October 14, 2007 Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost

Sermon Title: “The Grateful Samaritan”

Series: None

Text: Luke 17:11-19

Dr. Steve Jackson

NewSong Community Church

Delivered on October 14, 2007

 

“…when he saw that he was healed, he turned back, praising God with a loud voice.”
Luke 17:15

 

The Grateful Samaritan

 

As I read over today’s very familiar passage of Scripture from Luke I started thinking about an old poster Donna had on the wall in her basement back when we were in high school. It was a saying that seems to sum up the problem we sometimes experience when we try to communicate with one another. The poster read, “I know you think you know what you thought I said, but what you thought I said isn’t what I really meant.”

 

I thought about this saying in relation to this passage of Scripture because on the surface it seems to be pretty straightforward, but I believe if we dig a little deeper we’ll discover it has something else to say to us. Perhaps it’s one of those teachings from the Bible that can instruct us at several different levels simultaneously.

 

For instance—the first thought most of us probably had upon hearing this story is that it is about being thankful, or grateful. I suppose thousands of sermons have been preached on this text over the years with titles like, “How to have an Attitude of Gratitude,” or “Do You Think to Thank?” In fact, the theme of thankfulness is so strong in the passage that once every three years this text is one of the suggested texts for the Sunday falling closest to Thanksgiving.  And who among us can criticize such an interpretation? Clearly the Bible teaches believers to be grateful and to thank God for all our blessings. But before we make a hero out of the one for being grateful and villains out of the nine who didn’t come back to thank Jesus, let’s look a little closer at what they actually did.

 

They cried out to Jesus for healing believing he could—Good. Jesus said, “Go and show yourselves to the priests,” which they did—Good. And then look, “…as they were going they were healed.” Check. Their obedience to Jesus’ command to go to the priests to be declared “clean” was apparently essential to their healing. Fact is, the nine lepers did exactly what Jesus instructed them to do. They weren’t bad guys. If anyone was “in the wrong” it was the tenth. The nine are, in fact, models of faithfulness and obedience!

 

And those twin themes—faithfulness and obedience—are what other interpreters have latched onto as crux of the message in this particular passage. They point out that the ten lepers did what we should all do: They cried out to Jesus for mercy, to which he instructed them to go and show themselves to the priests, which was the only way they could be declared officially “clean” in their culture, and as a result of their obedience (“as they were going”) they were healed. These expositors point out that the tenth leper, as a Samaritan—as a foreigner—wasn’t required to go show himself to the priest like the other nine who were presumably Jews. That means the tenth leper, the grateful Samaritan, did what was only natural in going back to express his gratitude to Jesus. The real heroes in the story, say these interpreters, the ones we need to model our lives after, are the nine who were faithful and obedient. Who knows, perhaps the nine planned to come back and thank Jesus once they did what he said for them to do—to go to the priests.

 

People taking this interpretation often link this story to a story in the Old Testament about a man named Naaman. Naaman, like the Samaritan in this story, was a foreigner and a leper who was healed by God. Naaman went to the prophet Elisha to be healed and the prophet told him to go and dip himself into the Jordan River seven times. At first Naaman thought that was a ridiculous thing to do, but at the urging of others he eventually obeyed, performing the simple ritual required by Elisha, and he was healed. What’s more His physical cure led to his believing in God and his spiritual salvation. After he is healed physically Naaman declares, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth, except in Israel.” People who notice the similarities between Naaman and the grateful leper point out that the leper in today’s story also received spiritual salvation, which is greater than physical healing. If you look carefully at the story of the grateful Samaritan you’ll see that all ten were healed physically “as they went.” But it’s to the tenth alone, the Samaritan, that Jesus says, “…your faith has made you well.” The word for “well” there in the NRSV is the Greek word sozo, which is the word for “salvation.”  So ten were “healed,” but apparently only one was “saved” because he alone came back to establish a relationship with the Savior.

 

So what is this story about? Is it about gratitude, or faith, or obedience? Or is it some combination of the three?

 

Here’s what I think—at least what I think God’s message is from this story for you and me here at NewSong on Oct. 14, 2007. I believe the story is about noticing God’s work and activity in our lives. It’s a story about “seeing.”

 

Look at your Scripture handouts or your Bible with me for a moment at the text as it is written there. I want you to notice the instances of “seeing” in this passage.

 

In verse 14 it says when Jesus saw the lepers… And then he said to them go and show yourselves (seeing) to the priests. And then there’s the most critical instance of seeing in verse 15 where it says, “Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice.”

 

What I believe God is saying to us this morning is that all too often we plod along through life without recognizing that God has done something significant or even spectacular for us. The greater miracle than the healing might just be the noticing it, which the one man alone did. And please notice that it was an “outsider” who noticed it.

 

Luke wants us to notice that, in fact, I believe this is his indictment of insiders like you and me—church people—who often fail to see all the wonderful ways God is blessing us, healing us, and providing for us each and every day of our lives. Meanwhile we’re so busy following “forms of religion” (like the nine) that we miss God’s best miracles.

 

You notice this more when you spend time around “outsiders” – nonbelievers to whom the truth of the gospel is new, who haven’t become immune to its wonder by those weekly inoculations of religion you and I receive each Sunday morning. One of the best things you and I can do is to spend time around people who don’t believe, so that as the wonder of coming to know God comes up on them, we can see anew the greatness and wonder of who He is.

 

So the first and most important message I believe God wants us to hear from this passage this morning is that we, like the grateful Samaritan, need to see—to notice or recognize—what God has done.

 

But there’s a related second point I think we need to take away from this story. And that is that even when we do notice we often notice the wrong thing. There were two miracles that occurred in this story. The first was the physical healing of all ten. But the second miracle was the greater miracle, and that was the salvation of the tenth man.

 

In some ways we’re like a little child at Christmas who instead of playing with all the cool toys we’ve bought him, wants to play with the boxes and the wrapping paper. We get all excited about the flashy paper and the unusual boxes—the means of the gift getting to us—that we miss out on the greater gift within—the actual “toy.”

 

I say that because did you notice the nine who were physically healed simply couldn’t wait for life to get back to normal? And who can blame them? Being a leper meant you were an outcast. You were ostracized from family and friends—you had to move out of your home in the village and live on the fringes of society until the skin condition you had either went away (as verified by the priests) or until you died. It was a sad, lonely way to live. I can’t imagine how it must be.

 

I have a picture to show you from my trip to Ghana. In one village we were in there was a little boy who was an albino. He seemed so sad…so alone. In the picture you can see all the other kids standing around him, but even in the throng of children he looked scared and alone. I am confident that a day does not pass when that little boy doesn’t wake up and wish he could be “normal,” like the other kids. His is a sad, lonely existence, much like a leper back in the biblical days.

 

So when we look back at this story, who can fault the nine lepers for rushing to the priests to be given the go ahead to get back to their families? They couldn’t wait to be normal again. Perhaps they would come back later to thank Jesus. For now all they wanted to do was to get on with life.

 

Yes, they were all healed physically and that’s great, but their physical healing can be likened to the packaging and wrapping paper that contains the real gift. The greater miracle was not what God had done for them on the outside, as important as that was. The greater gift—the “real” gift was what he wanted to do for them on the inside—which the tenth leper alone apparently experienced.

 

Those who recognize God’s activity in their lives—those who “get it,” those who “see” what God has done soon realize that the goal of life isn’t to simply blend in and be “normal” like everybody else, but is instead to connect in a relationship with God. Those are the ones who are truly healed—those are the ones who are sozo—saved. Those are the ones who are made whole.

 

And so there are two messages from this passage to us this morning. First, don’t miss the gift that God is giving us—notice it, see it, and thank him for it. And second, don’t mistake the packaging for the real gift—don’t miss the deeper gift, the one that lasts forever, your spiritual sozo.

 

Should we be grateful? Yes.

Should we be faithful? Definitely

Should we be obedient? Of course.

Does God want us to be healthy? No doubt.

 

But none of that really matters if we don’t recognize what God is doing in our lives and in the world around us. God’s goal for you and me is to recognize his activity in our world and then to connect with him, and then to join him in furthering that activity—we’re to usher in His kingdom, that’s why Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.”

 

We are to love God, grow to be like Jesus, and then share with the world. That’s why the cleansed, saved, whole leper in our story does not remain at Jesus feet forever worshipping him. Instead, in the final sentence of the story we hear Jesus’ command to the man to “Get up and go on your way…” There is kingdom business to be done!

 

This morning I want to leave you with a challenge. And that challenge is to go through the next week doing your best to notice all the ways God is working in your life. Be like the grateful Samaritan and notice your healing—and connect with God, rejoicing over it—and then get up, and go on your way.  Let’s pray.