Hilton Head Island, SC – March 18, 2018
The Chapel Without Walls
Luke 17:11-19; Luke 19:1-10
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – “For the Son of man came to seek and to save the lost.” – Luke 19:10 (RSV)
The nation of Israel in biblical times or in modern times is about 250 miles long, north to south. However, the entire southern half is the Negev Desert. The heavily populated part of the country is the northern half. That was as true two or three thousand years ago as it is today.
The area around Jerusalem was called Judea in New Testament times, a word which essentially means “The Land of the Jews.” The area in the far north was called “the Galilee,” because of the Lake of the Galilee, or, as it known in our nomenclature, “the Sea of Galilee.” However, it isn’t really a sea; it’s a lake, thirteen miles long and seven or eight miles wide.
The area between Judea in the south and the Galilee in the north was called Samaria. Most everyone has heard of Samaria because we know Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, which is found only in Luke. Luke is the only biblical book from which we had readings for these last three Sundays and from which we shall hear for the next two Sundays. We are thinking about a long, slow walking journey Luke tells us about that Jesus took from the Galilee to Jerusalem.
On the way Jesus and the twelve disciples went through Samaria. Samaria was about twenty five miles long, north to south, and about thirty five miles wide, east to west to west. But it was an area which most Judeans avoided like the plague. That was because the Samaritans were Jews who, starting nine or ten centuries before the time of Jesus, began to marry Gentile Canaanite women who were living there. They did enough of that, and for enough time, that the rest of the Jews in the Holy Land by the time of Jesus no longer recognized the Samaritans as Jews at all. They were “Samaritans,” which to Jews meant renegades or backsliders or practitioners of miscegenation. In their minds, Samaritans were no longer part of the Chosen People.
Too many people living in or near the Middle East have memories that are carefully maintained for far too long a time, coupled with forgiveness for grievances against other people that is often offered for far too short a time. If ethnic groups live anywhere for many centuries, all kinds of unpleasant things happen to them through those long years. They may nurture those unpleasant memories with unmatched ethnic ferocity. Shiite and Sunni Muslims in Iraq remember a battle from more than a thousand years ago as though it happened yesterday. Muslims in Kosovo in the southern Balkans remember a battle there with Christians that happened centuries ago, and that memory re-spawned a war in Kosovo a few years ago after Yugoslavia fell apart. People who don’t bury their bygones may live to see those bygones spring to life again and again.
Jesus knew the depth of animosity the Jews felt for the Samaritans when he began his leisurely hike to Jerusalem and the death he strongly suspected awaited him there. Nevertheless, he deliberately went through Samaria on his way. In so doing, he was displaying to his disciples and anyone else who might notice that he purposefully went out of his way to express an interest in and a compassion for Samaritans, whom many of his fellow Jews considered to be outcasts. Jesus had made himself an outcast to many Jewish religious leaders, and so he wanted them to realize that he was also turning to other outcasts in the last days of his life. Luke, who is telling us about this journey to Jerusalem, was also an outsider and an outcast. He was a Gentile, and all Gentiles were outsiders to all religious Jews.
In our first reading for today, Luke begins his narrative this way: “On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was passing along between Samaria and Galilee” (11:11). Those very words suggest that by crossing into Samaria, Jesus was taking a major risk. Most Jews going from Galilee to Judea would go around Samaria, either down into the Jordan Valley and along the river, or west to the coast, and along the Mediterranean. But Jesus went straight through Samaria. Would he and the disciples be attacked by the Samaritans? Would he be shunned by them? Or might he just be ignored? In any of those possibilities, his journey through Samaria would have been to no avail, and he might as well have gone to Jerusalem either by the eastern or the western loop.
In the modern state of Israel, most villages have residents all of one kind, whether they are Jewish or Arab villages. Thus there are Ashkenazi (European) Jewish villages or Sephardic (oriental) Jewish villages or Orthodox or Reform or secular Jewish villages. Then there are Sunni Muslim Arab villages or secular Arab or Druze Arab villages. The Druze are an offshoot of Islam and thus are considered not proper Muslims. Israel draws Jews from all over the world, in addition to having Arabs who have lived there for centuries. But Israel is not a melting pot like the United States of America. Melting pots are rare; villages or towns or cities where everyone is alike are common nearly everywhere in the world, and American-type communities are rare.
In a similar way, in Jesus’ time all the Samaritans were thought to be offshoot Jews, and thus not Jews at all. For us, the Samaritans would be like Mormons. Mormons call themselves the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, but we know their church is not like our church and they are not Christians like the rest of us are Christians. Despite that, Jesus consciously led the twelve disciples directly across Samaria. No doubt the twelve were none too pleased.
Here is the next verse in the Lukan narrative. “And as Jesus entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance” (11:12). Leprosy was a dreaded disease. It was thought to be infectious or contagious, though it is barely either. But because everyone thought it was contagious, lepers always had to keep their distance from everyone else.
Maybe that particular village was filled with lepers. Maybe both Jewish and Samaritan lepers found refuge with one another in their own little leper hamlet. The village was, says Luke, “between Samaria and Galilee.” In any case, Jesus did not take a wide berth around the village. He went right into it, where he came upon the ten lepers. Somehow the afflicted ten knew who Jesus was, and they said, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us” (11:13).They had heard that Jesus could heal people, and they hoped against hope that he might heal them. All Jesus said to them was this: “Go, and show yourself to the priests” (11:14). Both Jews and Samaritans had priests, so presumably they were all to go to show themselves to their own priests. Then Luke tells us an astonishing thing; “And as they went, they were cleansed” (11:14). As they went! Later, one of them, realizing that he had been miraculously healed, went back to thank Jesus, “praising God with a loud voice” (11:15). Then Luke adds this postscript: “Now he was a Samaritan” (11:16).
Every single verse in this story is packed with meaning! Every phrase is important; every word is vital in this episode! Listen to what Luke next reported: “Then said Jesus, ‘Were not ten cleansed? Where are the other nine?’” (11:18). Presumably then Jesus turned to the disciples and said, “Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Please note: Jesus does not say, “Didn’t anyone come back to praise me?” No, he clearly said, “Didn’t anyone come back to praise God?” THAT is what Jesus wants from all of us when we truly encounter Jesus; he wants us to praise God. Jesus is God’s unique messenger, God’s specially Anointed One; he is God’s Messiah; he is Jesus the Christ.
In this passage Jesus is seen to be turning very intentionally to outcasts. All ten of these people were lepers, and all lepers were outcasts. Everyone else cast them out, and they cast themselves out, for the good of the entire society. But Jesus went to them and addressed them and ultimately led them to be cured. Not only that, but one of these lepers, or maybe half, or all ten, were Samaritans. Luke doesn’t bother to tell us that. But for certain one was a Samaritan, because Luke specifically tells us that. “Rise,” Jesus tells the leper, “and go your way; your faith has made you well.” If we believe God heals us of our diseases or illnesses or adversities, we are healed, and if we don’t believe it, we might not be healed. It is as simple --- and as profound --- as that.
Jesus doesn’t seek only people like us. We are socially acceptable, at least to ourselves. But Jesus intentionally also sought outsiders and outcasts. He searched for people whom everyone else had given up on, because Jesus never gave up on anybody.
A friend of mine in seminary was associated with a group home for released prisoners in Chicago called St. Leonard’s House. It was started by a remarkable Episcopal priest. I looked it up on Google, and it still exists, still in the same place, except that now it has two buildings rather than the one it had in the early 1960s. I also Googled St. Leonard, about whom I knew nothing. He was a French nobleman who became a simple monk and started a monastery where ex-prisoners of war were welcomed and were healed of sixth-century PTSD – post-traumatic stress disorder. Both St. Leonard and St. Leonard’s House welcomed all comers, but especially prisoners, regardless of what might have led them there. No one was ever turned away.
Both St. Leonard and that priest at St. Leonard’s did what Jesus did. They sought out the least, the last, and the lost. That was one of the many favorite homiletic phrases of Elam Davies, the pastor of the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, and my primary mentor in ministry. He turned Fourth Church into a refuge for the spiritually and physically lost.
And that brings us to Zaccheus. On his way to Jerusalem, Jesus went through Jericho. We know from this detail that Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem was a circuitous one. Jericho is in the Jordan River valley, and however he got there, Jesus had to walk down steep mountainsides to get to Jericho, which was not on any direct route from the Galilee to Jerusalem.
“Zaccheus” is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Zakkai, which means “To Make Clean.” How ironic! He was a dirty little Jewish crook who collected taxes for the Romans. He was such an outcast that he took a Greek (Gentile) name. Luke says of Zaccheus, “He was chief tax collector, and rich.” Not only was he a tax collector, he was the Main Man for the IRS in the entire Jordan Valley Region.
He also was short. Fred Buechner says of him in his delightful book of biblical mini-biographies, called Peculiar Treasures, “Zaccheus stood barely five foot tall with his shoes off and was the least popular man in Jericho. He was head tax collector for Rome in the district and had made such a killing out of it that he was the richest man in town as well as the shortest.”
When Jesus came through Jericho, a large crowd gathered to greet him. I don’t know specifically how that happened, but throughout all four Gospels it often happened. Zaccheus, being so stunted (in more ways than one) climbed up into a sycamore tree so he could see Jesus.
Whenever I organized a tour group to go to Israel, Walter Zanger was always our tour guide. And on all but one of those tours we went to Jericho. The time we didn’t go there was because politically things were too dicey in the West Bank, and we were strongly advised not to go to what Jews call the oldest city in the world. (Arabs call Damascus the oldest city in the world.)
Anyway, one time, and just one time, Walter took us past a huge old sycamore tree in Jericho. Middle Eastern sycamores are not like the ones on the banks of the Wabash, far away, or like the ones along Seabrook Drive in Hilton Head Plantation, or along Unter Den Linden Strasse is Berlin. They are another species of sycamore altogether. But the Jericho sycamore is really tall and really old, and Walter told us that day it could have been there when Zacchaeus stood in it, and I don’t believe that for a minute. It looked old, but not that old.
When Jesus saw Zaccheus in the tree, he said, “Zaccheus, make haste and come down, for I must stay at your house today” (19:5). People such as we ask how Jesus knew the man’s name, but people back then looked for the meat of the story, not the mustard sauce, and they didn’t worry about the details. We would do well to do that too. So, says Luke, “he made haste and came down, and received him joyfully” (19:6).
Nobody had ever said anything like that to Zaccheus. They treated him like dirt --- or like a leper. And when Jesus called to him, and said he wanted to go to his house, Zaccheus was overjoyed. Then Luke adds another of his Lukan, outsider, outcast, Gentile observations, “And when they saw it, they all murmured, ‘He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner!” You see, Zaccheus was Harvey Weinstein or Kim Jong Un or Valdimir Putin. Would a holy man say he wanted to talk to someone like that? Could a holy man do that? Surely not! Murmur, murmur, murmur! Genuine servants of God would never do such a thing! But that is exactly what Jesus did. That’s exactly what he intended to do, not just for the sake of Zaccheus, but for everyone who watched it happened, and for all of us who are very familiar with this story and may still be mystified, wondering how on earth that could have happened.
Without giving us any more details, Luke says Zaccheus said, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold” (19:8). And Zaccheus being Zaccheus, that probably means he might give a quarter of what he owned to the poor, and he had probably cheated everyone at least eightfold. But he publicly promised to repent of his sinful ways, and that was good enough for Jesus. “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham” (19:9). Zaccheus was one of the chosen people. He was a Jew. He was sorry Jew, a fallen Jew, but a Jew nonetheless. We are all part of God’s people, and we all also are sorry and fallen, but still, we all belong to God. And we are all lost.
If we have never been lost, we have never lived. We have been too cautious about life to live it lavishly, and we have merely followed the rules, thinking that was all we were supposed to do. But to live lavishly means to sin and to turn the other cheek and to walk the extra mile and to give away our coat as well as our cloak. We are to give up our lives, as Jesus gave up his life, for us not on a cross, not in death, but in life, in how and why and for whom we choose to live our lives.
“For the Son of man came to seek and to save the lost” (19:10). That is the Gospel. That is the Good News of God.
What a marvelous, courageous, committed, man Jesus was! The Son of man is on the road to Jerusalem, and he invites us to go with him. We know what awaits him there, but he doesn’t. He can’t. He is the Son of man, and thus one of us. But he suspects; he has dark fears. Still, let us follow. Let us always seek to follow him. Otherwise we shall stay lost. To follow is to be found.