Samaritan to associate with one another. Joined by a common disease, these 10 men found fellowship with one another that transcended their racial animosity.

I think we need to remember that the Church consists of humans who also suffer from a horrible, disfiguring ailment: Sin. We found ourselves separated from our Creator by our sin and rebellion, with no hope of salvation. Sin separates us from each other as well; our pride compels us to belittle one another, berate one another, and put ourselves above everyone else.

Sin will separate us from each other, but Jesus came to defeat sin for us. Jesus lived among humanity and died for our salvation on the cross in Jerusalem. Jesus then conquered death itself with His resurrection 3 days later, an event we celebrate each week on Sunday and yearly on Easter. We gather weekly to worship God because we know Jesus has redeemed us from sin.

Only those who demonstrate faith in Jesus receive healing from sin. St. Paul told the Romans, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). There’s that word “saved” again, from the same verb Jesus used to describe the Samaritan’s new state in life. When we are saved from sin, the Holy Spirit comes into our lives to help guide us in our new lives as Christians.

The Holy Spirit will always draw believers together into fellowship in a local congregation. We gather weekly to worship God, to celebrate Jesus’ death and resurrection, and to study the Bible to learn more about God. We also encourage one another in the Christian lifestyle so we can live outside the church what we proclaim inside with other believers.

I see another major lesson in this passage: Acceptance.

Jesus didn’t omit the Samaritan from the miracle; He didn’t tell only the Jews to go to the priest. The Samaritan leper needed Jesus, and Jesus included him when He healed the lepers.

We in the Church here in America tend to say one thing and practice another. We tend to tell people that we want everyone to confess Jesus as Lord, but we often make it clear that we want only certain people to join us in our congregations for worship and fellowship. People of God, we have no right to exclude anyone from our worship! We have no right to exclude anyone from our fellowship!

I experienced something for the first time this past week: I attended a heavy metal concert with my daughter and some of her friends. Two of the groups both assured their fans multiple times that they had nothing to fear in the walls of the venue; they were accepted as they were, and they were worth far more than anyone outside the venue could say. I looked around and recognized many fans who most likely suffered ostracism and scorn from people on a daily basis. At Rocketown on Thursday night, in Nashville, Tennessee, those fans could enjoy themselves without worrying about bullying or exclusion.

After the concert, I approached one of the lead singers and commended him for his message of inclusion and encouragement. I also told him that people should hear this weekly at church.

I suspect we could find youth and young adults less than a mile from our church who need this message. We have the message of life, and we have a responsibility to take this message to everyone whose lives we touch every day. When Jesus calls us to show His love to those people, we must do this.

We must also accept those people when they come to our congregations to join us. After all, none of us can approach Jesus but by grace; we don’t deserve His salvation any more than the lepers deserved Jesus’ healing from leprosy. We have received grace and mercy; we must show grace and mercy as a result.

I love the way C.S. Lewis described the Church: “It takes all sorts to make a world; or a church. This may be even truer of a church. If grace perfects nature it must expand all our natures into the full richness of the diversity which God intended when He made them, and Heaven will display far more variety than Hell” (Letters to Malcom: Chiefly on Prayer). We more fully demonstrate God’s love and desire to unite all humanity under Christ when we increase the diversity of our congregations and the people in our lives. Sin divides; grace unites.

Will we meet Jesus’ desire to bring even the “foreigners” into our midst? Will we meet Jesus’ desire that all humans should repent of sin and confess Him as Lord (2 Peter 3:9)? We have words of life for everyone. Take the words of Jesus’ healing and deliverance to a world desperately needing His salvation and grace.