Day 307 - And He Was a Samaritan

A Sermon presented at First Presbyterian Church, Soddy Daisy, TN Oct. 13, 2013
OT reading: 2 Kings 5:1-16
NT Reading: Luke 17:11-19

What are we to make of the connection between these two stories of lepers who have been healed?

Let’s begin with Luke and ask, "What is Luke telling us with his Gospel?"  If we read Luke carefully looking for the thematic focus of his Gospel, starting with its prologue we realize Luke is explaining the story of Jesus as the prophetic fulfillment of scripture.

Luke shows how Jesus used children; the dregs of society (the outcasts, the poor and aggrieved) to tell us something about the obligation of faith and entering the kingdom of God; and to call out those who have failed the Law or hide behind it.

Luke begins telling this prophetic fulfillment of Israel’s hope in the first sermon of Jesus. Luke tells us Jesus read the proclamation of Isaiah 40 (found in Luke 4:16-19):

(16) “When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, (17) and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: (18) “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free,  (19) to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Jesus has come to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

Luke shows this prophetic image of Jesus in various ways. He compares Jesus with Elijah and Elisha several times. In that very first sermon in the synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus continued (Luke 4:20-30), and chastised the response of the religious leaders and members to his proclamation saying they will say,

 (23)…Doctor cure yourself! (25) “But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; (26) yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.

Now I am going to stop here in Jesus comments because the story of the widow is important. (1 Kings 17:1-25) Elijah befriended a starving widow and gave her a jar of grain and a jar of olive oil that will never empty until the famine lifts, but while he was there her son died. Both the widow and Elijah blamed Elijah for his death. Elijah prayed to God to bring the child back and the Lord did it. This resurrection caused the woman to understand and say that Elijah speaks with the voice of the Lord.

The Jesus continues to the story of Naaman in the next verse (Luke 4:27-30):

(27)There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” Luke tells us (28) “When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage.”

Naaman was an Aramaean, a Syrian like Abraham; but also he was the general of the Syrian army the Lord used to defeat Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha (who lived in Samaria).  Naaman had taken a young Israeli girl as a spoil of war to be his wife’s servant.  
Naaman had a problem, he suffered from leprosy. The  Hebrew girl knew Elisha lived in Samaria and could heal Naaman. She convinced Naaman’s wife to talk him into going there to be healed. Naaman followed protocol and went straight to the King of Israel with a great fortune and ask to be healed.  The king panicked. He knew he couldn’t cure anybody and accused Naaman of trying to start a fight that would lead to a Syrian reprisal.

Elisha hears of this visit and sends for Naaman. When he arrived Elisha told him to wash in the Jordan River seven times and he would be healed.  Now The Jordan River was more a muddy creek than a river compared to the “great” rivers of Syria.

This instruction angered Naaman and he stormed off because he was expecting Elisha to command him to do some difficult task. But Naaman’s servants persisted telling him, “you were prepared to do something difficult if you were commanded to do it, if you don’t have to do anything more than just go wash in the river, why not just go do it?”

Naaman did as Elisha commanded and was healed. He then returned to Elisha with his large sum of money insisting on paying Elisha. Elisha refused and Naaman vowed never to worship any god but the Lord. Naaman experienced a conversion to Judaism through his faith that God has healed him. Not Elisha.

With Naaman in mind, Luke begins this story of the ten lepers. True to form the first thing Luke does is remind us where we are, “On the way to Jerusalem” heading to the cross.

The ten lepers knew of Jesus because they call him “master.” Like Naaman, they are probably expecting a command to perform some task to bring about divine action and the power of healing. But Jesus  says and does nothing to the lepers except, “Go show yourselves to the priests so they can verify you are healed.” At this point we only know they are ten lepers. The command. "go to the priests," suggests they are all are Jews. 

One interpretation of the story leads us to conclude they were not healed before they left Jesus but on the way because they obeyed the command of Jesus to go see the priest. They were healed as a result of their obedience.

In such a case, Luke is giving us a lesson about the gratitude of the only one who realized Jesus healed him and gratefully came back to praise God; in contrast to the ingratitude of the other nine who failed to return to thank Jesus.

However, once we discover the person healed was a Samaritan, the story takes on a more complicated tone making this a Jew vs. Gentile story. The Samaritan, as you know, was despised as a heretic and not allowed in the Temple.  As a leper he is a double outcast and the priest will refuse to examine him. So not only is gratitude involved, it is the gratitude of the infidel, the outcast Samaritan and the ingratitude of the Chosen people. The outcast gets the message but the nine Jews do not. I think there is more to it.

The most important part of this story is the healing and faith revealed in the last verse (19). The story does leave us uncertain whether the nine Jews knew they were healed before they saw the priest.  Did they intend to rely on the priests to tell them they are healed rather than understand, as the Samaritan did, that they were healed when they obeyed the biding of Jesus and left to see the priest? Jesus did tell them to go show the priests and if they felt Jesus had healed them all would be grateful and return to give thanks. In other words, if they have faith that Jesus healed them as an act of grace, kindness or kindness, ingratitude would not stop them from returning to Jesus to acknowledge god's work, as it did not stop Naaman. Perhaps they experienced healing but not salvation?

Since Jesus wonders why did only the Samaritan return, it is pretty safe to conclude the nine never returned to offer gratitude or thanksgiving because they did not have the faith that God’s presence was the critical ingredient.

Faith takes front and center when it is revealed the Samaritan understood (saw) he was healed by God’s presence. Luke tells us, “When he SAW he was healed he turned back to Jesus.” No one told him who healed him, rather he instinctually knew he was healed because of the power of the Lord. This Samaritan knew he was healed in God’s presence. He act is gratitude. Luke’s language leaves nothing to misunderstanding. Luke says the fellow returned to Jesus and threw himself on the ground prostrate at Jesus feet, praising God in a loud voice and thanking Jesus for this act. The Samaritan foreigner understands God is acting in Jesus, perhaps as Naaman understood God was acting in Elisha.  Luke adds his own commentary to the narration to emphasize the point. You can almost feel the bite of irony that not a Jew but a Samaritan returned to praise God as he comments, “And he was a Samaritan.”

Jesus asks, “Where are the other ten?” leaving us to wonder where.

As I said the last verse captures the core message (17:19). Jesus turns to the Samaritan and says, “You are raised to a new life, go on your way.” Though it is often translated in the vein of  “Get up and go your way;” the Greek clearly reads Jesus on the final leg of his trek to Jerusalem saying, “Arise” or “Be resurrected.” The world can conclude that arise means get up from your prostrate position, but the word, here on the road to Jerusalem, means arise to a new life.  

How do I know this? Because Luke will not let us, or the leper, go without spelling out exactly what has happened here.  Jesus tells the Samaritan to go on his way because his faith has saved him. The word is saved, not healed. (Though it can be translated either way, the context and other usage resists using "healed" except in soteriological terms.)

Where are the other nine? We can only conclude they did not have faith that Jesus is God; they failed to understand that God was present in his prophet Jesus. Only the foreigners, the Samaritan and Naaman understood that God had touched them. Luke might say scripture is being relived in the moment.

There is a three-fold significance to this leper’s conversion in faith. The Samaritan’s conversion itself is important because he understands God has been present in his healing. As I have said before, faith found the Samaritan.

There is another important part (warning?) of the story.  An observant Jew would hear the echo of Naaman’s healing in this story of the alien returning to Jesus.  The uncomfortable reminder to the listening scribes and Pharisees on this road to Jerusalem is that an outcast, a heretic, a despised person can experience God’s grace. 

The third part of the message is response guided by faith. The issue is not having faith in God’s work; but in what we do with our faith. We ought to worship and praise and go our way with renewed lives.

So I can sum up this story of the ten lepers. The first point is that no one can create gratitude where it is absent. Special status, such as being a Jew or a preacher does not confer gratitude. What confers gratitude is an inward disposition towards the understanding of grace. This is the fundamental character of faith: we have faith and are grateful because we understand the source of grace. As the Samaritan leper showed, faith is not found in a rational experience but by grace of God.
For the other nine, perhaps the absence of gratitude, or ingratitude, is a greater burden than leprosy itself.  Are these nine men worse off for their ingratitude after being healed? At the worst they have denied that God healed them and at best failed to SEE Jesus for who he is.

What does gratitude for God’s grace encumber?  Gratitude for God’s grace encumbers the obligation to worship and praise God as the source of grace. Praise in its original sense (note 1) means shouting “Hallelujah” for our gift of grace. And there is some evidence “Hallelujah” originally means a shout “Hurrah for Yahweh.”

And finally we get to the main point of faith. Faith incurs a demand for action, a point James will make directly in his letter. The issue is not having faith but in what we do with that faith in our daily lives.

If I tried to condense Luke’s message from Jesus to a single sentence it would be, “the mysteries of the Kingdom of God are best understood by those who hear the word of God and do it (Luke 8:21).’” (note 2)

note 1: see The Interpreter’s Bible, Volume VIII, Luke and John, Nashville: Abingdon Press. 1952. p 299.
note 2: See Holladay, C.R., A Critical Introduction to the New Testament,Nashville: Abingdon Press. 2005.  p179-180.