The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
On the missal stand — that’s where the book is — the altar book. The altar book contains all the worship services that we use in the LCMS, right? And with the publication of each hymnal — TLH, LW, now LSB — believe it or not, they’re not going to be working on another one, because it takes about 20 years to produce one of these things. So they’ve already turned the conversation, and soon there’s going to be another one. But with each altar book comes a companion book, and it’s called the Lutheran Service Book Agenda. And inside this there’s additional services, there are prayers, there are more liturgies, there are psalms. This is the supplement that pastors use when they go visiting people in their homes. And this newest Agenda, the Lutheran Service Book Agenda, contains in it Christian funeral rites, to replace the eulogies that we so commonly hear take over the service these days.
That is, there was a common tradition to have a Christian eulogy for each saint that was being buried, and it goes something like this: the eulogy — full name — John Doe is given life by his or her Creator and born on such and such a date, child of [name], in the name of the Father — and then you put the mother in — the date when he or she was baptized into the Christian faith and became a child of God, the day in which he or she publicly confessed their faith and was confirmed in their faith, and he or she received the precious gift of the Lord’s body and blood, and the date in which they received their beloved companion, his or her spouse, in holy matrimony, was blessed with children, and thus the names of children. God blessed them with many special things — that he or she had served in the church and worked in the community. And finally, on a certain date, the blessed one departed this life in a holy death, and God took him or her home to be in the arms of Jesus, to await the resurrection of the dead. Of course, that’s a kind of sloppy summation, but that’s example option number one. There’s an option number two. There’s an option number three. The whole point was this: when you’re doing a Christian burial, the eulogy should be about Christ — what he has done in and through the deceased. That’s the point. It’s not a list of good works to do. It, in fact, is a biography of what it means to be a Christian. It means to be baptized, to confirm the faith, to partake in the means of grace, to go to church, to serve the church in various forms and fashions, to serve one’s neighbors and one’s families, one’s community, one’s country, in true Christian faith. That’s what a Christian eulogy should be. And we lost the practice, a very long time ago, of having funerals in which the Christian eulogy is in fact spoken.
Now the gospel lesson — it’ll all come together in a few minutes, maybe more than a few minutes, but it’ll come together. The gospel lesson assigned for this morning is a familiar one to hear. And when we’re in Series C of the lectionary readings, we read this lesson twice each year, in kind of close proximity. You probably recognize the reading as the reading for Thanksgiving Day, for the Festival of the Harvest celebration: for the lepers that were cured, as the one that came back, thanking and praising the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s studied here during Pentecost, so it’s supposed to remind us of another theme presented to us. See, at Thanksgiving we focus on the gratitude of the Samaritan who comes back to give thanks and praise for his healing, thanks and praise to the Son of God, thus Thanksgiving. But the story tells us more than just the miracle and about the miracle worker of healing. On Thanksgiving we focus on the Samaritan, and Pentecost we focus on the words and deeds and person of Jesus Christ, whose words accomplish the purpose for which he spoke them.
The text begins with the statement that Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, but it’s his last trip. He went there three times during his earthly ministry. This is the last time he would make this journey to Jerusalem, and he’s taking the long way around to get there. And he took a rather dangerous and unpopular route, by the way. He took a route that took him between Galilee and Samaria. It was an area that was inhabited by both Jews and Samaritans who had open hostility one to the other. And along the way, we’re told, Jesus entered a certain village. Standing at a distance were ten lepers. Now Jesus knows this is a dangerous road. He knows the animosity between the Samaritans and the Jews. He’s been rejected and driven out of towns consisting of Samaritans throughout his ministry, on occasion welcomed by one or two here or there, featured in a parable here or there. But standing here, at a distance now, of this certain little village — why, there were ten leprous men. And when they saw Jesus, you know the story: they raised their voice and said, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”
Now one of those ten men, it is noted, was a Samaritan. And it’s safe to assume up until this moment his eulogy would have been rather a difficult eulogy. After all, he’s a Samaritan, outnumbered by Jews who hate him and want him dead. He’s probably endured plenty of problems and conflict with his Jewish neighbors in the community. And then, add insult to injury: not only is he a second-class citizen and probably mistreated most of his life, God afflicts the Samaritan with the disease of leprosy. Up until that moment, his eulogy is an unfortunate one — a hard-luck story of defeat, perhaps with a note of hope, of positive sort of encouragement for the others that might hear a eulogy about him, about perseverance and struggle. But now, meeting Jesus, a new eulogy will now begin. A new story will be written.
Samaritans were a minority, and being a minority — why, admit that you were the object of prejudice. It meant you grew up in a corrupt religion, and you had a skewed view of God, one who was only and all lawmaker. To add insult to injury, this particular Samaritan then contracts a skin disease: leprosy. You all know what leprosy meant in the Jewish culture of the day: and then forced separation from family and friends and population. The reason for separating the sick from the healthy, by the way, had more to do with religious beliefs than it had to do with medical precautions. Being in poverty or sick or handicapped, or having to endure an unusually difficult life, was understood by the people of the day, both Samaritan and the Jews, as a judgment of God against the one who was suffering. Such people were believed to be grievous, secret sinners who were being punished for their sins or for the sins of their family. So as an unholy people, they were unfit to be among the people of God, for fear of infecting them — not with so much the disease of leprosy, but with uncleanness, unholiness, with sin.
And Jesus was passing by. They raised their voice: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” That’s a plea of faith, by the way. It’s the Kyrie. It’s where we get the Kyrie. Here we go — why it’s in the liturgy: it’s the cry of sinners who are sick with sin, death, and under the power of the devil. It’s a plea and a prayer of faith. The ten leprous men knew who Jesus was. They had all heard the stories. They had heard about the works that he had done. They’d heard about his teaching, the gospel. They had heard that he was a caring and compassionate kind of prophet who had the ability to work miracles. So they pleaded, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”
When he saw them, he said to them, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And it came about as they were going, they were cleansed. Notice what Jesus did, and what Jesus did not do. Notice he did not tell them to fall down and worship him, that if they did that and confessed his name before him, he would heal them. Instead of drawing attention to himself, to his own works, as commanding them to offer him adoration, he tells them to do what the law of Moses required of them: to show themselves to the priests. Jesus directed them to simply follow the words of the Old Testament — namely, by the way, in his Word — and that’s found in Leviticus 13:2: “When anyone has a swelling or a rash or a shiny spot on their skin that may be a defiling skin disease, they must be brought to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons who is a priest.”
People who thought themselves cured of leprosy, or had actually been cured of some kind of skin disease, had to present themselves to the priests who would be on duty at the sanctuary 24/7. And the person being healed, or who had come to be healed, would then show himself, that the priest would be able to establish whether in fact it was true, and thus lift the exiled status from the one, and allow them back into the temple — which, by the way, in order to go back to the synagogue or the temple, they had to offer a sacrifice, an offering, and that’s in Leviticus 14:2. There’s a whole chapter, right there in Leviticus chapter 14, instructing both the penitent and the priests what they are to do in order to establish and declare one to be clean and healed.
Notice Jesus did not heal the ten men outright, though he could have. He didn’t say, “Rise and walk; your faith has made you well,” as he had previously done. He didn’t spit on their skin and make them clean, as he’d spit on somebody’s eyes before. He did not touch them. He did not let them touch the hem of his robe. He didn’t instruct them to do so, as had happened already. He didn’t take them by the hand, as he had done in the raising of the dead and people who were on the verge of dying. He simply told them to go, head off, and go show yourselves to the priests — go to Jerusalem. That’s offensive, by the way. In this way, Jesus and the ten men were keeping the law of Moses, and Jesus would be showing proper deference to the office of priest. He didn’t come to abolish it; he came instead to bring it into the New Testament period. Without some goodwill toward the priests in the office of the priesthood, the priests, you see, might not be inclined to declare the men clean — as a way to reject Jesus, and as a penalty toward the men who were following Jesus’s instructions and sending them to the priest.
Jesus was doing something that we don’t usually give him credit for doing, namely, he was combining tact and discretion with kindness and mercy in order to achieve for the ten leprous men the maximum benefit possible in the working of the miracle. Jesus was practicing what he was preaching, namely, he was being as wise as a serpent in his dealing with the priests, and as gentle as a dove in his dealings with the leprous men.
Now on the lepers’ part, the act of going to the priests in this circumstance was an act of faith of some kind. When they started the journey, they hadn’t yet been healed of their leprosy. Even though they had not seen any results, they believed somehow, in some way, once they’d reached the priests, they would be healed by that kind act, and thus declared clean and worthy once again to come into the presence of both men and God. And it came about as they were going, they were cleansed.
Now one of them, when he saw that he had been healed, turned back, glorifying God with a loud voice, and he fell on his face at Jesus’s feet, giving him thanks. And he was a Samaritan. You know, all ten were healed. Only one — the Samaritan, who had a really bad theology and should never go to Jerusalem in the first place — turned back, glorifying God. And Jesus, when he saw the man, questioned where the others had gone. Why, Jesus said to the man, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”
In telling the Samaritan leper, “Your faith has made you well,” Jesus was declaring that the man was truly forgiven, cleansed, made a new man. It’s not a reference to the healing that’s already taken place, the physical, bodily being. It’s a reference to what now sets this man apart from all the others: he returned to the Lord God, to the Son of God, and he offered true Christian praise, born out of true Christian faith. The healing did not come about as a result of his faith, or the faith of the other nine. The healing came about because Jesus made it so. But only one was well. Only one was saved, and that is the one whose sins had been forgiven and who was made in that moment a child of God. And now he would start his own life in Christ and build his own Christian eulogy. That’s what it meant when Jesus says to someone, “Your faith has made you well.”
Just think of that. Yeah, I don’t particularly care for it — it’s a little schmaltzy for me — but it’s not bad in its lyrics: “It Is Well with My Soul.” Right? That is a hymn about the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. It even has, for those Sunday-morning folks that stay around, an eschatological stanza to it.
Jesus spoke, and this Samaritan man, of an errant religion and a false understanding, was made a true man of true Christian faith. This faith was created by the words of Jesus Christ, the words that directed him to go, to believe, and to do as instructed. See, faith is in fact a gift of God — that is true Christian faith. People claim faith. I’ll get there in a second. Right? “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God” — Ephesians 2:8.
The man who believed it was a sin against God and Moses to worship anywhere else other than on Mount Gerizim glorified God, worshiped God in Jesus Christ, as he fell at Jesus’s feet, face down, giving him thanks and praise. This act alone was a violation of all that the Samaritans believed and practiced. It was a renunciation of his errant faith. Here, the Samaritan man leaves behind the faith that marked him as a Samaritan and embraces the one true Christian faith. He leaves behind ordinary things born in the hearts and minds of sinful men, and is now born anew of true Christian faith, and thus his Christian eulogy now begins.
Jesus Christ and his words are unique. Thus he is the Creator and Giver of this unique, one-of-a-kind faith — a one-of-a-kind faith that’s not born of the flesh, doesn’t come out of the heart and mind of sinful human beings. That’s a sinful human faith. Nope. This is the kind of faith that’s only born by the Word and sacrament ministry of the church, by the very words of God. True Christian faith only comes from Christ Jesus and his Word. Without the preaching of the law and the gospel — I’m going to say that again — without the preaching of the law and the gospel, there is no true Christian faith. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ — Romans 10:17. Or John 14:23 and 24: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. And the one who does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.” Without the Word of God, there is no operation of the Holy Spirit. Without the Word of the Holy Spirit, there is only ordinary, sinful, flawed faith that is grounded in sinful human nature.
It’s not any different than the faith and confidence that you have that when you’re driving home from the service, the person coming at you is going to stay in their lane. That’s hardly saving faith. There are a lot of people who claim to possess faith — we hear it all the time. But it doesn’t take long to discover, in a conversation or watching their life, that it’s counterfeit: the faith is not grounded in Christ, in his Word. They don’t know Christ, and they certainly don’t know any words he spoke. They think they do, but they don’t. Instead, their faith is grounded in works, their feelings, their experience, their own way of thinking. “Jesus loves me, this I know, for my feelings tell me so” — because they don’t have a clue what the Bible actually says.
Such a faith, whether it’s in Buddha or Muhammad or some generic, abstract God, higher power, good works, or emotions, is not a saving faith. Such a faith is death — death to the words of God. Faith that rises out of fallen human nature does not seek Christ where he can be found, that is, in the Word and sacrament ministry of the church. It doesn’t come to a real church. Such faith knows nothing of the objective Christology, the reality of what Jesus meant and what he was referring to when he said, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” — namely, in the church, in the Word and sacrament ministry, and the preaching and teaching of his Word.
Such a faith, you see, is corrupt. Corrupted already, such a faith is leprosy: it’s decaying, and it’s leading to death. Natural faith is death to objective grace, to the mercy and peace of Jesus Christ. Mercy and peace is ever present in the preaching and teaching of the Word of God and in his life-giving and blessed sacraments. Our God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — because he is not far off, he’s not aloof, he’s not indifferent to us — he does not even leave the matter of faith to ourselves, for us to generate it by ourselves. No, it’s a gift. He creates a supernatural gift, creating the faith that is unlike anything else in all the world.
He’s doing what he’s always done. He’s holding out the Word of life to all those who will hear it and will hold fast to it in true faith, and live according to that faith — which, by the way, lives according to the Word, to the best of this sinner’s ability. Ten lepers have been healed. Only one, seeing the miracle, returned to him, turned back in true Christian faith. Luther writes of this: “This is the true worship of God: to come back to praise God with voice. This is the greatest work in heaven and on earth.” Also the only one which we may show God, for of the others he has no need. That is, the only work that God is finally and ultimately interested in is the work of true Christian faith that he gave to you, that lives in you, and that you will nurture by coming here and hearing his Word, by confessing your sin and being forgiven.
Luther: he receives us only to be loved and praised by us — that he loves. But that is terrible: that the Lord just knows that they have sin that’s been cleansed. The fact that they had not reckoned — he does not hold his peace about it, but asks for them. And he seeks them: “Where are the other nine?” Oh, what a terror it will be at that time when they feel the question and have to answer: where did they go? For they did not give thanks. We have all vowed in baptism to follow Christ and his teaching. No one has vowed to follow the pope or the bishops and clerics. God’s Christ has altogether rejected the doctrines of men — also, by the way, the faith of men.
Jesus, you see, is the merciful one. He is the compassionate one. He is the giver of the true gift of true Christian faith, and he does that through his Word. Jesus finished his journey to Jerusalem and to the cross and made atonement for the sins of the world, and for your sins in particular. He has called, gathered, enlightened, and sanctified you with his Word and the Holy Spirit and the whole Christian church on earth, so that one day your healing and your Christian eulogy will be made complete. For your sins are forgiven. Amen.
May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.