Göttinger Predigten
Göttinger Predigten im Internet hg. von U. Nembach
18th Sunday after Pentecost, 10/13/2019
Sermon on Luke 17:11-19, by Paul C. Sizemore
Ruth 1:1-19a; 2 Timothy 3:1-14; Luke 17:11-19
It always does our hearts good, to see other people get back up on their feet again; especially after they have been devastatingly knocked down by some sort of tragedy or misfortune in their lives?
And yes, it must have been very difficult obstacle for those three dear ladies to overcome, in our Old Testament lesson (Ruth 1:1-19) in the aftermath of such great losses that they had suffered!
The story of Ruth begins with Ruth as a young woman. Her life seems to hold a bright future. She marries a man with strong family ties. They begin building a life together. But within the span, of only a few short years, her extended family through marriage, is repeatedly assaulted by the last enemy to be faced by us all (I Cor. 15:26); that old grim reaper called death.
Ruth’s father-in-law and then her own husband and her brother-in-law have all died recently! The last thing anyone would have ever expected is that any one of those three men would have died, given their relatively young age at the time of their deaths.
Ruth and Orpah had no “blood-relationship” with their mother-in-law, Naomi, but out of the great love they had shared with her, they wanted to devote themselves to caring for Naomi in supplying her needs.
Besides this, the immense devotion that Ruth and Orpah wanted to give to Naomi speaks volumes about the kind of sweet, caring, supportive, and loving mother-in-law Naomi must have been to her daughters-in-law, whom she treated much more readily as her very own daughters!
Over time, Ruth came to see that she was twice blessed. She was blessed with the love her mother-in-law Naomi was showering upon her. But also, by marrying into a Hebrew family, she became blessed with the love and peace Naomi’s God had showered upon her too.
That’s why Ruth turns to her mother-in-law Naomi and speaks those well-known words of the Bible that for decades and centuries, “nuptials” have spoken to
each other on their Wedding Day, though they are not originally words spoken by the two people who are getting married, at all!
When Naomi tries her best to decline the offer of devotion that Ruth longs to share with her, Ruth return Naomi’s punt with a quick snap of the ball too. Ruth says to Naomi: “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go, I will go! And where you lodge, I will lodge! Your people shall be my people and your God my God! Where you die, I will die and there will I be buried! May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything, but death separate me, from you!” (Ruth 1:16-17).
Friends, if Ruth’s wonderful response to her mother-in-law Naomi, was in large part an expression of her gratitude for being twice blessed, first by the love and care that Naomi had shown to her, and secondly, by the love and care that the LORD God Almighty, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, had shared with her, why how could Ruth do anything other than to seek to love her mother-in-law as her very own mother, in return?
Similarly, our Gospel Lesson (Luke 17:11-19) today, shows us also how a man, who initially was in a very precarious situation also becomes twice blessed through his epic encounter with Jesus!
Upon his first coming within eyeshot of Jesus, this man is one of ten lepers living a life of social isolation and physical decay.
Leprosy disfigures the body.
Leprosy was so fearful of being contracted by other human beings in a community that lepers were forced to live in their own colonies. These ten men in anguish see Jesus as he is going to Jerusalem and cry out, “Lord, have mercy upon us!”
They plead for mercy, which is undeserved love; the love given to those who cannot pay back, the love that can only come from a lover who loves another only for love’s sake.
The Lord Jesus responds to their petitions. He tells them to go see the local priest in accordance with the Old Testament Levitical Law, dictating such!
Somewhere in route to the priest, these ten debilitated men, suddenly discover to their own great chagrin that the sores on their bodies have become healed up and that their skin was not completely free of that dreadful scourge.
In addition to this, their limbs are also made whole; arms and hands, legs and feet! They are healed. No doubt they rejoiced and sang hymns of praise exuberantly to the Lord God.
All nine Jews and one Samaritan, though come to think about it, there could have been more than just one Samaritan in that traveling entourage, all of them were miraculously healed by the power of God’s Word. And they were all healed by the generosity of the LORD God, the Creator of heaven and earth.
All ten men are healed, but only one of them received this magnificent healing from Jesus, with a spirit of true thanksgiving and he was a Samarian.
What did he do? Discovering that he was healed, he turned around and hightailed it back to Jesus. We are told that he returned to the Master, fell at his feet, and thanked him and said to him: “Praise God!”
By the eye-opening, enlightening ministry of the Holy Spirit, the one, some might have said was the “least deserving” person, turns out to be twice blessed, healed of leprosy but also gifted with the knowledge of God’s salvation come to earth in the Holy Son of God, who took on himself our human flesh and blood in order to reconcile us to his Heavenly Father!
Please let me say it again: The One Lonely Samaritan, the one least deserving, from his fellow men’s eyes, could see beyond the darkness of the present moment and looked: “To see God and to give to God, all the glory!”
He saw the light of God’s grace in the healing he experienced and returned to thank the One through whom that undeserved gift of healing had come to him!
Jesus responds to this ACT OF THANKSGIVING with what my high school English teacher called a “double entendre;” a statement with a double meaning. “Your faith, has made you well!”
When we consider the central message in Luke and Acts the meaning of the story of the ten lepers comes into sharp focus. Luke’s central message is that JESUS OF NAZARETH BROUGHT GOD’S FINAL AND UNIVERSAL RULE OF GRACE INTO THIS WORLD. The signs of that universal kingdom were found in his healing others and liberating those who were oppressed and through his love shown to the poor.
But his own people (the Jewish people) would not see the meaning of his mission. “He came to his own and his own received him not!” (John 1:13). JESUS WOULD SUFFER AND DIE IN JERUSALEM, BUT GOD WOULD RAISE HIM AND GOD’S KINGDOM WOULD SPREAD THROUGHOUT THE WORLD.
In this story, nine people are healed but do not see Jesus as the bearer of God’s final salvation. The Samaritan, the foreigner, is healed and sees Jesus as the source of God’s special healing in the world. He becomes the symbol of the church’s outreach to the whole world. He is doubly blessed.
As we may learn from Ruth’s wonderful example, receiving a gift with thanksgiving is more than saying: “Thanks!” It is living the thankful life. The nine who were healed but gave no thanks were probably not fundamentally changed with a fresh, God-given outlook on life!
It seems that their only interest was to return to business as usual!
But do you remember Jesus parable of the unforgiving servant? He embezzled many thousands of dollars from the king. When caught, he pleaded for mercy. To his immense, most undeserved surprise, the King granted him mercy and forgave all his debt.
BUT IMMEDIATELY AFTER THIS, LO AND BEHOLD, THIS VERY SAME SERVANT GOES OUT AND ENCOUNTERS A FELLOW SERVANT WHO OWES TO HIM A SUM OF MONEY, BUT A VERY MEAGER AMOUNT OF MONEY IN COMPARISON TO THE ENORMOUS DEBT THAT HE HAS JUST BEEN FORGIVEN!
Let’s say a that the king forgave his servant a $50,000 debt, but that same forgiven servant could not find it within his own heart and mind to forgive his fellow servant a mere $50 debt; that was a mere DROP IN THE BUCKET BY COMPARISON, A LOUSY FIFTY DOLLARS!
FOR ONE TO BE FORGIVEN ALL THEIR DEBTS, IN THE FORGIVENESS OF ALL THEIR TRESPASSES BY ALMIGHTY GOD IS A GREAT BLESSING. BUT BEING ABLE IN TURN THEREFORE TO PASS ON THAT SAME KIND OF FORGIVENESS TO ANOTHER WHO HAS WRONGED YOU IS TO BE TWICED BLESSED.
There is an ancient legend about two angels who flew to earth to gather people's prayers. Wherever people bowed in prayer by their bedside at night, in a chapel, or on the side of a mountain, the angels stopped and gathered the prayers into their baskets. Before long the basket carried by one of the angels grew heavy with the weight of what he had collected, but the basket of the other angel remained virtually empty!
Into the first were put prayers of petition. We all know those kinds of prayers: “Lord, please give me this, Lord, please give me that! Do this for me or do that for me!
Into the second basket was to be placed all the prayers of thanksgiving and gratitude that were being offered up unto the Lord! You know what I mean: “THE THANK YOU" prayers; the prayers of gratitude!
"Your basket seems very light!" said the first angel to the second.
"Yes," replied the one who carried the`Thank You's. "People are usually ready enough to pray for what they want, but very few remember to thank God when He grants them, their requests."
The half-breed, the outcast, the Gentile, the one considered unholy, showed just how holy his heart really was. He expressed his gratitude. And to this man Christ gave not only a physical blessing but also a spiritual blessing. He said to him: “Go your way. Your faith has saved you.”
The other nine had been freed from the misery of leprosy, but they were still in bondage to the misery of ingratitude. I am convinced that this small footnote to the story is there to remind us that God’s salvation is for all those outside the doors of this church. And for that we should all throw ourselves at the feet of Jesus and give thanks.
Ruth became the great-grandmother to King David! How did this happen? Someone in Ruth’s deceased husband’s family had to buy back or "redeem" the right to own the land in Israel that would have belonged to him. That "kinsman redeemer", as they called him, was Boaz. But don’t misunderstand, this wasn’t just a business deal - it is a love story! Boaz didn’t want the land; he wanted Ruth’s hand in marriage. He had fallen in love with her watching her commitment to her mother-in-law and her gleaning in the barley fields.
So, he goes through the proper channels and legally becomes her husband.
God blesses them with a child. Obed, the father of Jesse, the father of David. David became the greatest king of Israel, a type of Christ, "the man after God’s own heart."
Who would ever have dreamed an outsider, a Moabite woman, would be in the very lineage of Christ Himself? GOD DID!
God knew you before you were born. He knows what’s going on in your life right now! You can expect great things from Him if you will take risks for Him like Ruth did.
You can expect great things from Him if you will look after the needs of others and not just your own needs, the way that Ruth did.
And you know what else?
Our God made a way for him to become our own "kinsman redeemer"! He sent His only Son to die on the cross in our place. Jesus purchased heaven for us on that cross.
We can’t make it to heaven on our own. We’re sinners; outsiders like Ruth!
But God is rich in His grace. He loves to bless people. Step out in faith and you will see that there is no limit to the great things He can do! Amen