Sunday, October 12, 2025, Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
“One Out of Ten”
Psalm 111; Ruth 1:1-17; Timothy 2:1-13; Luke 17:11-19
Divine Service III, without Communion
Hymns: #684 “Come Unto Me, Ye Weary”; #551 “When to Our World the Savior Came”
#806 “Give Thanks with a Grateful Heart”; #699 “I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say”
Dear Friends in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
God’s call to us on this day is for ordinary people like us to be extraordinary people for His sake. While the rest of the world goes its own way, a few of us – the “one-out-of-ten”- remain faithful to God and faithful to Christ. I don’t mean one-out-of-ten (or ten percent) as a literal number; Jesus in our Gospel reading didn’t either. The percentage of faithful people could be higher (and I hope it is), depending on how we choose to define what “faithful” is; or it may well be lower.
So whether it’s that young Moabite girl Ruth, who acted in faith, and showed her mother-in-law loyalty and courage when everything in the world was telling her to go the other way; or St. Paul’s young protegee Timothy, who was faithful to his calling to preach God’s Word, even though he was young and the task he was given was a difficult one; or the one leper in our Gospel reading who remembered to be grateful and give thanks to God for his healing -- you and I are called to be the “one-out-of-tens” in this world and to confess our faith out loud, even if the rest of the world is mocking and laughing at us and walking away. Lord, grant us the courage and strength we’re going to need to do this. Amen.
Our Gospel reading begins, “Now on His way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee.” That is significant, because the majority of Jews in Jesus’ day, probably way more than 90 percent of them, would go out of their way not to set foot in Samaria; and most of the Samaritans felt likewise. There were years and years of hostility between the one nation and the other. Jesus was one of the very few Jews -- maybe less than one percent, maybe the only One -- who was willing to cross that old “dividing wall of hostility,” and love people no matter who they were.
And as Jesus was going into a village (it could have been a Jewish village or a Samaritan village; the Gospel doesn’t say which side of the border He was on), ten men who had leprosy met Him, and stood at their proper distance, because that’s what lepers had to do. Whether they were Jewish lepers or Samaritan lepers, they were untouchables, unwelcome in society. Lepers were considered contagious; people were deathly afraid of them.
It’s curious that this group of lepers had both Jews and Samaritans in it. When a thing like leprosy comes along and puts you on the suffering, starving, on-the-outside-looking-in fringes of society, suddenly being a Jew or a Samaritan or anything else doesn’t matter very much. Mutual suffering makes for strange companions sometimes. What does all that stuff matter anymore anyway, if all of us are going to die?
These ten lepers saw Jesus from their proper distance and began to call out to Him: “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” Kyrie Eleison! Lord, have mercy! Lord, pity me! Have compassion on me! See me here, see how I’m suffering! Lord, notice me! Feel for me! Help me! Lord, please have a heart for me! “Lord, have mercy” is the universal cry of the suffering soul, no matter who you are or where you’re from, or what language you happen to speak. “Kyrie eleison” is a cry of human desperation, from those who have no one else to cry out to, and nowhere else to go. The lepers may not have believed – probably didn’t believe – that Jesus would answer them or pay them any mind -- but what did they have to lose by calling out and asking?
Was it faith they already had – even a little faith – that moved them to cry out? Or did Jesus mean to use the miracle of their healing to bring them to faith? Not knowing anything about any of those poor men, or what was in their hearts when they called, we really can’t say; the Lord knows our hearts, and we can ask Him about it one day. But nevertheless, the lepers lifted up their voices and called, and Jesus saw them, and heard them, and He did have mercy – because that’s what Jesus does, and that’s who He is. Mercy and love and compassion are the essence of His nature.
Jesus, in this Gospel, didn’t touch the lepers or heal them on the spot, as He’d done at other times. He simply told them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” Showing yourself to the priest was the only way a leper in those days could be declared clean and return to polite society. It was up to the priests to examine people’s rashes and warts and bumps and boils and unusual growths to determine if they were contagious or leprous or not; and also to determine if a person had truly been cleansed or cured of their disease. (I’m so glad priests don’t have to do that anymore!)
We can’t say exactly at what point the ten lepers were cured, whether it was immediately when Jesus spoke, or somewhere along the way. But they were clean by the time they got there. No bumps, no rash, no blemishes for the priest to see; nothing but pink, clean, unblemished skin. And once they were declared clean, they could go back to living again. They could go home to their families and home to their lives; they were restored! Praise God!
Now here’s where we come to the sad one-out-of-ten part of the story. One of the ten lepers, when he saw that he was healed, came back to bow himself at Jesus’ feet. “He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked Him--and he was a Samaritan.” One man recognized and understood where His healing had come from, and who it was who had healed him. One man knew what it really means to sing, “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,” and “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.” One man knew and remembered and understood how lost and hopeless he’d been, and that if not for the grace and mercy of God, he’d have withered away and died all alone.
Is it really only one out of ten of us, ten percent or less of us, that still look up to heaven and recognize where our blessings come from, and where we’d be apart from the love of our Savior? The polls and statistics I’ve seen seem to say so, or at least that we’re trending that way. Don’t ever lose sight of your blessings, folks. Be thankful for where you are, and for where God in His mercy has brought you. Be thankful always for God’s incredible gift of saving faith, and for the genuine hope we have that makes all the difference in the world. But also, don’t lose sight of where you’ve come from, or forget what God has called you out of, or where you’d be today without God’s mercy. That is truly the source of the thankfulness and gratitude that these lives we’re living ought to show.
Jesus asks in our Gospel, "Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" “Where are the other nine?” is a profound question – a question that underscores the problem with the whole human race -- and also tells us what we “ten percenters” that make up God’s Christian Church here on earth are up against. Who did Jesus die for? Was it just for the Jews? Was it only for the Samaritans? Or was it only for ‘true believers’ with some measure of faith in the first place? There’s a wonderful doctrine of the Christian Church we call “the universal atonement,” which means, to put it plainly, that Jesus died for everyone. “For God so loved the world…”
How many human sins did the blood of Jesus pay for? Let me ask you this: How many times do you sin in a day? Remember, we’re talking not just about physical sins, but sins done in words and thoughts as well. We sin by “thought, word, and deed, by things we have done, and by things we have left undone” – let alone by sins we’re not even aware of yet. So, to be kind to ourselves, let’s say we sin, on average, 100 times a day. That adds up to 36,500 sins a year. If you’re fortunate enough to live to be 90 or so, that’s three million sins or thereabouts in a lifetime. Now, multiply that number by every human being who has ever lived or ever will live… And now you know why Jesus’ knees buckled on the way to the cross.
But the fact is, all human sin has been paid for; not will be paid for, but has been paid for. All your particular sins, past, present, and future, have already been paid for and atoned for by the blood of Christ. That’s what happened at the cross; that’s why Jesus said, “It is finished” when He breathed His dying breath. “Paid for” includes Samaritans and Jews, good men and bad; the best of men and the holiest of saints, and also the worst of the tyrants and dictators and murderers, the Hitlers and Stalin’s and Chairman Mao’s, Sadaam’s and Osama’s and all the rest of them. 100% of human sin has been paid for; yet there are those 90% who don’t yet know it, or as of this day still refuse to accept and acknowledge that it’s true. The gift of God’s grace has been offered, and is being offered, to everyone in Christ -- but God need an open hand in which to place His gift; He won’t force Himself om anyone. And what good is a gift, if it isn’t gratefully received and opened and used? And that is where the difference lies, between the one leper who came back to Jesus, and the nine of them who didn’t.
Jesus makes a profound statement to the one leper who comes back, maybe one we don’t really expect. He tells him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.” We’d expect Him to say, “God has made you well” or “I, Jesus, have made you well” (and that certainly is true). But He says to him, “Your faith has made you well.” That makes faith an important thing to have, doesn’t it? That makes faith everything.
Our Lord will do miracles for us and pour blessings on us to show us who He is and to open our eyes. He’ll pour down goodness and kindness and blessed rain to make this world we live in beautiful, and to make the earth produce food for us. Everyone gets those “give us this day our daily bread” blessings. “It rains upon the just and upon the unjust,” God’s Word says, because God is generous and good, and He loves us. But how few remember to return thanks to the God who gives the blessings.
So, the nine lepers who didn’t come back to give thanks: Were they healed? Were they cured of their leprosy? They were! They were all found to be pink and healthy and clean when they got to the priest. They were clean on the outside, anyway -- but it’s “clean on the inside” that Jesus is after with us. And what makes us clean on the inside? Trusting and believing and having faith in Him. What God requires of us, says Jesus, is “to believe in the One He has sent.” Healed on the outside is good for a moment, but healed on the inside lasts forever. We don’t know, only God knows, that happened to the other nine or where they went afterward. We can only hope they come around.
But how do we know our own faith is real? How do we really know we’re part of that blessed 10% whose faith is genuine? Is there a difference between saying, “Yes, Lord, I believe,” and genuinely believing? What about the ones who say, “Lord, we preached and taught in Your name,” and He answers, “I don’t even know who you are?” Jesus said once that what’s in our hearts will come out in what we do. Christian faith, if it’s of that rare and genuine kind, is faith that expresses itself in thankfulness, and in acts of love and mercy. “As I have loved you, so you must also love one another,” Jesus says. “By this all men will know you’re My disciples, if you love one another.”
So Ruth showed and expressed her faith in love by staying with her mother-in-law, which she didn’t have to do. And Timothy showed and expressed his faith by preaching God’s Word, even in a world that would never love him back for it. And the one-in-ten leper showed and expressed his faith by pouring out his thankful heart to God. Being one of the one-out-of-tenner’s -- or one of a hundred, or one in a million -- can be a lonesome thing. Prophet Elijah complained to God once, “I’m the only one of Your prophets left, and they’re trying to kill me to.” But God told him, “It’s not so; I have 7000 left in Israel who have not bowed their knees to Ba’al.”
Our numbers may be small, but it’s our faith that makes us “strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.” Jesus promised to be with us always – and He is, and He will be, by His good Holy Spirit. And we’re here for a reason. There may only be a few of us, but the few of us that there are, are keeping faith and love and hope alive in the world, still baptizing and teaching and preaching God’s truth, still eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ, still keeping the blessed words of Jesus spoken where the they need to be spoken, out there in that 90% of a world. Our numbers may be small, but we’re powerful – more powerful than this world we live in will ever understand; because the power we have is the power of faith in a Savior who really does love us all.
Maybe, just maybe, O Lord, if we continue to be thankful, and faithful, and strong and courageous in telling our world about You, that one-out-of-ten could become two out of ten, or even three or four or five; or as Jesus says, “Thirty or sixty or a hundred times what was sown.” For every blessing we have received, and every blessing we’re about to receive, Lord, help us to be truly thankful. In Jesus’ name; Amen.
Rev. Larry Sheppard, M.Div
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Oxford, WI, LCMS Trinity Lutheran Church, Packwaukee, WI, LCMS
pastorshepp@gmail.com