Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
(Proper 23C)
October 12, 2025
Text:
Luke 17:11-19
If you want some edge-of-your-seat,
page-turning, electrifying reading, turn to Leviticus 13 and 14, and read about
skin diseases in ancient Israel. Is it
leprosy, or is it not? How should the
priest make the examination? Who has to
be excluded from the community, and for how long? Who is unclean, and how do they become clean? Can they become clean? Now, admittedly, this is the part of the
Bible where many Christians give up on their Bible-in-a-Year reading plan. It’s tedious.
It’s gross (well, if you think that’s gross, wait until bodily
discharges in Chapter 15). It’s more
than a little daunting. We can laugh
about it, especially we beneficiaries of modern medicine. But note at least two things about this:
First, there is nothing in the Bible that God, in His infinite wisdom, didn’t
put there very deliberately, for our good. And second, these were very real afflictions,
borne by very real, flesh and blood people.
Their lives were devastated.
Their bodies were devastated. And
because of their uncleanness, they had to suffer these afflictions as outcasts
from their community, outcasts from their homes and their families, outcasts
from the Communion of God’s Old Testament Church, the children of
Israel.
Jesus comes across ten such people
in our Holy Gospel. Lepers. Now, their disease may or may not have been
Hansen’s disease, what we, today, call leprosy. As a term in the Bible, leprosy covers a
broad spectrum of skin disorders. But
whatever it is, specifically, the living bodies of these men were already
decaying, piece by piece. They were
slowly degenerating into walking, breathing corpses. That is what made them unclean, in the Old
Testament sense. This is the key to
understanding biblical uncleanness. Life
is from God, and therefore holy. Death
is from sin, and therefore anti-holy.
And so, where the things of death and life mix (and they don’t
really mix… this is the problem), there you have uncleanness. A living person touches a dead body? Unclean. The things in men and women that make for new
life (ask you mother about those)? Unclean. Flesh rotting on your body? Unclean. So, anybody who touches you, or touches the
things you touch… Unclean. That
is why you have to stand apart, and when anyone gets too close, you have to
shout, “Unclean! Unclean!”
Being unclean wasn’t necessarily a
sin, understand. Everybody has bodily
functions. Somebody has to carry the
corpse out of the room. Procreation is a
blessing. It’s not like anyone wants
to get leprosy. But theologically,
it’s helpful to understand that bodily uncleanness signifies the spiritual
condition of every one of us, every single son or daughter of Adam and
Eve. It signifies the brokenness caused
by our sin. Death snuffing out
life. Unholiness. Separation from God. Separation from one another.
And that’s why Jesus came. There they are, these lepers, standing apart,
as they must do according to the Law of Moses.
But they are crying out something different, something other than
“Unclean! Unclean!” They are praying the Kyrie (we just
prayed that, moments ago, in our liturgy… “Lord, have mercy,” we sang). “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us,”
they cry (Luke 17:13; ESV). Well, they’d
heard about Him. This Man gives sight
to the blind. This Man makes the lame to
walk. Even, this Man raises the
dead! So, of course they cry
to Him. He can help us!
Now, it’s interesting what Jesus
does. We know He often heals people with
a touch. That would have been scandalous
in this case. But then, Jesus is not One
to shy away from scandal. We know He
often heals people with a Word. This
one, though, is different. This one
calls to mind leprous Naaman from the Old Testament. That passage really is exciting. 2 Kings 5, if you want to read about it,
maybe this evening. Remember? Naamann comes to Elisha’s house, and the
prophet doesn’t even come out of the house to say hello. He doesn’t wave his hands over the
infection, or speak some incantation, or hand over some magic elixir. He just sends his servant out to say, “Go,
wash in the Jordan seven times, and you will be clean.” Naaman scoffs! That dirty old river? He resolves not to do it, but his servants
convince him to give it a try. So he
does. And it works. Why? Because
Elisha speaks God’s Word. And that
dirty old Jordan River water has God’s Word and Promise attached to it. So it does what God’s Word says. Had Naaman washed in a different river, he
wouldn’t have been healed. God said the
Jordan. Had Naaman washed six times, or
nine times, he wouldn’t have been healed.
God said seven times. Naaman does
according to the Word of the Lord. And Naaman
is healed. Naaman is clean.
Well, likewise Jesus in our
Gospel. He says, “Go and show
yourselves to the priests” (Luke 17:14).
They aren’t healed yet, understand. I have to imagine they hear Jesus say that,
and then look at their still-rotting flesh, and think, “What gives? Shouldn’t You wave Your hands or something? Shouldn’t you have spoken some incantation,
or given us some magic elixir? Instead,
You tell us to go show ourselves to the priests?” But that is what you do when you think
you might be healed, according to the skin disease discourse in Leviticus 13
and 14. And, in spite of the fact that
they had not yet been healed, as they go… as they do according to the
Word of Jesus Christ, that to which His Word and Promise are attached… behold,
they are healed! They are cleansed!
By the way, you can bet they are all
grateful. They are all praising
God. Lord, have mercy on us for making
this Gospel into a morality tale about how we should remember to say
“Thank you,” whenever God, or somebody, does something nice for us. We should remember to say “Thank you,”
and maybe that is a tangential point we can glean from this text, but it kind
of misses the main gift our Lord here gives us.
We’re getting to that.
The Samaritan… talk about
somebody who is excluded! Not only is he
unclean because of his disease, he’s the wrong ethnicity to be presenting
himself before the priests in the Jerusalem Temple. But he catches on to something that the rest
do not. “Wait a second. Jesus healed me. I’m whole again. No high priest in Jerusalem could do that,
heal a man of leprosy. If I’m supposed
to go and show myself to the Priest, I should actually go to Jesus. He is the true High Priest!” But more!
“Here I am, thanking and praising God for my cleansing, the miraculous
healing of my body, my release from suffering.
But I don’t have to stand afar off, anymore, to thank Him. Now that He’s made me clean, I can draw
near. Restored to Communion with Him,
and with His people. And I know just
where to find Him. I don’t have to go to
Jerusalem. He’s standing right there.” Did you catch the language regarding the
Samaritan’s actions in our Gospel? “Then
one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a
loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks” (vv.
15-16). In praising God, he fell
at Jesus’ feet. And that is
exactly right. God is the only One who
can cleanse the uncleanness of body and soul.
God is the only One who can make a broken and dying man whole. This Man is God. And that is what He does.
Not only for lepers. For you. In fact, He is doing it for you, right now,
in your hearing of these words. The Word
of God is such that it never simply tells us about something. This is not just a nice story about how some
lucky lepers were cleansed and healed, any more than it’s a lesson in manners,
remembering to say “Thank you.” The Word
of God does things. It does
what He says. Otherwise, what’s
the point of coming to Church? Learn
some fun facts about history, and find out how to be a nice person? Spare me.
That isn’t Christianity, and I have better things to do. When Jesus Christ tells you how He
cleanses lepers, He is, in that very moment, healing and cleansing you.
You’re not a leper, thank God, but
sin renders you unclean. Broken. Death snuffing out life (you’re reminded of
that every time you get sick, and every time you go to a funeral and stare your
own mortality in the face). Unholy. Separated from God. Separated from one another. Broken relationships. Broken Communion. What does Jesus do? Tell you to stand over there, far apart,
where you belong? Tell you to cry out,
warning everybody to stay away from your uncleanness? No, that’s not what He does. Go and show yourself to the priest. You know why you would do that? Not only so that he could verify the
healing. So that he could offer the
blood sacrifice that renders you clean.
So, again, what does Jesus do?
He bids you come to Him.
Come right up into His space, with all your uncleanness. Let Him take it into Himself. That as your High Priest, He may make the
blood sacrifice that renders you clean.
Not a lamb, or a bird, as in Leviticus.
Himself. His body on the
cross. His blood shed for you. His death for your life. His atonement for the forgiveness of your
sins. And then, the Third Day. The reversal of all that sin has
wrought. His life snuffing out
death. What was broken, made whole. What was unholy, now holy. You, who were separated from God, and
from one another, now restored and brought near. So near, you don’t have to give thanks
to God from afar, as though He is somewhere up there, far removed from
the sinner. He’s right here, for you,
in His Word, and on the altar with His true body and blood. You can come right into His presence,
praising Him with a loud voice, and fall at His feet, and receive Him. Because you are clean. He is your cleanness. He is your healing. He is your life.
By the way, when the Old Testament
priest made the sacrifice for cleansing, he’d mix the blood of the sacrifice
with water, and sprinkle it with hyssop on the one to be cleansed. Interesting.
The sacrificial blood in the water, attached to God’s Word and Promise,
applied to the unclean person, rendering him clean. That is Holy Baptism. You see what Leviticus does for us? The Priest has done His work again. You, beloved, are baptized into Christ. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X,
and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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