Sermon - Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost (10/13/2019)
2 Kgs. 5:1-3, 7-15c; Ps. 111; 2 Tim. 2:8-15; Lk. 17:11-19
“Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”
As Jesus is making his way to Jerusalem, near the border between Galilee and Samaria, he meets a group of ten leprous men – in the Greek, the text literally says ten “leprous men,” not ten lepers, and it is absolutely central to this story that these are ten human beings who happen to have leprosy and who are not defined by their being lepers. These ten men keep their distance from Jesus, as people with leprosy are supposed to do. But they call out to him, by name – Jesus, Master, have mercy on us! They ask for mercy – not for healing, necessarily, but simply for mercy. Who knows what they may have heard about Jesus, who knows what they thought he could do for them? Maybe they were asking for healing. But maybe they were just hoping for some alms. Maybe they were just hoping Jesus would pay attention to them – living as social outcasts, even this would have been a great mercy for them. In any case, they are not specific in what they ask of Jesus – just that Jesus have mercy on them.
Jesus does see them, and he does pay attention to them. And then he gives them a most curious instruction: Go and show yourselves to the priests. You see, in the Law of Moses – which was binding on both Jews and Samaritans – the priest plays a crucial role in the management of leprosy within the community.
Specifically, priests were trained in how to diagnose leprosy. Leviticus chapters 13 and 14 go into incredible detail about how to tell the difference between leprosy and less serious skin conditions, and the priests would know how to apply these rules. And if the priest gave you an official diagnosis of leprosy, the priest would also impose on you the consequences: that you were unclean, that you would have to be separated from the community, that your family and your friends and everyone close to you would be forbidden from associating with you, for as long as you continue to have leprosy.
And, if you think that you’ve gotten better and no longer have leprosy, you are required to show yourself again to the priest, who will either confirm that it is safe to restore you again to community or not. And if you are in fact cured, and no longer have leprosy, the priest has very specific rituals of thanksgiving which lead to the official declaration that it is OK to associate with you again. You see, people didn’t judge for themselves whether someone had leprosy and whether it was safe to be around them or not. This was the job of the priests, who had both the expertise to make the diagnosis and the authority to make the official pronouncement that someone has leprosy, and the official pronouncement that someone no longer has leprosy.
So, if you were once diagnosed with leprosy but you’re now looking and feeling much better, it’s not enough to move out of the leper colony and back into your house and resume your life. You need to go and show yourself to the priest and get the official stamp of approval before anyone else will believe you. But, the reverse is also true – if you have been diagnosed with leprosy and you’re still sick, there’s not much point in going back to the priest and hearing your diagnosis and your excommunication all over again.
So this is what is so strange about the instruction of Jesus to these ten men with leprosy. The Gospel says only this: “When [Jesus] saw them, he said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’” So Jesus saw them, and saw that in fact they were lepers, and Jesus told them to begin the medical and legal procedure for being reinstated to the community after being healed of leprosy. Yet Jesus says nothing about actually healing them from their leprosy, nor does he actually heal them – at least, not until they are already on their way to the priests. Why? Why, if they are not already healed, does Jesus tell them to go and begin this process, and why do they do it?
The text of the Gospel says simply: “When [Jesus] saw them, he said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’” When Jesus saw these ten men, calling out to him for mercy, and he saw them, I believe that he saw that they were already clean, that they were already right with God, that they were already beloved children of God who belonged in community with all of God’s beloved people. They may not have seen it yet, but Jesus saw it. And if they are already clean, then the only thing left to do is to make it official – go, show yourselves to the priests, they’ll see what I see.
It took me a while, reflecting on this gospel passage over the last week, to see that Jesus was not sending the ten men off to the priests as a kind of test of their obedience – if you go and do this thing I’m telling you to do, even though it doesn’t make any sense to go see the priests until you’ve been healed, then I will heal you as a reward for your blind obedience to me. That’s not the Jesus I know.
And I was encouraged to learn that I’m not the only one who has thought that, to make sense of this passage, Jesus must see the ten leprous men as already clean, and then when they start to see the priests they simply notice that they have been made clean. This is, in fact, how Martin Luther understood this passage. Here’s what Luther said about this text in 1521:
“[Jesus] does not say: Yes, I will have mercy on you, ye shall be cleansed; but merely: ‘Go and show yourselves unto the priests.’ As though he would say: There is no use of asking, your faith has already acquired and obtained it, before you began to ask; you were already cleansed in my sight when you began to expect such things of me; it is no longer necessary, only go and show your purity to the priests; as I consider you and as you believe, so you are and shall be. For he would not have sent them to the priests, if he had not considered them clean.” (para. 16)
And so the ten men started off on the road – not yet seeing themselves as Jesus saw them. But soon enough, they did. And presumably nine of the ten arrived safely at the temple where the priests checked them over, said, No leprosy here that I can see, and then offered God the proper thanksgiving as set out in Leviticus. And they got their certificate of good health, went back to their homes and families, and lived happily ever after. There is nothing wrong with what the nine men who used to have leprosy did – they went and showed themselves to the priests exactly as Jesus had instructed them, and they expressed their gratitude just as the Bible tells them to.
But the one who comes back, the one who comes back and falls on his face before Jesus in gratitude – to this one Jesus says, “Get up, and go on your way. Your faith has made you well.” Note that Jesus doesn’t say, I appreciate the congratulations, I’m the one who made you well – glad at least one of you took the time to thank me. No, Jesus says, your faith has made you well. It was when you believed that you were already clean in the eyes of God and started acting on that belief that you came to see it for yourself. Your faith has made you well, now stop groveling, get up, and be on your way.
If only we saw ourselves the way that Jesus sees us! Like the ten leprous men, we may sometimes feel cut off from others. We may sometimes feel burdened with grief for what could have been or should have been. We may feel crushed by our health or that of those close to us, that there is nothing we can do. We may wonder why God has let this thing happen to us. We are like those men in so many ways – and Jesus tells us, as he tells them, what we should do if we are in fact the people Jesus sees us to be. He invites us to come to the table of the children of God, he invites us to be transformed into his own body and blood given for the world God loves. Jesus would not make that invitation if he did not see us as he does, and if we accept that invitation in faith we too may come to see what Jesus sees in us and in all of God’s beloved. May we be filled with gratitude for what Jesus allows us to see, and may we hear those words: Go, and be on your way, your faith has made you well.