The Giver and the Gift: A Meditation on Luke 17

And it came to pass, as he went to Jerusalem, that

he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee.

And as he entered into a certain village, there met

him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off:

And they lifted up their voices, and said,

Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.

And when he saw them, he said unto them,

Go shew yourselves unto the priests. And it

came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed.

 And one of them, when he saw that he was healed,

turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God,

And fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks:

and he was a Samaritan.  And Jesus answering said,

Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine?

There are not found that returned to give glory to

God, save this stranger. And he said unto him,

Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.

In this short vignette from Luke 17, Jesus’ encounter with these ten lepers reveals something very troubling about human nature.  Leprosy was an umbrella diagnosis with serious physical, social, and religious implications in ancient Israel.  Regardless of which skin ailment or deformation was medically presenting, Mosaic Law prescribed that such people should be segregated (quarantined) away from the community until the priests cleared them to return.  While modern understandings of micro-biology and infectious disease have given us tools for more refined treatment of people with contagious diseases, quarantine is still the method used when dangerous or life threatening diseases appear in populated areas (consider the recent Ebola outbreaks) and infected people are not allowed back into the general population until evaluated by a competent authority and declared “clean.”  For these lepers which Jesus encountered, their disease left them rotting in exile, excluded from their families, their communities, and their places of worship.  When Jesus healed them and sent them to show themselves to the priests, He gave the gift of life and restoration in every facet of their lives.  However long these ten lepers had been in their condition, their ostracization was at an end.

The enormity of the good gift Jesus gave them was apparently enough to make nine of the ten forget the One who gave it to them.  Just one of the ten returned to fall at Jesus’ feet, giving glory and thanks to God for rescuing him from his morbid fate.  Jesus took the moment to teach those around Him, noting to His Jewish disciples that though all ten were cleansed by His miraculous and gracious gift, only one foreigner—a Samaritan, generally loathed by Jews—recognized the Giver of the gift.  Nine Jews who should have known better, taught by the Hebrew Scriptures to reverence their God of grace, healing, and mercy, instead reveled in the gift without regard to the Giver.  Noting the depth of difference between those nine and the thankful Samaritan at His feet, Jesus told the penitent and grateful man, “Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.”  Something more than leprosy had been healed in that Samaritan, as the gift of grace Jesus offered him was received in faith, raising him up in a new life of love and gratitude for the One who had saved him.  All ten had been healed of their leprosy, having received a great and wonderful gift—but we see only one who received the even greater gift of reconciliation with God by grace through faith in Jesus.

It is worth taking a moment to examine ourselves in light of this teaching moment Jesus offers us.  How many great and wonderful gifts have we received from Almighty God, as individuals, families, communities, a nation, and a world?  Our world is blessed with much abundance, variety, and beauty, set apart from the wasteland expanses of sterile space.  Our nation is blessed with stability and prosperity unrivaled anywhere in the world.  Our communities have running water, electricity, sanitation, schools, and hospitals, so that even our most downtrodden enclaves still fare much better than so much of the rest of the world.  Our families generally dwell in peace, protected by the laws of the land.  As individuals we live as free persons, where everyone can work and learn and make a living for themselves according to their own choice, effort, and competence.  On even the most superficial of examinations, we are blessed—and at a finer point of consideration, every person, no matter how rough or coarse their circumstances, is blessed with life in this world, and the promise of eternal life in the world to come.  All of these gifts, and so many more, come to us freely from the hand of our good and gracious God, whose life and love and mercy He pours out to us through His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ.

And yet, how many of us become so bedazzled by the gifts, that we forget the Giver of our gifts?  How easy it is to revel in the beauty of nature, the freedoms of our nation, the joys of hearth and home, and our own personal freedom to determine the paths we tread in our lives, and to forget the good and gracious God who gives them all to us by His grace.  As great and wonderful as these gifts are, it is all too easy for us to forget that deep down inside us all is a sinful and fallen nature which before God is sick, diseased, contagious, ostracized, and unable to heal itself.  Deep down inside us all is a dead and dying heart full of pride, malice, lust, covetousness, hatred, and a thousand variations on the evils which enamor us.  Way down deep in places we don’t like to talk about even with our closest friends, we know we’re in desperate need of forgiveness, new life, salvation, and reconciliation with our good and gracious God.  In that dark and diseased recess of our corrupted soul, we know we need Jesus to heal, cleanse, restore, and enliven us again.

Hear Jesus as He calls to you from the pages of His Holy Scriptures, that you might not lose sight of the Giver as you enjoy His good and gracious gifts.  Rejoice in the good creation He has given you, but do not forget the Creator; enjoy the blessings of good government and local community, without forgetting the King of the Universe; embrace the joys of family and friends, yet without forgetting your heavenly Father; give thanks for your life and the freedom you have to live it, while remembering the Author of Life.  And beside all these things, so wondrous and gracious and good, give thanks and glory to Jesus who restores your soul and your eternal fellowship with your good and gracious God through the sacrifice of His Cross.  Return by faith to the feet of Jesus, that you may hear His Word of grace reach into every corner of your being:  Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.

Amen.