✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠
The Word of the Lord Endures Forever
Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum
Luke 17,11-19 4415
14. Sonntag nach Trinitatis 059
Onesiphorus, 2. Timothy 1,16. Martyr 81
Magnus, Apostle of Allgäu, Bavaria. ✠ 665
6. September 2015
1. O God of Life, who is loving and compassionate, send forth the Holy Spirit to make us a new creation in Christ Jesus our Resurrected Lord. (VELKD Prayer for 14. Trinitatis § 1). Amen.
2. On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. And as He entered a village, He was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices, saying: „Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.“ When He saw them He said to them: „Go and show yourselves to the priests.“ And as they went they were cleansed. Then one of them, 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. Now he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus answered: „Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?“ And He said to him: „Rise and go your way; your faith has saved you.“
3. We have forgotten what leprosy is and how serious an illness it was, because in our 21. century medicine and pharmaceuticals have all but eradicated the most serious forms of leprosy. The disease of leprosy referred to any sort of skin diseases which may be simply a whitening of the skin that gradually effects more and more of the body, a more serious skin infection like a boil or the worst case being a flesh eating bacteria that devours skin and limbs over time. As a precaution, those with any skin disorders were immediately quarantined from the community as a precaution because some forms of leprosy were contagious. Such lepers often formed their own little communities in the wilderness outside of a village, and they were required to warn travelers approaching that they were lepers so that those unaware could bypass the lepers. The lepers’ life, therefore, was a solitary life separated from friends and family. Lepers were forbidden to attend worship services at the local synagogue and they were barred from the temple and its sacrifices. Lepers, therefore, became outcasts in Jewish society, and as such they were scorned as notorious sinners whom God surely had punished for their transgressions.
4. In this morning’s gospel pericope, St. Luke the Evangelist records for us:
I. A cry for mercy.
II. Jesus is merciful.
III. A foreigner is saved.
I.
5. Jesus approached the lepers, and they cry for mercy. They are removed from God and community. People refuse to draw near to them and talk with them. Travelers avoided their eyes and quickly ran away from their presence. Normally, the cry from the lepers to a caravan was „Unclean! Unclean!“ People got the point and went another way. On this occasion, the cry from the lepers was: »Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!« Removed from society as they were, even these ten lepers had heard about the Rabbi Jesus who has healed the sick and comforted the suffering. Perhaps they had heard that Jesus had earlier healed a man covered with leprosy (Luke 5,12-16). Word had spread, and was spreading, that Jesus is merciful and He brings healing to those afflicted. How greatly these ten men desired such mercy in their lives too! They wanted to be healed, welcomed back into the community and live their lives with friends and family.
II.
6. Jesus is merciful to these ten lepers. He tells them to go and show themselves to the priests. The Mosaic law required that no leper be admitted back into the community until he or she had been given a through physical by a priest. In this regards, the priests operated as doctors who meticulously examined a leper to verify that there was no trace of leprosy. Sometimes, leprosy went away on its own or with the help of herbs and ointments. Many times, however, a leper remained a leper until he died. Only the priest could declare a leper clean and healed. So off the men go to get the good news from the priest that they are cured.
7. In His mercy, Jesus had delivered these men from a life of solitude among their own kind, and He restored them back into the fellowship of the Lord and now had access to the Word of God in the synagogue and the sacrifices for their forgiveness at the temple. All ten men believed Jesus, and by faith they went to the priest to hear the good news of their healing.
III.
8. One, however, was singled out for his faith, for he did not merely have faith in Jesus’ healing words but he had faith in Jesus as the Christ. Not only did this one leper receive Divine mercy in being healed from his disease, but he also received an even greater mercy: He received the Divine salvation that healed his separateness (Getrenntkeit) from his Creator. This leper, you see, was a Samaritan and in the eyes of the Jews he was no better than the pagan Greeks and Romans. What does a Samaritan know of covenant, faith, and salvation? Many of Jesus’ contemporary Jewish brethren would answer: Samaritans know nothing of such things.
8. And yet, Luke has shown us in three of the past four Gospel pericopes that those who should know nothing of mercy indeed know quite a lot about mercy, more so that the pious Pharisees even. A tax collector and Samaritans receive mercy from Jesus while those who consider themselves righteous are passed over when Jesus shows mercy.
10. Jesus entered the life of this foreigner. He was a man doubly cursed as a Samaritan and as a leper, but Jesus entered this earth to save the outcast and the unrighteous. This Samaritan was certainly an outcast and unrighteous; He needed the mercy Jesus gives. This Samaritan believed in Jesus as a great healer; He furthermore believed in Jesus as an even greater Savior. Thus Jesus did not tell this Samaritan „Your faith has healed you.“, but more importantly He proclaimed to this Samaritan: »Your faith has saved you.«
11. The Samaritan had exchanged one community for another. He went from a community of outcasts to the Christian community of the accepted, and from a community of death to a community of eternal life.
12. Each one of us are part of this community we call the Church. We were born as outcasts separated from God our Father. We were sick with sin and desperate for God’s mercy. The Holy Spirit called us to faith in Jesus through the preached Word and the waters of Holy Baptism. God has brought us into His holy family and saved us through Christ Jesus. This is why we confess with the Apostle Paul: »For by grace we have been saved through faith, and this is not our own doing because it is the gift of God« (Ephesians 2,8).
13. Jesus is the gracious and merciful gift of God. Our faith receives Christ, and in receiving Christ we receive God’s forgiveness. Go in peace, for you Christ has saved you through His death and resurrection. Go in joy, for your faith assures you that Jesus is merciful to you. Go with a thankful heart, for Jesus is in your midst and He is your Divine Providence. Amen.
14. Let us pray. O Compassionate Lord, who shows mercy to Your children, help us to be merciful to our neighbors so that they see in us Your mercy upon them through Christ our Lord. Amen.
To God alone be the Glory
Soli Deo Gloria
✠
All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4. Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27. Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.
Bayer, Oswald. Living by Faith: Justification and Sanctification. Copyright © 2003 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Cynewulf. Crist. Copyright © 2000 In parentheses Publications. Translation © 2000 Charles W. Kennedy.
ELKB. Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. www.bayern-evangelisch.de/www/index.php. Copyright © 2013 Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern.
Martens, Gottfried. A sermon preached on 16. August 2009 (10. Trinitatis) in Berlin-Zehlendorf, Germany on Luke 19,41-48. Copyright © 2009 St. Mary Church in Berlin-Zehlendorf (SELK). All rights reserved. The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind, Tr. © 2011.
VELKD. Vereinigte Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Deutschlands. www.velkd.de. Copyright © 2013 Vereinigte Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Deutschlands.
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