A sermon on Luke 17:11-19 for the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity. Delivered by Pastor Caleb Strutz.

I spent the first half of my childhood outside of La Crosse, right on the border between Wisconsin and Minnesota. Things kind of break down along the border, there were people who lived in Wisconsin but worked in Minnesota and vice-versa. But because these communities were mixed together, certain identity markers became way more prominent. You have a lot more Viking fans in La Crosse than you do in Green Bay, that rivalry is way more intense on the border. The funny thing about borders is the lines are often blurred but that only makes those lines all the more important.

Now I’m not trying to say that Vikings fans are analogous to Samaritans or to lepers, but our Gospel today addresses these issues of identity and community. Jesus is travelling along the border between Samaria and Galilee, where these already tense issues are heightened. And He interacts with people who are, quite literally, on the fringes of society. We see that Christ calls the outcast into community. He frees people from their false identities and gives them a new sense of true belonging.

I. False Identities

So both last week and this week, Samaritans have played a pretty big role in the Gospel accounts and we need a bit of background knowledge to understand why this detail is so important and so shocking.

The Jews and the Samaritans didn’t like each other. But this went beyond any mere ethnic discrimination. The Samaritans were a mix of Jews leftover from the Babylonian captivity and the pagans that had moved in. They had the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, but edited it and corrupted it. They built a rival temple to the one in Jerusalem. When the Greeks came in, they denied their Jewish heritage to avoid persecution. There’s a lot of beef, and rightfully so. In Jewish eyes, a Samaritan was worse than a pagan, he was a heretic. Not just someone who didn’t know about the true God, but who actively corrupted the true religion.

As Jesus is travelling along the border, these sensitivities and prejudices were all the more heightened. There were Samaritan villages and Jewish villages, ‘nere the twain to meet. So that makes this leper colony all the more intriguing.

There’s at least one Samaritan, there could have been more, we’re not told, and, presumably, a number of Jews. It makes sense that the lepers from various villages would gather together—if you had leprosy, the law of Moses commanded that you had to be sent into quarantine, into exile, to avoid passing on the disease to anyone else.

So these ten men make a rather odd community. If they were healthy, they wouldn’t want anything to do with each other. The only thing that they have in common is this disease. The only reason they’re in this community is because of something that’s killing them.

These questions of community, identity, belonging, haven’t gone away. It might not be along the same lines now as it was then, but we still wrestle with these same issues.

The church is also a community. How does this community view and relate to others? Sad to say, Sunday morning is the most self-segregated that America gets. Now, I’m not accusing you of racism or saying that that’s your fault, there’s lots of factors that go into that, but what that does mean is that a Christian congregation tends to be a homogenous group. And because we have so much in common, we can confuse those other identity markers with the ones that do matter.

Again, I’m not saying that I’ve seen anyone discriminate against a visitor, but these are questions that we have to wrestle with. Am I more welcoming, more comfortable, more outgoing to someone who looks like me and votes like me and makes as much money as me? Would I be uncomfortable or suspicious if someone outside of my groups would come in off the street?

We can have the tendency to view the church as this exclusive community. We know we’re not supposed to be of the world, but do we always recognize that we’re still in it (Jn 16:14-16)? That that means interacting with all sorts of people? That Sunday morning might be and maybe should be a little uncomfortable?

How do you view the church? How do you act at church? How do you view other people? How do you interact with them? You can handwave this all away and say, “I’m not like that,” or you can do the uncomfortable work of sitting with it and pondering it and realizing that you’ve fallen short. Every community is a community of sinful people. We’ve sinned against those within and outside. We have failed to always demonstrate the attitude of Christ.

II. Real Belonging

So what is Jesus’ attitude towards the outcast? Where others turned a blind eye, He sees them. Where others, where we, would pass them by, He shows mercy. He helps and heals.

He sees the leper colony and knows that this is not as it should be. This is a community of death, a fellowship in something that will destroy them. So He heals them. He takes what had become the primary pillar of their identity, their leprosy, and removes it. He sets them free. Sends them out.

But in that is also the implicit invitation to return. Only one, the man who happened to be a Samaritan, caught that, as unlikely a candidate as can be. But we see in his restored life what it means to be a Christian. To receive good things from Christ and respond with worship and praise and thanksgiving. In setting them free, Christ invites them to something better. To join a community focused on Him. To receive a new identity, a child of God.

Christ has shown mercy to all. Not just to those on the outside, but even to us—that’s why we’re here. He has taken your sin, that disease that defines us, and healed you, set you free. He has given to you the medicine of His precious blood. Because He died, He has freed you from every destructive, false community, and because He rose, He invites you to new life in Him. To be a part of this community where we receive His gifts and respond with praise and thanks.

The Church is a rather odd community. You’ve met people here that you wouldn’t have otherwise, spend time with people every week that you maybe wouldn’t have picked. But that’s a feature, not a bug. Here we are stripped of every false identity, everything that we would use to separate ourselves from others is taken away. Our sins are forgiven. Here we gather around the one thing needful. We receive this forgiveness in Word and Sacrament. We are given a new identity, called into a new community, as we are now children of God and brothers and sisters with each other.

So how should this community interact with others? Well, we don’t have to be afraid that we’ll be in danger if we approach the wrong sort of people. We have the promise that the gates of Hades shall not prevail against the Church (Mt 16:18). This gives us courage, this gives us boldness, to seek out those on the fringes of society, to see and go to the outcast, and show them mercy and give them healing, just as Christ did.

Sadly, many in our day have created their identity on sin, built a community around something that destroys them. That’s as ridiculous as a leper embracing and taking pride in his leprosy!  But because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, you can go to anyone and say, “Jesus died for you. Your sins are forgiven.” To the outcast, you can say, “Here’s somewhere you belong.” To someone who feels unloved and rejected, you can show the love of your Savior.

As we interact with others, what does it mean to be inclusive and accepting? Sadly, these, too, are things that many congregations have gotten wrong. Accepting someone doesn’t mean affirming everything they do. I can’t think of a single time in the Gospels where Jesus affirms anyone’s lifestyle choices, whether they’re a Pharisee or a tax collector, a priest or a prostitute. In each case, in every case, He goes to them, shows mercy, and calls them to leave their past behind and enter in to something better.

Being inclusive doesn’t mean that we have to meet certain quotas and we should feel bad if we don’t. Being accepting doesn’t mean turning a blind eye to sin. It does mean that here is a community where everyone belongs. Here is where you will be embraced and loved and love enough to be told when you’re wrong.

Now not everyone wants that. Jesus’ success rate wasn’t that great either, one out of ten isn’t good odds. But that one still matters. That one is still worth it. For every nine that would go their way, there is one who knows that something’s wrong. One who doesn’t believe the lies that the world is telling them or that they’re telling themself. On who longs to be released from that false identity and to be welcomed in a new community.

Being a community means a lot of difficult things. It means engaging with people you wouldn’t have otherwise, setting aside your own desires and preferences in service to others, realizing that I’m not the most important—what ties us together is. Christ has shown you mercy, healed you from your sin, called you out of what you came from, and in to something new. In this community, your history or background aren’t important. Any other identity markers are left at the door. Because here we receive good gifts from Christ and respond with thanks and praise. Here, we have Christ, the source of our identity, the glue of this community, the One who has called you out of darkness and into His marvelous light (1 Pet 2:9). Amen.