Sermon: Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Luke 17:11-19, October 9, 2022
Sermon: Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Luke 17:11-19, October 9, 2022
Faith Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman
We find Jesus in today’s passage from Luke in a border area. That’s what it means that Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee.
It’s not unlike where we find ourselves in this part of Arizona, not far from the border with Mexico.
The region between Samaria and Galilee, as a border area, was a blending of cultures and languages, and of religions, the Samaritans and the Israelites, to name two, and perhaps others. We, too, live in a place and a time with the blending of many cultures.
And we hear so much these days in various media about borders and securing our borders. Human beings tend to be preoccupied with borders, the boundaries between us and them.
When my father, a Swede, married my mother, a Norwegian, in 1947, some joked that it was a mixed marriage. Some were only half joking…. The small town where I grew up in Illinois was probably 99% white with a few hundred African Americans in the 1970’s. Now the Catholic Church there has Masses in Spanish and the school district serves students who speak some twenty different languages. Quite the blending of cultures in a border region even in the heart of the Midwest.
We have our own boundaries here at Faith/La Fe – the borders between the 9:00 am service in English and the 11:00 am service in Spanish.
Even if both our services were in English, there would still be the 9:00 am people and the 11:00 am people! Some congregations divide up and create borders in terms of contemporary vs. traditional worship. And on and on it goes – in church, in politics, in neighborhoods, among nations and peoples and throughout the world and throughout history.
It’s human to mark boundaries and borders of all kinds. Boundaries can make for well-being. Thus, clergy and other helping professionals go through healthy boundary training on a regular basis to guard against forms of abuse against others and their appropriate boundaries.
But borders and boundaries can be the occasion for huge amounts of human suffering when our brokenness and sin get involved in the boundaries and borders we create.
The scourge of racism and other forms of ethnic prejudice come to mind as examples of destructive border keeping. Red state vs. blue state. Coastal elites vs. folk in the fly over states. War. Genocide. Ethnic cleansing. All are examples of how human sin makes boundaries and borders into occasions for destruction and death. That’s the bad news.
Turning now to today’s readings, one of the boundaries we see in the gospel passage from Luke is that between lepers, considered unclean, and everyone else. That in addition to Samaritans vs. folk from Galilee. These were walls that divided.
But here’s some good news: Jesus located himself in the region between Samaria and Galilee. That is to say, he was content to be there in the blending ambiguities between Samaritans and Galileans. And he did not turn away from the outcaste people with leprosy.
Moreover, Christ opened the borders with the ten lepers, allowing them to approach him, even as they also kept some respectful distance from Jesus according to the passage.
The ultimate result of this border crossing was the healing of the lepers and their being made clean.
Luke, who sought to write an orderly accounting of Jesus’ life and ministry, pays special attention to the fact that it was a Samaritan, one identified as a foreigner, one of the out group, who turned back, praising God with a loud voice and falling down on his face in front of Jesus’ feet to thank him. In other words, it was the foreigner who exemplified the most faithful response to the gift of divine mercy – to return to say thanks.
Remember that elsewhere in Luke’s gospel, it’s the Samaritan, the foreigner, who was identified in the parable as the Good Samaritan, the one who, unlike the religious leaders, did not pass by on the other side, but went out of his way, also crossing boundaries, to bind up the wounds of the robbed man left for dead on the side of the road. The Good Samaritan crossed over to the other side of the road in the service of mercy.
In short, foreigners get good press in Luke’s telling of what Jesus was up to and concerned about. The religious leaders and authorities aren’t portrayed so well.
A clear message to us is that we should not assume that only the “in group” will do what is right.
In passing through the region between Samaria and Galilee, Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. This is code language in the gospels to say that Jesus was on his way to his last earthly days which would culminate in his death and resurrection, accomplishing our salvation and crossing the ultimate borders and boundaries between life and death.
It is on the borderland of the cross where Jesus draws the whole world to himself, binding together Samaritans and Galileans, us and them, making for healing of the divisions we broken, sinful humans tend to create. Jesus’ death and resurrection make the ultimate border crossing that will bring us all together when it’s all said and done.
And we share in this divine border crossing. When we are baptized, we cross over the river to a new land of belonging as children of God. The proclamation of God’s liberating word breaks down the walls that divide and opens up new horizons of life and salvation. In eating the bread and drinking from the cup, we pass over from here to eternity, receiving a foretaste of the feast to come. When we are forgiven, we who were estranged find each other again, and community is restored.
For as the apostle says to Timothy for his encouragement in today’s second reading, “the word of God is not chained.” (2 Timothy 2:9b) In fact, God’s word and sacraments loose our chains, opening the doors of our prisons so that we can cross the border from captivity to freedom in Christ. Thanks be to God.
Which is to say, the only natural response to these ultimate healing, life-giving border crossings is to turn back like the Samaritan cleansed from leprosy, to praise God with a loud voice, falling down at Jesus’ feet to thank him.
That’s what it is to worship in true faith according to Martin Luther.
Listen to these words of Luther taken from a sermon he preached on the story of the ten lepers in Luke, with special focus on the one who returned to thank Jesus:
“But the true worship is to return and praise God with a loud voice. This is our greatest work in heaven and on earth, besides it is the only worship we may bring to God; for God needs none of the other kind… God wills only to be loved and praised by us…. Do you think God would drink the blood of goats, or eat the flesh of bulls? Thus God might also say now to the founders of charitable institutions, and to…. singers, ringers and candle lighters: Do you think that I am blind and deaf, or that I have no house for shelter? You shall love and praise me, this is the incense you are to burn to me and the bells you are to ring for me.” (Sermon by Martin Luther, taken from his Church Postil of 1521, On the Ten Lepers in Luke 17:11-19)
In short, according to Martin Luther, true faith that births true worship is the tenth leper turning back to give loud praise to God in Christ.
And that’s who we all are when it’s all said and done: the tenth leper who returns to say thanks. We are, in our own particular ways, unclean and unwell persons who have been cleansed and restored to health in Christ. We are sinners forgiven, baptized, fed and nourished at Christ’s table, healed, restored. And our coming here Sunday after Sunday is our return each week to give thanks to God in Christ.
After the Samaritan healed from leprosy returned to give thanks to God, Jesus sent him on his way: “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”
Which is to say that Jesus sent him on a mission to proclaim to others in word and deed what God in Christ did for him in healing him and restoring him to community.
We, too, are sent from this place, our faith having made us well, to do our part to open up borders and to seek to break down unhealthy, destructive boundaries we broken humans artificially create.
We are beckoned by Christ to do our part to open up borders at home, among our families and friends and neighbors, in our places of work, and yes, too, in our church. Christ situated himself in the border regions to be a healing, unifying presence. Such is our calling, too.
We are called like Elisha to go to the various warriors like Naaman in today’s first reading. The warriors we find in our lives may like Naaman be unwell and need healing. Our job is to convince them to bathe in the waters of the Jordan, a prefiguring of our baptism into Christ, to be made well and whole again.
And even when these warriors in our lives angrily resist our entreaties, we don’t give up on them, but invite them ever and always to the healing waters of baptism.
And maybe, just maybe some of the warlike Naaman’s will consent to being cleansed and come up out of the waters praising God like the rest of us!
God knows that there are loads of angry, war-mongering people out there who want to build ever higher walls and create ever stricter borders. But like Naaman, they suffer. They are our mission field, folks. See you at the borders with them, and with the healing presence of Christ at our side, and the winds of the Spirit propelling forward in this mission which God in Christ entrusts to us. Amen.
Announcements for October 9:
Thousand thanks for Installation festivities (cf. my pastoral message)
Veronica ordination on October 30 at 4:00 pm
Plug for Wednesday Bible Study
Phoenix Pride next weekend: