October 10, 2010
Read Luke 17:11-19.
This text is more complicated than it sounds. On the surface, it seems like a simple story about remembering to say thank you. However, four different themes weave through this text. To really get the full picture, we need to see and understand each color of thread.
The most obvious theme is thankfulness. Jesus’ action in our lives calls for our joyful gratitude. Ten people are healed. One comes back. Nine go on their way, maybe not noticing their healing yet, maybe in a hurry to experience the benefits of healing (seeing their family, reintegrating into society, entering the town). Only one shows thanks. Martin Luther said the essence of worship is the one leper who returned to give thanks.
We live in an era where most people in developed nations have an attitude of entitlement. We believe that everything is supposed to go our way. We believe we are supposed to get everything we want. And if we don’t, if life isn’t going our way, then something’s wrong with the world. “Why is it raining on my birthday? It’s not fair.” A good income is a right not a blessing. Health and happiness are standard expectations, and if we don’t have them, we pout. In general, we have a glaring lack of gratitude for the many, many blessings we experience.
On the other hand, this leper who was healed is extreme in his expression of thanks. Did you notice that? He shouts for joy at the top of his voice. He falls on his face at Jesus’ feet. He praises God openly.
When was the last time you shouted for joy? It doesn’t happen very often, does it? I had to think for a long time, and I figured it was either when I was playing a game or watching sports. I haven’t shouted for joy about something that really matters for a long time. How about you?
Maybe we need to relearn how to be truly, honestly joyful. This week I thought about two examples of open, unhindered joy.
First, through the wonders of Facebook, I read about a friend (who was adopted as a baby) who recently met her birth family. It was a whirlwind series of events. Two of the Facebook comments really stood out to me. Once, her biological brother said he was just too happy to sleep. And after a friend posted that he is absolutely amazed and happy for her, she made a really profound comment: “It takes a dang good friend to be genuinely overjoyed for you.” When was the last time you were genuinely overjoyed for someone else?
Second, when I think about expressing joy, I sometimes think of concerts, or more particularly some of the local concerts at the Rock Station, when Wayne and some of my other friends have been playing. Sometimes - not on every song - but sometimes, the people take the dance floor and just dance and sing along with joyful abandon. Nobody cares what they look like. Nobody cares what anybody else looks like. We just jump and dance and put our hands in the air and celebrate the joy of being alive and together with friends and music. This kind of fearless joyful expression is healing and energizing ... and one of the best possible responses to God’s amazing grace.
“One of them, when he saw that he was healed, came back to Jesus, shouting, ‘Praise God!’ He fell to the ground at Jesus’ feet, thanking him for what he had done” (17:15-16).
The next line is: “And he was a Samaritan.” This is our clue to the next major theme that runs through this text, and it is a thread that Luke weaves into his stories again and again and again. Jesus welcomes outsiders, and outsiders “get” Jesus.
This is one of the great scandals of the Jesus story. My friend, Donnie, who is also a pastor, recently said: “In the gospels, the spiritual leaders who (literally) knew every word of scripture, were not able to recognize God when staring right at him, in the person of Jesus. Anyone else find that a bit concerning?” Again and again in the Jesus story, the religious people, the people who should have known the most about God, the people who should have been Jesus’ biggest supporters, again and again, these people let Jesus down - or even become his enemies. And again and again, the irreligious people, the outsiders, the sell-outs, the homeless, the diseased, the open sinners - these are the people who really get Jesus. These people who hate religion and are hated by religious people - surprisingly get Jesus.
And Jesus gets them. Jesus welcomes prostitutes and national traitors. Jesus advocates love for enemy soldiers. Jesus hugs lepers. Jesus touches women. Jesus sits down for dinner and drinks with the wildest bunch of party-animals in Israel.
The guy in our story is a double outsider. First of all, he’s a leper. We read the rules about that from Leviticus (13:45-46). He had to keep his distance from others, and cover his mouth, and call out “Unclean! Unclean!” He wasn’t even allowed to comb his hair. People were freakishly afraid of getting whatever he had. It was kind of like AIDS in the 1980s. People didn’t really know what it was or how it spread, so most people tried to stay away.
Second, he was a Samaritan, a foreigner. For Jews ethnic purity was extremely important. Ethnic purity was closely related to religious purity. They didn’t want any outside people coming into their religion with outside religious views.
But on several occasions, Jesus points to an outsider as the example of faith. Jesus says a Roman officer has more faith than anyone in Israel (Luke 7:9). Jesus says a “sinful” woman has more love than the religious people (Luke 7:47). Jesus says the good Samaritan is the perfect example of kindness (Luke 10:30-37). For examples in how to pray, Jesus talks about an annoying widow and a corrupt tax collector (Luke 18:1-14). A notorious sinner wins Jesus’ approval more than the complaining religious folks (Luke 19:1-10). A poor widow’s two coins are more “valuable” than all the rich people’s huge donations (Luke 21:1-4). And to top it all off, Jesus walks into the Temple, the center of the Jewish religion and starts a fight. He turns over tables and hits people with a whip and tells them that the religious establishment is worshiping God all wrong (Luke 19:45-46 and John 2:13-16).
If we really follow Jesus, then the church will be very similar to the bar on the old TV show Cheers. (Feel free to sing along.)
Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got.
Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.
Wouldn't you like to get away?
Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name,
and they're always glad you came.
You wanna be where you can see,
our troubles are all the same
You wanna be where everybody knows
Your name.
You wanna go where people know,
people are all the same,
You wanna go where everybody knows
your name.
If we follow Jesus, we won’t really count anyone out. We will recognize that people are all the same; we are all hungry for God’s grace. If we live like Jesus, we’ll accept everyone and consider everyone a possible teacher in what it means to live in grace.
The next key theme emerges in the tension between Jerusalem and Samaria. They had a long-standing, bitter conflict about who were the real followers of God and where the real temple was. The Jews said the real temple, the center of the presence of God in the world, was in Jerusalem. The Samaritans said it was in Samaria.
In this story, Jesus is traveling through the borderland between Judea and Samaria. When Jesus tells the lepers, “Go show yourselves to the priests,” there is a deep unspoken tension. Which priests? Which temple - Jerusalem or Samaria? Which place is the center of God’s presence in the world? Which of these arguing, fighting, quarreling religious group is right?
The leper who comes back realizes that something new has happened in Jesus. His simple action of coming to Jesus to give praise to God is the tip of a theological iceberg. The presence of God in the world is now concentrated in Jesus, not in a temple. Jesus is the new high priest and the new temple. Jesus reunites us. Jesus is the third way, the higher apex, around which we can all unite. As Jesus said to another Samaritan outsider, “The times is coming when it will no longer matter whether you worship the Father on this mountain or in Jerusalem. ... But the time is coming - indeed it’s here now - when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth ... I am the Messiah!” (John 4:21-26).
Jerusalem, Samaria, Calvin, Wesley, Baptist, Pentecostal, contemporary, traditional, liberal, conservative, right, left ... all of that fades away in the light of Jesus. Jesus is the new Center, around which we can all unite.
The next theme is the most challenging and also the most subtle. This theme is almost impossible to catch in English unless you read the text in several different translations.
The NLT says: “Your faith has healed you.”
The NIV says: “Your faith has made you well.”
The New Korean Revised Version says: “네 믿음이 너를 구원하였느니라” or “Your faith has saved you.”
The Message uses a combination: “Your faith has healed and saved you.”
What’s going on here? Is it “healed” or “saved”? Which did Jesus say? Well, the answer seems to be both. The word Jesus used is Greek: sesoken and it can mean either healed or saved.
All ten lepers seemed to have enough faith for healing. All ten cried out, “Jesus, have mercy on us!” All ten had enough faith to start walking to the priest. They obeyed before anything changed. All ten were healed of leprosy.
Only one came back to give thanks. Only one fell at Jesus’ feet shouting with joy and praising God. And it’s only to this one that Jesus says, “Your faith has healed/saved you.” Maybe Jesus is talking about a different kind of healing here - something that is more than skin-deep, something that goes all the way to our hearts. Maybe Jesus is talking about a total life change. This man’s faith has saved him. This man’s faith revolutionized his life. This man’s faith has turned him in a new direction.
You can see some evidence of this in his actions. Before Jesus healed him, he stood with the other lepers “at a distance.” He stayed away from the crowd because he knew he was unclean and unwanted. After Jesus healed him, he ran right up to Jesus’ feet and started shouting joyful praises to God. He knew he was different. He knew he was cleansed. He knew he was accepted and loved by Jesus. He knew Jesus was the living presence of God in the world. He knew Jesus would forever be his master.
What about the other nine lepers? They were also healed, but it doesn’t seem like they were saved. They were blessed, but their lives were not reoriented around Jesus. They were blessed, but their perspective on life was pretty much the same.
What about you? Are you content just to be blessed? We want a little encouragement, a warm feeling, some friendship, a reminder that we are not alone, a little strength to make it through the week, an English lesson, an interesting thought to take with us. But maybe we don’t really want to be saved. Maybe we just want to take the blessing and go on our way. Maybe we just want to be a little better people, but basically like we are now, thinking like we do now, acting like we do now, just a little better. Maybe we just want to be blessed.
Maybe Jesus is offering us a more radical change than we realized. Maybe Jesus wants to turn our world upside down and inside out. Maybe the way we’ve been thinking about church is all about us, all about getting a blessing, all about enjoying the music, or hearing a good sermon, or having the preacher confirm what we already believe. Maybe instead of just blessing us, Jesus wants to save us.
Maybe Jesus wants to save us religious people too. Maybe Jesus needs to save us from our negativity, from our exclusion of others, from our arrogance, from our selfishness, from our “fighting over words” (2 Timothy 2:14). Maybe our religious world has become far too comfortable and far too far from what God really wants. Maybe Jesus wants to come into our religious churches and our religious homes and our religious hearts and start turning over tables, kicking over TVs, and throwing things out the windows.
Maybe when Jesus healed and saved that leper, he was also trying to save his disciples - who kept their distance from lepers and looked down on Samaritans. Maybe when Jesus healed and saved that leper, he was trying to save us.
And this is where it comes full circle. If Jesus really saves us, then gratitude happens naturally. If we were dead in our sin and bent on a meaningless life, but Jesus busted us out of that trap and filled us with his life, then thankfulness is easy. If we really get that Jesus heals us and helps us share healing with others, then joy kind of explodes out of us - especially when we can see the healing happening.
If Jesus really saves us, then we stop trying to decide who is saved and who’s not. We stop trying to draw lines between insiders and outsiders. We know that Jesus wants to really save them too. We know that Jesus is working on them too. We know that Jesus is still working on us and still saving us, too.
If Jesus really saves us, then we naturally unite around Jesus. We are all broken sinners - lepers, if you will - who have found a God who can heal us and make us new. What difference do our differences make when we are standing in front of Jesus? He makes everything new. He makes everyone new. Jesus wants to heal and save us so deeply that we are reunited in joyful submission to him.
So how do we respond?
We need to confess. Maybe you’ve been using Jesus and the church just for the blessings. Maybe you’ve been excluding others. Maybe you need to confess that you are sin-sick and need radical healing. Take this opportunity to say whatever you need to tell God. We all need to confess. We need to ask. We need to ask for healing. We need to ask for forgiveness. We need to ask God to radically change us. We need to ask God to recenter our lives around Jesus - the true center. We all need to ask.
We need to submit. Maybe you will want to fall face down before Jesus. We’ve got these cushions here in front of the cross. As we’re singing, you can just step out and come to the front and pray. You can stay for as little or as long as you want. But sometimes we need to do with our bodies what we are trying to say with our hearts. Maybe you can come and kneel in front of Jesus as a sign to you and to him that you want Jesus to be your Master, that you want Jesus to radically save you. We all need to submit.
We need to celebrate. Use your body to celebrate: dance, clap, raise your hands, shout for joy. Later today we are going to baptize six people who have found new life through Jesus. Let’s celebrate that. Shout with joy. Sing at the top of your voice. Go on and pray out loud during the songs. Just celebrate God’s goodness and God’s healing in our lives. We need to celebrate today and everyday.
Jesus wants to heal and save us so deeply that we are reunited in joyful submission to him. So in response to Jesus’ great offer, let’s confess and ask and submit and celebrate. Get up out of your chairs and get ready to sing loud. Get ready to pray loud. Get ready to use your body. Jesus died to set us free! Be set free!
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