“THE GOOD
SAMARITAN SAVES SAMARITANS”
Saint Luke 17. 11-19
14th Sunday after Trinity: 1 September
Anno Domini 2013
Fr. Jay Watson
SSP
In The + Name of
Jesus
“For
the Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword,
piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and
marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” [Heb.
4.12]
In the fullness of time, doing God’s will,
the Nazarene journeyed to Jerusalem. The Trinity’s will was that the Son obey
the Torah and do all that Adam and his spouse failed to do. The design of God’s
salvation was that the flesh and blood Messiah, the true Israel, would restore
fallen man by suffering and dying for all trespassers. And on the journey of
buy-back and liberation the God/Man would reveal to some just Who
it was marching freely to the tree of death and the resurrection of family and
life. God in the flesh would heal and restore many during His brief visible Palestinian ministry.
Ethnic rivalries and Jewish theological
politics aside, to get from northern Israel to Jerusalem in the south, one had
to walk from the region of Galilee through Samaria as one headed up hill to
Judea and King David’s ancient city. Jesus was in an area that had a mixture of
Jews and
Gentiles, a mingling of pedigreed and “correct-thinking”
Jews, heterodox half-breed Samaritans, and pagan syncretistic Greeks/Gentiles.
As Jesus entered a “certain village,
there met Him ten sinners.” These ten men, by the way were lepers. Let us
Lutherans deliciously borrow from Thomas Aquinas and correctly note that by essence,
by true inherent ontological nature, the ten men were sinners…their
incidental “accidents,” i.e. form and outward appearance just
happened to be that of leprosy. For you see, all sinners are flawed,
broken, decayed, dying, and horribly disfigured. Some are deaf, some are mute,
some are dead 12-year old girls, some are women with unceasing flows of blood;
some are cheating tax-collectors; some are “fallen
women” with alabaster flasks of spikenard, and some are Samaritan women at wells with
collections of husbands. And some are you:
every one of you with your moral leprosy of disfiguring and ugly sins of daily
omission and commission.
The John 3.16 of “for God so loved the world” is because of the Romans
5.11 of “all have sinned.” The wages
of sin is death for you and every human since the sentence was first pronounced
on Adam. And along the way there’s heartburn and heart disease; astigmatism and
blindness; bad backs and ALS; baldness and leprosy. With the lepers--
He heals all ten of physical decay—but
that’s NOT the point. Earlier in Matthew’s Evangel Jesus speaks the truth that
The Father “maketh His sun to rise on the
evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” [Mt.
5. 45]
And while it’s true that re-born Christians
are still simul iustus et peccator (simultaneously
sinners AND saint) what our text shows is that good things happen to Greeks and
Jews, pagans and believers, Muslims and Lutherans. They were all healed by the
Word of the Lord. They had all cried out to Him in anguish and heart-felt need “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us” and
He did. Whether they were all sincere in their Old Testament confession of
Genesis 3.15 and following is NOT the point. Their cry is not why He healed them, in so far as their desire to be healed (their faith) is not what healed them.
Cancer wards are packed to the gills with old and young who desire to be healed
AND who still love Jesus. The point is always and ONLY about the Christ of God,
Who He is and what He does! Jesus can do miracles upon anyone He chooses to but
ONLY His gift of faith by the Holy Spirit can create a living man out of dead
man. Only Jesus finds lost sheep, a lost
Samaritan leper and gives Him back a beating heart that can receive a
transfusion of eternal Godly Blood and fresh + live-restoring water.
Yes of course good works and an attempt to
strive for a sanctified life of obedience ALWAYS follows faith and
regeneration…but the word is “follows.”
It’s not that the Samaritan who “turned back” was not going to
subsequently “go shew himself unto the
priests,” sure he was…but first things first. JESUS.
The nine who left, who did not return are
the fallen and rejecting Jewish nation, a picture
of all who driven by works righteousness and glory to seek to show others
themselves and have others recognize them for their deeds, good fortune, and
glory. The returning Samaritan is the blood-bought saint found and created by
God to receive all that the Son can bestow—yes, health, but so much more by faith: LIFE ETERNAL in
the forgiveness of sins. For only in forgiveness does Jesus then bestow more
of His words of Peace and His banquet of rest and love.
In this encounter with Jesus the God/Man,
Saint Luke gives you your own family history and your daily diary, including
what you’ll be doing now, and in a few short minutes at the communion rail.
To be sure, perhaps the nine, or some of
them were later to seek Jesus out (but BY THE POWER of JESUS—His Word and
Spirit) and that too is Grace filled joy for all of us. But the crux is that
true worship, true servanthood, is not what you
do but Who you receive. As
Melanchthon notes in the Apology, true worship is to receive the gifts of
Jesus. Receive your king with the Samaritan, you my fellow Samaritans. Receive
Him on bended knee. Fall with your face at His pierced and scarred feet and
give glory to God by eating and drinking the God/Man. The very content
of Jesus-given faith: JESUS—has made you whole, and Holy.
In The Name of The Father and of + The Son and of
The Holy Ghost
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