St. Luke 17:11–19
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Last week, we heard Jesus tell a parable about an unlikely helper: the Good Samaritan. A man was attacked by robbers and left for dead, and while his fellow Jewish countrymen, a priest and a Levite, passed him by and would not help, a Samaritan came along, had compassion, and took care of the man. A Samaritan helped a Jew—very unlikely.
And today, we hear about another unlikely person: the one leper who returns to give thanks to Jesus, and he was a Samaritan. Ten lepers ask for mercy, ten lepers are healed, but only one returns to praise God. A Samaritan, a foreigner, worshiped Jesus—very unlikely.
So, what’s so unlikely about these Samaritans? Well, the simple answer is that Jews and Samaritans didn’t get along. But their hostility was far older than most family feuds. Their animosity goes back hundreds of years into the Old Testament. After the death of King Solomon, the Kingdom of Israel was divided. The northern tribes rebelled against the southern tribes and so two kingdoms were created. In the South, you had Judah and Benjamin, with their capital at Jerusalem with God’s holy temple. And these people eventually became known as Judeans or Jews. In the North, you had the other ten tribes, led by Ephraim and Manasseh, and their capital was at Samaria.
The northern kingdom, also known as Israel or Samaria, became incredibly wicked. Their kings set up idols for the people to worship, sacrificing to foreign gods and blaspheming the Lord. Again and again, the Lord sent them great prophets like Elijah, Elisha, Jonah, and Hosea, but the kings and the people would not repent. And so finally the Lord had the Assyrian Empire conquer and destroy Samaria. The Assyrians killed and scattered the northern Israelites. They also drove other foreign peoples into the land of northern Israel who intermarried with the remaining Israelites. Their descendants, living in the ruins of the northern kingdom are the people known as the Samaritans.
These Samaritans held onto parts of their Israelite faith, and retained the Books of Moses, but they also incorporated foreign superstitions. They also sided with the enemies of the Jews in several military conflicts. The strangest thing was that they built their own temple on Mount Gerizim in Samaria, claiming that this was the proper temple for the Lord, not the temple down south in Jerusalem in Judea. For these reasons, the Jews, their distant relatives, despised the Samaritans, they looked down on them. In the words of John’s Gospel, Jews have no dealings with Samaritans (John 4:9). This is why the Good Samaritan was an unlikely helper, and why it was unlikely that only this one Samaritan leper came back to worship Jesus.
Now, with this miracle of healing the ten lepers, we need to get one thing straight first: all ten are healed from their leprosy. They ask Jesus for mercy, for help, for healing. He tells them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests,” which was required by the Law of Moses to verify the healing. And all ten lepers listen to Jesus, set off to see the priests, and on the way, all ten are healed by His Word.
But we don’t know what kind of faith the other nine had. They had some kind of faith that Jesus would heal them because they listened to Him and did what He said. But having been healed, they did not go back and thank Him. This is worse than rudeness or ingratitude. The nine had faith as far as the healing was concerned, but not beyond that. They sought this benefit from Christ, but they did not receive Christ Himself through this benefit. For these nine, the healing was the object of their faith, but for the one who returned, the healing was the means for him to go to the true object of faith: Christ Himself. For those nine Jews, the healing led them away from Christ, but for the one Samaritan, the healing led him back to Christ.
We know that the Samaritan had true faith because Jesus says so: “Your faith has saved you.” Our translation says, “Your faith has made you well,” and it could mean that, but that’s not the point here. The other nine lepers were all made well, but Jesus says this one had faith and so was saved. Not only was his skin cleansed and his body made whole, but his sins were forgiven, He was justified, he was reconciled back to God through faith in the Christ who would make atonement for his sins. And this unlikely Samaritan shows his faith in Christ by his worship. When he was an unclean leper, he had to stand at a distance and cry for mercy. But now, cleansed and forgiven, he comes near. Praising God with a loud voice… he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving Him thanks. This Samaritan, who had been taught to ignore the Jews and disregard their worship, he comes back to this Jewish rabbi and worships Him as the true Lord of Israel, the God incarnate, his Messiah, his Savior. While the other nine Jews took their healing and missed their Messiah, this Samaritan recognized Him and worshiped Him.
This account calls to mind another interaction Jesus had with a different Samaritan: the one we know as the woman at the well. When Jesus met this woman and asked her for a drink, she was shocked that He, a Jew, would talk to her, a woman of Samaria. And in the course of their conversation, she also brought up the question of worship. Where was the proper place to worship the Lord? The Samaritan woman said to Jesus, “Our fathers the Samaritans worshiped on this mountain (Mount Gerizim), but you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You Samaritans worship what you do not know (because they have made up their own traditions); We Jews worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews (meaning the Messiah will come from the Jews, from the House of David). But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship Him.” (John 4:20–23). True worship of God is not done in a certain location or temple. The true worship of God is faith in Jesus Christ. What Jesus explains to this Samaritan woman, the Samaritan leper actually does: he worships the Father in spirit and truth by going to Jesus and recognizing Him as the Messiah and Savior.
So, we neither worship on Mount Gerizim in Samaria nor on the temple mount in Jerusalem. Neither being a Jew nor a Samaritan counts for anything in God’s sight. All have been redeemed by the blood of Christ. All who believe in Christ are one in Christ. And so, yes, this does mean that Christians worship the Lord anywhere. In fact, it’s not enough to say that we CAN worship Him anywhere, but that we MUST worship Him EVERYWHERE. This is not an excuse to skip church. This is not an excuse to say, “Oh, I worship God in my fishing boat, or on my tractor, or at home.” That’s beside the point. All of our life, every thought, word, and deed, should be done in praise to God. And because we know this is not the case, we don’t do this, we must never stop returning to Him, throwing ourselves at His feet, and crying out for mercy. And He never stops giving mercy to those who trust in Him.
But even more important than where we worship, is that we learn from this Samaritan leper what worship really is: it is going back to Jesus, recognizing Him as our Messiah and Savior. First and foremost, this means we go to where He is and receive from Him the gifts He has given to His Church. Worshiping Jesus by faith means that we trust His Word in the water of Baptism and know that we are covered by His righteousness, we have been crucified and raised to new life with Him, and we are adopted as the children of God. Worshiping Jesus by faith means that we pay attention to His Word: we read it, listen to it, learn from the preaching and teaching of the Word. Worshiping Jesus by faith also means that we hear the Word of God that forgives our sins, and with that Word of God ringing in our ears, we want to do better, we try to do better in living a holy life. Worshiping Jesus by faith means that we go to the Lord’s Supper, falling down at Jesus’ feet, trusting in His Words, eating and drinking His body and blood for the forgiveness of all our sins.
Dear Christians, you are neither Samaritans nor Jews. You have a new mountain and a new temple where you worship the Lord. You have come to Mount Zion, the Church of God, and you worship the Lord in the temple of His Son, the holy body of God incarnate, right here in your midst, your Messiah and your Savior. Like the one leper who returned to Jesus, you praise God with a loud voice and give Him thanks. Like the one who had faith in Jesus, you hear the Lord say to you, “Rise and go your way; your faith has saved you.”
In the Holy + Name of Jesus. Amen.
Some parts were informed and inspired by Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, pp.271–279 & 701–703.
