Luke 17,11-19 4423
14. Trinitatis 61
Pulcheria, Eastern Empress, Virgin, ✠ 453
10. September 2023
1. ℣ Behold, O God, our Shield, and look upon the face of Thine anointed:
℟ For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand! (Psalm 84,9-10a).
O Yahweh, whose Name is highly praised; declare Your merciful steadfast love in the morning and Your faithfulness by night, so that we dwell securely in Your Providence and Grace. Amen. (Psalm 92,1-2 Gradual).
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: „Lord Jesus, 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. Human beings are sinful creatures. Experience and the daily MSM verify it. Man’s inhumanity to man runs red in the pages of history books and also in the Bible. Man’s inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn! (Robert Burns 1784) »Surely there is not a righteous person on earth who does good and never sins« (Ecclesiastes 7,20).
4. Leprosy is one of many manifestations of sin’s effect upon human beings, for sinfulness has both physical and spiritual effects. The lepers’ life 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. All of us suffered the sinful effects of spiritual leprosy. Sin makes us unclean and puts distance between our holy God and us.
5. The lepers’ cry in our pericope „is a cry for salvation (Just 652). The lepers know they need a miracle to be made well.
6. Thus they cry for mercy. They are removed from God and community. They wanted to be welcomed back into the community and live their lives with friends, family and worship at the synagogue and temple.
7. Jesus is merciful to these ten lepers.
8. One of these lepers received a double portion of Jesus’ mercy. Not only did this leper receive Divine mercy in being healed from his disease, but he also received an even greater mercy, that of 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.
9. Jesus entered the life of this Samaritan. He was a man doubly cursed as a Samaritan and as a leper, but Jesus came to this earth to save the outcast „announcing that the Samaritan’s cry for mercy was heard as a cry of faith and salvation has been granted“ (Just 652). He believed in Jesus not only as a great healer but also as an even greater Savior. Thus Jesus did not simply tell this Samaritan „Your faith has healed you.“, but more importantly He proclaimed to this Samaritan: »Your faith has saved you.« Jesus showed him merciful steadfast love.
10. In the next chapter, Luke tells us about a Pharisee and a tax collector praying in the temple courtyard: »But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying: ‘God, be propitiated toward me, the sinner!“« (Luke 18,13). Like the lepers, this tax collector was separated from the Jewish community. People despised him; he was labeled a thief and Roman collaborator; the Pharisees treated him with contempt. He was excommunicated from the synagogue, and he couldn’t exchange his Roman coins for the temple shekel, which made it very difficult to bring a sacrifice to the temple priest; thus most, if not all, tax collectors were denied the ability to received forgiveness.
11. The tax collector cried out for a different type of mercy; he needed atonement, and since he could not get this from the priest he petitions God directly and pleads for forgiveness. The verb is an Imperative Aorist Passive 2s (a statement that is always true in this tense!) but Blass-Debrunner-Funk suggests that it is a Permissive Passive: let Yourself be propitiated (BDF § 314). For God to be propitiated there must be a propitiator who appeases God through a sacrifice, one who atones for our sins by sacrificing Himself. The tax collector is pleading for God to become his Propitiator in order to propitiate and atone for his sin! Jesus concludes the parable by declaring: this tax collector went home justified and righteous.
12. The implied teaching of this parable is that Jesus has arrived to be this very Propitiator cries out for who will make sinners righteous. Jesus became the sacrifice that atones for sin. The Son of God will become the Propitiator who propitiates God the Father. On the cross God appeases His wrath on sin and sinners by bearing His own wrath.
13. »for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in His Divine forbearance He had passed over former sins« (Romans 3,23-25). »My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world« (1. John 2,1-2).
14. Jesus declares: »Your faith has saved you.« Jesus is the Subject who does the saving. Faith believes in this Jesus, and thus receives salvation. Luther explains it with these words: I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the virgin Mary, is my Lord, who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death and from the power of the Devil; not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death, that I may be His own and live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness, just as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity. This is most certainly true (Small Catechism).
15. From God can nothing move me
He will not step aside
But gently will reprove me
And be my constant guide.
He stretches out His hand
In evening and in the morning,
My life with grace adorning
Wherever I may stand.
(Von Gott will ich nicht lassen elkg 630,1 2021 Ludwig Helmbold 1563, Nürnberg 1569).
This is most certainly true.
14. The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4,7). Amen.
15. Let us pray. O Heavenly Father, keep us each day in our bodies as well as in our souls; let no accident befall us or ours; and whatever temptation crosses our path, may we be enabled to look upward and take courage, proving under every trial of faith that we are indeed faithful disciples and good soldiers of the Lord Jesus. Amen. (14. Trinitatis, 2. Vespers Collect. The Daily Office.)
To God alone be the Glory
Gode ealdore sy se cyneþrymm
✠
All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4. Edition © 1990 Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, Septuaginta, Vol. I and II 2. Revised Edition © 2006 Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 28. Revised Edition © 2012 Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.
Evangelisch-Lutherisches Kirchengesangbuch. Copyright © 2021 Selbständige Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche, Hannover.
The Daily Office. Copyright © 1965 Concordia Publishing House.
Blass-Debrunner-Funk. A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. Copyright © 1961 University of Chicago Press.
Just, Arthur A., Jr. Luke 9:51––24:53. Copyright © 1997 Concordia Publishing House.
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