All Were Healed

Text: Luke 17:11-19

Martin Luther was a young catholic priest. He worked hard at being good. But he was tormented by his conviction that he would never be worthy of God. He was, after all, only human, just a sinner, an imperfect being. Yet he felt that scripture was calling him to be better, better even than anyone could ever be. He felt that scripture was condemning him.

He wrote at the time: I hated that word, “justice of God,” which, I had been taught to understand [as] that justice by which God punishes sinners and the unjust.

“I couldn't be sure that God was appeased by my [efforts]. I hated the just God who punishes sinners. I said, “Isn't it enough that we miserable sinners, lost for all eternity because of original sin, are oppressed by every kind of calamity? Why does God heap sorrow upon sorrow and threaten us with his justice and his wrath?”

He felt that way especially about the writings of the apostle Paul. Paul was a thorn in the side of Luther, and Paul’s writings made Luther miserable.

Looking back at Luther from a platform 500 years later, you might find Luther’s agony a little excessive. You might think: He is a little too riled up about this. Or maybe you might not. Maybe you feel condemned by the Bible, too. Maybe when you hear in some Bible story about someone messing up, you think that passage is about you. Maybe you hear a lot of “shoulds’ in the Bible.

Maybe when you hear today’s Gospel story about the lepers being cured, you think: Those ungrateful lepers (the nine who just walked away without a word of thanks to Jesus). Maybe you think: This passage is telling us that we should be grateful for God’s gifts. It is telling us that we should realize who it is who provides our lives and health. Maybe is telling us that we should be more faithful. Maybe it is telling us that faith rewards us by making us well, or worse, that if we are not well it is because we lack sufficient faith.

If you thought that, you would not be alone. Many readers have seen in this passage praise for the one Samaritan (who even more amazingly was an enemy of the Jews, Jesus’ people)—the Samaritan who turns back to Jesus in thanksgiving and condemnation for those who leave without so much as a howdy-do.

Luther, after much violent thought (“I was raging with a wild and disturbed conscience,” he later wrote), came to see things differently. “I saw the whole of Scripture in a different light. The work of God, that is, what God works in us; the power of God, by which he makes us powerful; the wisdom of God, by which he makes us wise; the strength of God, the salvation of God, the glory of God.” So maybe you are like the second Luther, and see in the story of the lepers not what the lepers do and do not do, but what God is doing.

Ten people went to Jesus looking to be transformed. They had leprosy. They were considered unclean, disgusting. They were forced to live at the edge of the village, not in it. And by law they had to cry out to all who passed near: Unclean, unclean. They cry out to Jesus, “have mercy on us.” Help us. They cry out to be transformed. To have a new life.

Jesus tells them to go show themselves to the priest. To let the priest see them. It is not that the priest has any healing powers. But the priest is the judge of who is clean and unclean. It would be the job of the priest not to make them clean, but to announce that they were.

Somewhere on the way between Jesus and the priest they were healed, made clean the text says. It is not clear where exactly all this happened. It was not clear, it seems, how this happened.

There were ten people cured, but only one man who seemed to notice. The Samaritan. That man’s life was transformed. When the text says he was made clean, it uses a word that is like the modern word “cathartic.” Some major thing had happened, some definitive break with the sorry past. Some refreshing view of a hopeful future. Recognizing his new life, he praises God and runs back to Jesus to thank him.

What of the others? We don’t have to think them to be particularly dense. There are lots of reasons to deny what’s in front of your own eyes. There are lots of reasons to deny transformation. You might not think that you are worthy enough. You might not think you are ready enough. You might think it unlikely and you don’t want to get your hopes up (what if they had come to the priest and he said, “nope, not quite, not really, not enough”). You might not welcome it, for transformation can be disruptive. Even though they asked to be healed, perhaps they held a stake in the familiar.

But the man sees. And his sight leads him to gratitude. And his gratitude leads him to faith. He has been healed, made well, says Jesus. He has a new life.

God gives the man three gifts. The gift of sight, the gift of gratitude, and the gift of faith. Unearned and unearnable gifts. To see God’s hand in our life. To be thankful for what God has given us and showed us. To trust God.

This man is the more fortunate of the ten others on account of these gifts. But he is not the better of them. They all are healed, grateful at the time or not. They all receive something for nothing. They all are transformed, like it or not. Or maybe: like it and not.

We who like to see people get what they deserve, we who respond well to “should” (you should, they should, I should), we who know there are no gains without pains, we hear in the story that Jesus is a little put out. Like, I cured all ten of you. I mean, nice to see you here, Mr. Foreign Samaritan, but where’s the other nine? What’s up with that?

But this story is not about us so much as it is about God. Not so much about how we mess up but about how much God gives us even so. If we think of the ungrateful nine, we imagine all that they might have done better. If we think of the grateful one, we think he might be a model for us doing better. But if we think of the gracious one, the healer, Jesus, we think only of our generous God. I don’t think Jesus is annoyed at the nine who walk away. I think he is amused. I think he looks on them with affection and understanding.

Jesus does not heal these lepers because Jesus wants something back. The Samaritan is not the model; he’s the gravy (if I can mix metaphors here). It is great that he comes back to thank Jesus, and I’m sure Jesus appreciates it, but his gratitude is not the point. It is a little extra (it is an extra gift for the man). The point is that Jesus heals all the ten who cry out to him from the side of the road.

Many people live their lives seeking ways to be criticized. It is weird but true. We look for “shoulds” and we respond to them. But of course as Luther knew, we never can do all we “should” do, so we are always a bit—or a lot—behind in time and results. But there is no need to walk in shame. As Luther realized and then publicized, there is one who does not expect accomplishment and gratitude, but gives them to us as gifts. One who prefers healing to judgment. One who, as Luther saw, judges us with more generosity than we judge ourselves.