The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
October 10, 2004 

Thankfully Made Whole
Luke 17:11-19

When watching a movie, I am often aware of the costs of filmmaking. The costs of the film, editing, postproduction and distribution all contribute to help me to pick up on details in a film. You can be assured, the occasional overblown epic notwithstanding, if they bothered to film something, edit it into the film and show it to you, then the Director and all the other folks making the film felt you needed that scene to understand the story.  

The well-known star who a character meets in passing in an early scene will come back later in the movie and be important. They didn’t spend all the money to get them in the movie, just to pump some gas while the main character is driving out to their lake house. Also, in a horror movie, the credits roll very soon after the bad guy or monster is really and truly dead, so if the film is still rolling, that baddie is going to get up for another round. 

I mention this because I think it is the best comparison I have to the art of storytelling we encounter in the Bible. For the most part, the stories in scripture are told with an amazing economy of words. There were, after all, so many stories that could have been told. John’s Gospel tells us this in its final verse which says, “There are many things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world could not contain the books that would be written.” 

So many stories to tell, but which stories matter most and what is it about that story that really conveys the Jesus his disciples knew, loved, and worshipped. Today’s encounter with ten lepers is found only in the Gospel of Luke and Luke tells this tale in just nine verses, a mere 12 sentences. I say this to set the context for a close reading of the 12 sentences. For if you and I were to tell a story we found important enough to put in a Gospel and we were to do it in just 12 sentences, we would try to make each sentence count. Luke is no different. Every time he is telling us something it would seem we don’t have to know to understand the bare facts, he is just wasting paper, but there is life in those “extra words.” 

First, the bare facts of the story. 10 lepers approach Jesus on the road. The lepers cry out at a distance. Jesus tells them to go and show themselves to a priest. The lepers were healed once they started toward the Temple. One of the lepers turns back to thank Jesus. Jesus notes that the only one who came back is one of the dreaded Samaritans.  

Now the details that really make the story. Luke reminds us that Jesus is “on the way to Jerusalem.” Luke’s Gospel has 24 chapters, but by chapter 11, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem for the last time. Everything that happens on that one long road trip is yet another last act of Jesus before he goes to be crucified. For Luke, the stories on the way to Jerusalem are the Gospel itself. The things Jesus does and says on the way to Jerusalem help us to understand Jesus death and resurrection. 

Luke tells us that they were along the border of Galilee and Samaria. This explains in advance why the lepers are both Jews and a Samaritan. On the outskirts of the village, 10 lepers cry out. This fits what we know of lepers. Leprosy today refers to a skin disease, also known as Hanson’s Disease. But in the Israel of Jesus’ lifetime, leprosy was a catchall term for skin ailments. Some of the conditions labeled as leprosy were contagious and so all people diagnosed as lepers were required to go to a leper colony, to live on the edge of towns, and survive by crying out at a distance “unclean, unclean.” Then no one would come near by accident, but a person encountering the lepers would know could to leave a gift by the road, which the lepers could come get after the person had walked on. This is why Luke writes, “Keeping their distance, they called out.”  

But then Luke notes that the lepers do not cry out “unclean” as prescribed by law. The 10 lepers call to Jesus by name saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” While a cry from a leper for mercy would normally mean a request for alms, a gift of food or money, they call a known healer Master and so their request can be understood to be that they hope for healing. 

Then Luke gives another throwaway line “When he saw them.” Why bother to say “when he saw them?”  This expression was already important in Luke’s story of the Good Samaritan in which a priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan each see a man who has been beaten and left for dead. For the men in that story, seeing the injured man was on opportunity to show God’s mercy, which the priest and the Levite chose to ignore. Here, Jesus sees the men, and shows the same kind of Godly mercy the Good Samaritan showed to the man in Jesus’ story.[1] This was a detail that Luke discovered and it was too good not to tell. Jesus told of a Samaritan who showed mercy on the roadside, before Jesus himself showed God’s merciful love to a Samaritan as he made his way to Jerusalem.  

Jesus then tells the 10 lepers, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” This was how a cure was always to be certified. The way out of a leper colony and back into your own home was to have the priests inspect you and certify that you had been healed. The lepers know this and at once all 10 start for the Temple. Luke tells us this in four words, “And as they went.” These are important words for they show that the lepers all had faith that Jesus could heal them of their leprosy. Knowing this little fact is vitally important to understanding the whole story. They all had faith in Jesus as a healer. All ten cried out for mercy. All ten started for the Temple. And all ten lepers were made clean as they went. 

Luke then writes, “Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed.” Once again sight plays an important role. Seeing is used in this story by Luke to convey perceiving things in a Godly way. One of the lepers sees that they are made clean and perceives what this means. Before we fault the other nine lepers too much, remember that they are doing both what the law requires and what Jesus asked of them. The nine are doing what they know to be the right thing. 

The tenth leper though sees that something more is going on here, he turns back and he praises God with a loud voice. The tenth leper lays out on the road at Jesus’ feet and he thanks Jesus for the healing. It helps to know that thanking a person was not the way things were done in the Israel of Jesus’ day. There was a common saying, “Don’t thank me, you will repay me.” The idea behind it was a little like I scratched your back, one day you’ll scratch mine. Instead of thanking a person, you would promise to do something for them in return. It was God that one thanked for everyone knew that there was nothing you could do for God in return for God’s blessings.  

So in laying on the ground at Jesus’ feet and thanking him, the Samaritan is showing unreservedly that he understands Jesus to be God incarnate. The Samaritan holds nothing back once he sees, once he rightly understands, that Jesus is Lord. He turns back from heading to the Temple, why go to the Temple when God is here on the road. The Samaritan praises God with a loud voice, prostrates himself before Jesus and thanks him. 

The nine lepers were still bound by the way the world works. They were still on their way to confirm the healing of their flesh when something more was being offered. The only one left giving praise to God was a foreigner, a dreaded Samaritan. Yet another sign that the Kingdom of God was being opened up to everyone.  

Then Jesus says, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” At least that’s the way it is translated in our bulletins this morning. That translation is from the New Revised Standard Version. The more literal, straightforward translation is found in both the New American Bible and the New Jerusalem Bible, which both translate Jesus’ words as, “your faith has saved you.” The Greek word here is sozo (sw,zw) which means to save, to deliver, to rescue or to heal. From it we get the New Testament concept of coming into relationship with God as salvation or deliverance. Not only is the word sozo, meaning to save, but the word is in the perfect tense, meaning the action is already completed.  

The Samaritan has come into a saving faith in Jesus. What about the other nine? What happens to them? We know they had faith. After all, Jesus told them to go to the Temple and they all did. They too saw that they were healed of leprosy. But unlike the Samaritan, the other nine lepers failed to connect the dots. They did not perceive Jesus as anything more than a healer. For them, there was nothing more that Jesus could offer. There as nothing more to acknowledge. If the doctor prescribes antibiotics for Strep throat, you don’t go throw yourself at his or her feet when your throat feels better do you? No, you go on your way, which is what the nine did. 

The thing that set the tenth apart is that he knew that Jesus was more than merely a healer. The tenth leper turned away from the way of the world and toward Jesus. The faith to go to Jerusalem to show themselves at the Temple was the faith that made all 10 lepers clean. It was the faith to turn back and acknowledge that what Jesus gave was a gift from God that saved the tenth leper.  

Knowing that the Bible doesn’t waste words got us to read this passage more closely and we found much more through digging deeper. But where does all that digging get us? 

Jesus connects thankfulness and faith and Luke wants to make that point clear in this story. It’s a connection we don’t always make, but for Jesus, your thankfulness is a sign of your faith. Being thankful to God for something shows that you understand that it is God who did the rescuing. This week, my wife Victoria stepped out of a car wreck that looked awful. Another car pulled out in front of her leaving no room to stop. Victoria hit the brakes just before impact. Her car crushed in, the air bags deployed, and then her car bled out on the road, leaking out all its fluids. Her car was totaled. Victoria walked away with bruises. Sure I’m thankful she was wearing her seatbelt and I’m thankful for air bags. I also spent a good bit of time thanking God this week. When things go better than you could expect in a situation like this, the call is yours. I chose to thank God. 

What about when things do not go so well? In just a few hours, we will hold a memorial service here for Sharon Schlosser Maxwell, who died, in my eyes anyway, before her time. Sharon knew she had cancer. Sharon knew it was fatal. I spoke with her a few weeks ago just before church, right back there (pointing to the seat she was in). I looked in her eyes as she knew death was coming. Within six months the doctors told her. As I looked into her eyes, I saw no fear. Sharon loved life and she did not want to die, but she was thankful for all her blessings and was not afraid of death. In the word’s of the King James Version, Sharon had already been made whole. True, her body was failing her, but she had been made whole.  

Throughout Jesus’ ministry, he offered healing of the body, but he offered so much more. Jesus seemed frustrated at times that people just wanted their bodies healed. From Jesus’ perspective he could heal your body and you would just go on to get sick again. Jesus could heal your body and you would still die. Jesus wanted to make people more than well. Jesus wants to make you whole. This includes the spirit as well as the body. Whole is a deeper wellness. Sharon had already been made whole and so she did fear her own death. That is the power of the health and wholeness Jesus offers. 

Luke reminds us with this reading that the key to wholeness is thankfulness. When we learn to be thankful for God’s blessings, we show that we know blessings come not through luck, or medical skill. We acknowledge our good fortune for what it so often is, God’s blessing. See your life anew. Use the perceptive sight Luke wrote of and you will see God’s blessings all over the place. It is in acknowledging those good things as gifts from God that you show your allegiance is to the God who made you, the God who loves you, the God who wants to make you whole. We all have much for which we can praise God and be thankful. And it is that thankfulness that will make you whole. 

Amen.