| |
Today's gospel reading poses the question of the
nature of faith. Is it possible to have faith in Jesus
without really believing in who he is? Is it possible to
have sufficient faith to receive God's blessing without
actually acknowledging the source of that blessing? You
see the story we find here tells of 10 people who were
healed through faith of some sort, yet only one who
appears to show true belief in Jesus. |
| |
Jesus is travelling towards Jerusalem on his
final pilgrimage to Jerusalem when he comes to a small
town. Just as he's entering the town he's met by a group
of ten men who are suffering from leprosy. Following the
conventions of the day, they keep their distance from
him, but call out "Jesus! Master! Take pity on
us!" We assume of course that the pity they're
asking for is that he'll heal them of their disease. |
| |
Now in a similar incident in Mark's gospel,
Jesus stretches out his hand, touches the man and says
"Be clean!". But here, all he says is "Go,
show yourselves to the Priests." There's no direct
indication of his willingness to heal. Just the
implication that if they're to show themselves to the
priests it's because they've been healed. It's really a
test of their faith isn't it? If they believe that Jesus
will heal them then they'll go. // And in fact that's
what they do, and as they go they discover that they've
been healed. Have you ever noticed how sometimes you have
to actually set out to do something before you see God at
work? How it's not until you take the first step, or the
first series of steps that you discover whether this is
indeed God at work. This is what we found with the Alpha
Course we've just finished. We didn't really know whether
it was worth doing, whether God would use it, until the
end. Then we discovered that God had used it greatly.
Well that's what happens here. These 10 men show their
faith in God by setting out for the local synagogue to
show themselves to the priests. And their faith is
rewarded. |
| |
But one of them, when he discovers he's been
healed turns around and comes back to Jesus to show his
gratitude. Now notice what he does. First of all he comes
praising God with a loud voice. He recognises that the
power to heal him has come from God, that Jesus is
working as an instrument of God's power and he wants
everyone to know about it. And when he gets to Jesus he
throws himself to the ground in an act of obeisance,
thanking him for his love and care, but also showing his
awareness of Jesus' closeness to God. Then we're told
that he was a Samaritan; a member of a nation that had
nothing to do with the Jews - and vice versa. Yet here he
was returning to acknowledge his debt to this Jewish
teacher and healer. |
| |
Well, Jesus looks around and asks "where
are the other 9?" Was this foreigner the only one to
come back and give thanks to God? Presumably the others
were Jews. Why hadn't they come back? Well, perhaps they
were so overcome with the joy of being healed that the
thought hadn't crossed their minds that they should
return to thank Jesus. Or perhaps they were afraid that
if they came back before they did as he said the healing
wouldn't be permanent. On the other hand they may have
been so intent on completing the requirements of the law
that they wouldn't stop until they got to the priests and
were declared clean again. Whatever the reason, the fact
remains that only this one man, and he a Samaritan,
returned to give thanks to God and to acknowledge Jesus.
And so it was to this man alone that Jesus could say
"Go your faith has made you well." Or more
literally, "Your faith has saved you." |
| |
Now it seems to me that this account raises a
number of questions for us about faith. First of all what
part did faith play in the healing of the ten lepers.
That is, what caused them to be healed? Was it their
faith that brought about the cure? Or was it simply Jesus
power, or God's power, independent of their faith in
Jesus? Does the fact that 9 of them failed to return to
thank Jesus indicate that they didn't really believe in
him? // Well I'd suggest that the way Jesus performed the
healing was in itself a test of their faith. That is,
without a certain amount of faith in Jesus, they would
never have been healed. If you look back a few verses in
Luke ch 17 you find the disciples asking Jesus to
increase their faith. And how does he answer them? He
says "all you need is faith as small as a mustard
seed and you'll be able to say to this mulberry bush be
uprooted and be planted in the sea and it will obey
you." It's not by chance that this incident with the
10 lepers comes straight after that saying. Although it
would seem that 9 of the lepers had only a tiny amount of
faith, still it was enough for them to be healed. We have
to assume that if they hadn't gone to show themselves to
the priests they wouldn't have been healed at all. So
there's some sort of correlation between their basic
faith in what Jesus says and their healing. |
| |
But what about the other man? The one who
returned to give thanks to God? He seems to have been
singled out for particular praise from Jesus for his
faith. Was it that the faith that he exhibited was
different from the others? That seems to be the
implication doesn't it? The fact that he returned seems
to indicate that he recognised in Jesus more than just a
healer. Here was someone who deserved a special sort of
acknowledgment. In fact the way the story is told,
there's a close link between the man's praise of God and
his approach to Jesus, as though his throwing himself on
the ground before Jesus is an act of worship. And he's
rewarded for his greater level of faith by Jesus'
acknowledgment of his faith. He's not just been healed,
he's also come into a relationship with Jesus, and that
new relationship is the source of healing not just of his
leprosy, but of all that separates him from God. So when
Jesus says your faith has made you well, or your faith
has saved you, we sense that he has in mind far more than
just his disease. |
| |
Another question that arises from all this is
the question of how our faith develops. Or to put it
another way, is our faith still developing? You see, if
the faith of this one man developed to this extent in the
matter of minutes, how much more should we expect our
faith to continue growing throughout our life. Paul in
his second letter to the Corinthians said: "Our hope
is that, as your faith continues to grow, our area of
activity among you will greatly expand." (2 Cor
10:5) It seems that he had a continuing expectation that
their faith would continue to grow. And so should we. If
our faith starts off like a mustard seed, we could expect
it to grow like a mustard seed into a large bush. - But
of course the thing about seeds is that they have to be
watered don't they? I guess Jesus' encouragement to the
one man who returned was his way of watering that seed of
faith. And in fact the man himself had watered it already
in a sense by the very act of returning to kneel at Jesus
feet. It's a bit like the parable of the sower and the
soils. The seed in that parable grew where it found soil
that welcomed it and gave it nourishment. When he
returned to kneel at Jesus' feet, the man was nourishing
his faith by focusing on the source of his healing, the
one who represented God's power on earth. |
| |
But how do we feed our faith so it grows?
Well, like this Samaritan, by keeping our eyes on Jesus.
"Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and
perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him
endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at
the right hand of the throne of God. 3
Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men,
so that you will not grow weary and lose heart."
(Heb 12:2-3) Secondly, Paul suggests in Galatians that
the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself
through love. That is, love is the way that faith
expresses itself. But isn't it also true that showing
love is a way of increasing our faith. Why? Because
"we love because he first loved us." So as we
show love to others we reflect the love of God towards
us. And so each loving act reminds us of that love. |
| |
Similarly as we act to put our trust in
God; as we step out trusting that he'll look after us,
we're reminded of his care for us and our faith is
strengthened. I guess it's a bit like going into
training. Each time you exercise you get a bit stronger.
I started going to the gym about 18 months ago and I
remember how I started off lifting just a few kgs each
time. But now, 18 months later I'm miles stronger than I
was then. If I went back to those sorts of weights I'd
have no trouble with them at all. I wouldn't even raise a
sweat! And that's purely due to practice. It's the
natural process of building up fitness and strength
through regular exercise of those particular muscles.
Well, we have to do the same thing with faith in God. We
have to keep on exercising our faith until it grows and
becomes strong enough to sustain us. |
| |
Now there are two dangers I want us to be
aware of. First of all there's the danger that we read
about this miracle of healing and think that healing is
the natural outcome of faith, so if we pray for healing
and it doesn't come then we mustn't have faith, or at
least not enough. But this passage doesn't teach that.
All this passage says is that the men who were healed,
particularly that one who returned, had faith and that
faith was significant in their healing. But as we've
already seen, the degree of faith they showed wasn't
necessarily the issue. For Jesus to heal these particular
people only required faith like a mustard seed. In Mark's
gospel we find an incident when the disciples couldn't
cast out a demon, because, Jesus said, it was a type that
could only be cast out through prayer. That is it
required more than just their faith to cast it out. And
there are times when for some reason, God chooses not to
bring healing no matter how great our faith is. Of course
the other side of this danger is that when healing does
come through our prayers, we can be tempted to think it
was because of our great faith, and start to feel puffed
up by it. Well the previous section of Luke 17 seems to
be addressed to that very danger. Jesus reminds his
disciples that no matter what they've been doing, even if
they've done great miracles of faith, at the end of the
day, all they can say is "We are mere servants, we
have only done our duty." |
| |
The second danger is related to the first.
It's that we begin to feel that faith is the object of
our Christian life. If you like, we begin to have faith
in faith itself, rather than in God. So we work so hard
at having faith that we forget that God is real and
relates to us as real people: that what matters, as was
the case with this Samaritan, is that we have a personal
relationship with Jesus. So that we can handle the times
when things go wrong as well as when things go right.
Because in the end our faith is in a person, but a person
who is so far beyond our understanding that all we can do
is to trust him, whether or not we understand what he's
doing with us. In the end all we can do is acknowledge
that everything we have is from God, that every good and
perfect gift comes from above, coming down from the
Father of the heavenly lights. |
| |
Like the Samaritan in this story, when we
see God working, all we can do is to come with praise and
thanks to his feet. That in itself will strengthen our
faith for the next time we have to rely on him. The more
we acknowledge God's involvement in our lives the more
we'll expect it, the more it will become a natural part
of life. This Samaritan, along with his 9 companions, was
healed both by the power of God and because of his faith
in Jesus. But what really mattered in this story was that
he returned to kneel at Jesus feet to begin a personal
relationship with him. |
| |
Let's pray that when God works in our
lives, however that might be, that we'll recognise it and
show the same praise and gratitude that this man did. |
