Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time 2025
Luke 17:11-19
Last week we saw Jesus urging the disciples to faith and obedience, not to gain some reward (even though faith is a reward), but because that is what the basic character of a disciple is: one who believes, corrects one another, forgives one another, loves one another. Luke, who is a very careful writer, follows that immediately with this story, an example that illustrates faith and finds it in a surprising place. The passage with the lepers shows us that true faith is a response to the grace of God, rather than something we accomplish on our own. Faith itself is the reward, not what earns it.
Here in the latter part of Luke, the narrative is focused around Jesus moving towards Jerusalem. He is “on the way” for several chapters, which Luke is using to build the dramatic tension to the Passion. The city is the center of the world, the spiritual capital, the stage for God’s redemption. Each episode along the way is also building up to the central ideas that Luke cares about: the elevation of the poor and downtrodden, the inclusion of those “outside” the chosen people, and Jesus’s Messiahship being revealed through his actions on behalf of those people.
He is approached by ten lepers. Leprosy was a catch-all for a variety of skin diseases, but we must understand that the significance of these is far more than the ailment itself. In any society, they were usually secluded off from the rest of the community, having to live with one another or on their own. Essentially, they were social exiles. But in Israel, it was even worse, for this kind of disease made one ritually impure, religiously exiled and unable to participate in the religious life of the people as well.
They have nothing to lose, in other words. Having probably heard Jesus had healed others, they throw their lot in, asking for mercy. And he gives it! He tells them to go to the priest, and they will be healed. That was the requirement when recovering from an ailment of this kind, that required exclusion from the community; the priest had to inspect you and sign off on your acceptance back in, especially into the religious rituals. Jesus, in other words, tells them to go do what they would do if already healed, and they had to trust that they were not doing it in vain. They took him at his word and went, and along the way were healed, and the priest declared them clean.
There was an act of faith in simply doing what they were told. There was trust that, even though they were not healed when they were told to go, they would be as promised. And each of them was! Here, however, is where things change. Only one of the 10 returns to Jesus, while the rest went on their way. Only one returned to thank Jesus, and to praise God for his healing. The others, like unfaithful servants, asked for a gift, took it, and then acted as if it was owed to them, as if it was their due. Only this one saw that this was an incredible gift, one that not only improved his life but brought him back into the community, and back into the worship of God. And this one was a Samaritan.
A Samaritan is the last person in the group who should have returned. Samaritans were an ethnically mixed group that lived in Palestine, part Jewish but not wholly. They had religious practices that were very similar to the Jews, but were not considered Jewish and were restricted from being a part of the Temple service. Jews and Samaritans generally hated each other, and would avoid interacting as much as possible as far as we know. And this one, receiving God’s grace, then goes to the Jewish Messiah and worships him. The others, who it is implied were Jewish, took the gift of God and treated it as a given, as Jesus puts it, “Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?’” But the grace of God is not our due, not what we “deserve,” not something of no value. It is healing, healing from sin and death, healing from shame and fear, healing from our weakness and failures. It is new life in God, as these men were given, cleansing from the disease we all carry inside us, this sin, and being restored to purity and holiness. We are made well, whole again, by Jesus.
That is why the response is praise. There is nothing else it should be. When we receive the grace of God, when we are healed by the power of the Spirit who unites us to Jesus Christ, we could despise the gift. We could just walk away, saying “thanks, I got it from here.” We could act as if we got our fire insurance. Or…we fall to our knees, at the feet of Jesus, and offer God praise. Faith is created in that moment of God’s healing, and faith is the response. We are cleaned and made whole, and we offer ourselves back up to God because that is all we can offer, all we can do in response. Your faith in Jesus, which is your believing that he has saved you and will give you the gift of immortal life, is simply the giving of thanks for mercy, a gift we could never gain for ourselves. Praise, then, God, and offer him yourself. Believe him, walking forward, knowing that along the way healing will come. And return to him always, giving him thanks for his abundant love. Amen.
