Luke 17:11-19

Transcript

00:00:00:32 – 00:00:22:20
Clint Loveall
Today. I kind of I just want to admit a personal bias. One of my favorite stories. Very simple story. It’s only found in the Gospel of Luke. I shouldn’t say it’s simple. There’s complexity here, but it’s simply told it’s easy to relate to. So I’m going to read it for you. It’s not long, and then we’ll come back and we’ll work our way through it.

00:00:22:21 – 00:00:48:25
Clint Loveall
So this is verse 11 of chapter 17. On the way to Jerusalem, Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. He entered a village. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him, keeping their distance. They call now saying, Jesus, master, have mercy on us. When he saw them, he said to them, Go show yourself to the priest.

00:00:48:30 – 00:01:15:51
Clint Loveall
And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, were not ten made clean, but the other nine? Where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?

00:01:15:55 – 00:01:42:25
Clint Loveall
Then he said to him, Get up and go on your way. Your faith has made you well. As I mentioned, this is only a story that we have in the Gospel of Luke. Luke is the only one that tells us this. There’s some interesting things just in the setting of the story. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem and he’s traveling in a region between Samaria and Galilee.

00:01:42:25 – 00:02:10:58
Clint Loveall
And so this is one of those on the way stories. And I love that Luke tells us it’s also an in-between story. Sumeria and Galilee, Jews and Samaritans. This is the the bookends that Jesus is traveling through as Luke tells the story and as he’s going into a village, he’s confronted by ten lepers. Now, lepers in Jesus day were to keep their distance and they were to stay out of town.

00:02:10:58 – 00:02:36:16
Clint Loveall
They were not to walk major roads. Or if they did, they were to call out leper, leper as they traveled to warn people. So they do call out to Jesus, but they call out saying Jesus have mercy on us. And when he saw them, he said to them, Go show yourself to the priests. And this is an interesting response, Michael, because Jesus doesn’t engage them.

00:02:36:21 – 00:02:49:41
Clint Loveall
Jesus doesn’t really, you know, say anything about healing. He doesn’t follow. He simply gives them an instruction. And it’s a curious way for Jesus to respond. Sort of sets up where Luke is going.

00:02:49:46 – 00:03:10:48
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, I think it’s a really fun sort of way to categorize it as a on the way story, because it’s on the way in many senses, Jesus is transitioning. In this section of Luke, we’ve had a number of these teachings and his conflict with the Pharisees and Satirizes as we’ve seen, has continued to increase in its tone and severity.

00:03:11:00 – 00:03:33:25
Michael Gewecke
Jesus’s criticisms specifically of the financial riches of the Pharisees, which we’ve just seen, has become very, very clear and is very much hitting home his point. And so now we we really pull back. It’s almost as if in a movie, you know, you were in a very close up encounter, the camera’s close to Jesus in the Pharisees. You can see that tension.

00:03:33:25 – 00:04:04:31
Michael Gewecke
And now for just a moment, we pull back and we’re going to see come into frame people who the Pharisees would have not even been remotely close to. These are the people on the fringes. They are the societal margin, by definition, that they’re literally excluded from the community. They can’t be in it. And so they’re calling out to Jesus across a a chasm, a social chasm, you know, saying have mercy on us.

00:04:04:31 – 00:04:26:52
Michael Gewecke
And it is Jesus words. Then to them, go show yourself to the priest, which at this point in the story, if this is all you read, then you might think to yourself, okay, you know, Jesus sometimes does different things when he is in the midst of healing someone. You might remember the story when Jesus spit into the dirt and then he put that on the man’s eyes.

00:04:26:52 – 00:04:47:42
Michael Gewecke
Or you might think of take up your mat and walk. All of these are examples of when Jesus does something more than just tell a person that they’re healed. But what’s interesting about this claim is when you move forward a little bit and realize that one of these individuals he’s telling to go to the priests is the Samaritan.

00:04:47:47 – 00:05:19:26
Michael Gewecke
And there’s a really shocking note in that, because the Samaritans do not go to Jewish priests. That’s not the way that it works. And there’s a kind of just base level inclusion that’s happening in this story that Luke just sort of drops to us as we go. So it’s an on the go kind of story and it’s got all of these multiple different layers of of sort of pulling back and showing us how marginalized these people are.

00:05:19:39 – 00:05:27:45
Michael Gewecke
And yet we’re going to see in the climax of the story of how it’s actually from the most marginalized of all those people. We have something to learn.

00:05:27:52 – 00:05:52:43
Clint Loveall
Yeah, in a couple of things I think that are helpful or at least interesting about this story, and you highlighted one of them, Michael, the goal language. So there’s there’s as Jesus is going, then Jesus instructions are to go and then one of them comes back and then Jesus says, Get up and and go again. So there’s the idea of going is really important in this thread.

00:05:52:48 – 00:06:26:33
Clint Loveall
Secondly, if this priest language is confusing, leprosy was understood by the Jews, at least to be only healer able by divine action. And so the priest serves as the gateway for those who claim to have been healed. They would have to be certified as clean by the priest. The priest sort of doubles as medical examiner here, but the not in the autopsy sense, but in the one who was going to give them a physical checkup so the priest couldn’t certify them.

00:06:26:33 – 00:06:57:04
Clint Loveall
And that means the priest is the doorway back to their lives. These men are isolated. Interestingly enough, Jews and Samaritans had little to do with one another. But when you have leprosy, we see here a Samaritan with these nine Jewish men. Those separations probably matter less when you’re all excluded from your community, when you’re all outsider. And I think that’s an interesting aspect of the story.

00:06:57:09 – 00:07:30:10
Clint Loveall
And then this is speculation. We’ve we’ve tried to make you a promise that whenever we get kind of off track a little bit in thinking it through on our own, we’ll try to tell you when we’re doing that. I have always loved this line as they went. They were made clean. I can’t prove this, but the implication, at least to me, seems to be that if they stood still or they didn’t know they were healed, that their healing is discovered in their going.

00:07:30:16 – 00:08:04:37
Clint Loveall
And that’s such a beautiful metaphor for our spiritual life that standing still doesn’t allow us to discover what God has done for us. It’s only in the moving, it’s only in the going that we understand what Jesus has done for us so that you can almost I’d love to imagine these men taking step by step as they sort of walk their way into wholeness and as they realize what’s happening to them and their excitement then of running to the priest to be certified.

00:08:04:42 – 00:08:26:24
Clint Loveall
And and if that was the end of the story, it would be a beautiful story. But then there’s this wonderful twist that you mentioned, Michael. One of them, when he saw that he was healed, came back. And this is, of course, the Samaritan, and he throws himself at Jesus feet and he thanks him in a loud voice, praising God.

00:08:26:36 – 00:08:49:15
Clint Loveall
Now, you can say, well, the Samaritan couldn’t have gone to the Jewish priest anyway, and that may be true. That’s not the point of the story. The point of the story is that one out of ten equates what has happened to them with wanting to praise and give thanks to Jesus. And one out of the ten turns back to do the right thing.

00:08:49:15 – 00:08:57:50
Clint Loveall
And just as we saw in the parable of the Good Samaritan, that one is an outsider. And Luke loves that that part of the story.

00:08:58:02 – 00:09:40:24
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things that’s lost on our reading of a story like this is we are not moved by the social differences, the health concerns, the cultural realities that are intrinsic to a text like this. And this is one of the beautiful distinctiveness of Luke in particular as a gospel writer. Is that the connection to the healing stories for Luke displays his knowledge as a doctor, and in many ways, the social disconnectedness of these ten individuals is not just a physical abnormality, it’s also a spiritual disease.

00:09:40:25 – 00:10:05:40
Michael Gewecke
It keeps them from their community. It keeps them from the practices of what it would mean to be a religious person getting to go to temple, getting to participate in communal prayers, getting to hear the proclamation of the word, the Scripture read these. These people are not only living with a kind of physical sickness, it brings upon them its own kind of spiritual impoverishment.

00:10:05:40 – 00:10:35:01
Michael Gewecke
And so what I find striking about this story is there’s actually in some ways a a distinct act of faith happening on the back side of this story. Let me share what I mean. And I’m reading in this a little bit, but this idea that this Samaritan man goes and the text says that when he saw that he was healed, when he saw it, not when he made it to the priest, he didn’t get there yet.

00:10:35:06 – 00:11:00:34
Michael Gewecke
When he saw that he was healed, that’s when he turned back praising God and he prostates himself or he prostrate himself or he lays at Christ feet. And that’s the place, right? That’s the moment in which he returns to the one who is brought healing to his life. But think about that. Jesus told them the instructions were go to the priest.

00:11:00:34 – 00:11:24:43
Michael Gewecke
And what that meant was not just as you go, you’ll be healed. When you get to the priest, you can be certified to be returned back to the life of the community, that that was the role and job of the priest. They were the gatekeeper to that restored life. But this man risks not doing exactly what Jesus said for the sake of expressing gratitude.

00:11:24:48 – 00:11:49:45
Michael Gewecke
He He doesn’t go the whole way. He decides, No, I’m going to return. I’m so moved with gratitude for for this. I’m going to return to give thanks and note the language that he comes back. Luke makes it clear. He comes back praising God with a loud voice. That is a thing that would be tough for a Jewish Pharisee to stomach.

00:11:49:45 – 00:12:14:11
Michael Gewecke
Clint would be a Samaritan praising God because the case is going to be you’re not worshiping our God. And in this case, this Samaritan has encountered the God He’s encountered Jesus Christ. And Luke wants us to know that even amidst all of the differences, health, spiritual, social, that this man is experience, this he has seen the Incarnate Christ.

00:12:14:11 – 00:12:17:19
Michael Gewecke
And that’s a story that Luke wants us to know.

00:12:17:24 – 00:12:40:09
Clint Loveall
There are a couple of beautiful things about this text. It’s really I just think there’s so much stuffed in here. Luke has done a wonderful job with this. The first is that Jesus does express maybe some disappointment, you know, Where are the other nine? Weren’t there ten who were healed? But notice that they they are healed. They’ve all received that gift.

00:12:40:13 – 00:13:07:54
Clint Loveall
And and that, I think, is a tremendous challenge to those of us who would call ourself Christian. Are we grateful for the things that God is doing? This means even those who have received at the hand of Christ may be nine times more likely not to notice, not to to praise, not to give thanks. And so there is a deep challenge here for us to be grateful people.

00:13:07:58 – 00:13:56:00
Clint Loveall
And then finally, and I will admit again, that sometimes this is just what Jesus says, whether you have this last line here, get up and go on your way. Your faith has made you well. Now his leprosy is already healed. So is it possible that when Jesus says this, what he means is your gratitude, your faith, that that something that wellness isn’t just being healed of the leprosy, wellness has something to do with him coming and kneeling before Jesus with praise and thanks that perhaps that’s what it means for this man to be made Well, in spite of and in addition to his already being healed of his physical condition, he now has a measure

00:13:56:00 – 00:14:17:36
Clint Loveall
of wellness that perhaps the other nine men didn’t attain or didn’t pay attention to. And again, speculation. But I just find this to be a very challenging story as I think about what it means to be grateful, as I think about what it means for our own faith to make us well and what that means, what it means to be.

00:14:17:36 – 00:14:22:45
Clint Loveall
Well, there’s just so much here, I think, to to give us thought.

00:14:22:49 – 00:14:45:49
Michael Gewecke
The context here, I do think helps also with this story, Clint, because not too long ago we were going through the whole story of Lazarus and Abraham, and we had that whole conversation in which very clearly the Pharisees were portrayed as the ones who had been given all the ample reason to understand the gospel, and they didn’t understand it.

00:14:45:54 – 00:15:13:27
Michael Gewecke
And then you have coming up here more conversation with the Pharisees and and here I think is very, very, very hard to read a story like this and to not see the ratio of 9 to 1. I think it’s very hard to not understand that what is happening here is the foreigner, which by the way, that’s explicit. Jesus says, accept this foreigner.

00:15:13:31 – 00:15:40:35
Michael Gewecke
The foreigner is the one who, when he receives grace, returns with gratitude. And this is in context of numerous conversations in which the Pharisees have been described as those who have received grace, but do not in any way express gratitude. And you said this. I just want to lift it out. I think it’s such an important interpretive devotional recognition in this text.

00:15:40:35 – 00:16:08:01
Michael Gewecke
Clint The challenge for us today is when you receive the good news in your life, do you take it for granted or do you return with Thanksgiving and the 9 to 1 is a very telling number that gives for us a a stark kind of reminder that there are far more ways to fall off the bandwagon of gratitude than there are to stay on.

00:16:08:06 – 00:16:38:08
Michael Gewecke
It is a daily practice, and today is another day worth practicing it. And so if you’ve not succeeded up to this point, this can be an invitation to a turning point for this day. I just think it would be impossible, I think, to underestimate the difference between someone in Luke’s gospel who receives Jesus, his teachings and healing power with gratefulness and humility.

00:16:38:13 – 00:17:05:22
Michael Gewecke
Then those who receive it with a sense of commonness or understanding or even opposition. And that’s a very, very hard bucket. I mean, I think Christians grow up with this awareness right up. We’re rather proud of the fact we’re not atheist. But in Luke’s telling the gospel, the Pharisees believe in God, but it makes no difference because it’s it’s not the God who’s revealed in Jesus Christ.

00:17:05:31 – 00:17:31:31
Michael Gewecke
They’re resistant to God himself. And so Christians are bound together in the texts like this. I think in a really uncomfortable way we should be willing to read a text like this and see that it’s calling us to to a life of humility and courage and returning to Jesus even when we think we know the story, return again and be grateful because there’s something deeply true that we’ll discover about that wellness.

00:17:31:31 – 00:17:32:57
Michael Gewecke
When we return.

00:17:33:01 – 00:17:58:09
Clint Loveall
Yeah, a beautiful story. Probably not considered Luke’s best. There are other places where scholars would say, maybe it is Luke at his absolute finest as a writer. But this has always been one of my favorites. I love this story, and every time I read it, I find myself challenged again by it. So hopefully there’s something in it that has been that has spoken to you that has been helpful.

00:17:58:13 – 00:18:04:27
Clint Loveall
We hope that there’s something in it that will encourage you along your own way as you are going.

00:18:04:31 – 00:18:27:43
Michael Gewecke
We would encourage you to give this video a light if you found it helpful and if you do, that helps other people find it in their own study. And then also, of course, subscribe because that helps you get future videos as we go along in studies like this. But we will once again not be doing our lives. Study this coming Wednesday, but will for Tuesday and Thursday and hope that you’ll join us for both of those.

00:18:27:55 – 00:18:29:13
Michael Gewecke
Until then, be blessed.