Twenty-First Sunday After Pentecost (Series C)
October 9th, 2016
Gospel: Luke 17:11-19
Epistle: 2 Timothy 2:1-13
Lesson: Ruth 1:1-19a
Psalm: Psalm 111
CLB Commentary – Rev. David Rinden
The gospels often record Jesus going from Galilee to Jerusalem. The one in our text today was his last. Jesus was very much aware of how this trip would end. “We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled.” (Luke 18:31)
While on the way, something else happened—an event that illustrated Jesus’ mission of bringing salvation to the world; his own people the Jews, and also included the Samaritans who were despised and often thought of by the Jewish people as being inferior and unworthy of salvation.
Jesus came upon ten men who, because of the severity of their leprosy, needed his help. The group apparently was composed of nine Jews and one Samaritan. Recognizing that Jesus was nearby they called to him with raised voices, an act very difficult for those with leprosy. Without hesitation Jesus sends them to the priests with these words, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.”
These words must have sounded strange to their ears. They were not yet healed, but they were told to go and be examined by the priests, a process laid out in Old Testament law. Without argument, the ten listen to him and somehow had faith to do what he told them to do. The text states, “And as they went they were cleansed.”
One, a Samaritan, turned back to give praise and thanks to God. The text doesn’t tell us whether or not he went to the priests. We do know that he turned back to worship Jesus. And as he came back with thanksgiving in his heart Jesus gave him another blessing.
Let me quote from Lenski: “Before the one turned back he must have debated with the others about turning back. Had Jesus not told them to go to the priests, and now, healed as they were, had they not more cause than ever to hurry to the priests? But with nine against him, left in a minority of one, this one turned back. The idea is not that he was disobeying Jesus’ orders—how long would it take to return and to seek the priests after that? Whatever outward arguments this one had with the nine, the decisions were due to something inward. In the heart of the one, out of the faith that made him, too, cry to Jesus for mercy, and out of the word of Jesus that had healed him, something was born that was not born in the hearts of the others, something that drew him back to Jesus in spite of the decision of the nine to go on, something that could not draw the others because it was not born in them because they grasped only at the healing and not also at the Healer.”
The words Jesus gave the returning Samaritan were, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well,” or literally, “your faith has saved you.” (See how this is translated in Luke7:50.)
Quoting Lenski again: “Jesus now tells this man to get up and to be going (durative present imperative) on the journey to the priests to be legally pronounced clean and to be reinstated in the society of men. But Jesus adds what was so vital: “Thy faith has saved thee,” the perfect tense as well as the verb itself refer to his saved condition into which one act of saving or rescue had placed him.”
The Samaritan was completely cleansed—body and soul. The Law would declare it (Romans 8:1).