{"id":10981,"date":"2025-10-06T13:57:55","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T20:57:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/?p=10981"},"modified":"2025-10-06T13:57:57","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T20:57:57","slug":"gods-logic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/?p=10981","title":{"rendered":"God\u2019s logic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Select here for a pdf version.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luke 17:11-19<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A sermon for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We heard the Gospel text about the ten lepers, and you may have thought: The ten lepers today? Isn\u2019t this usually a Thanksgiving text? What\u2019s going on?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be sure, we are marching through Luke, more or less. But the Lectionary Committee, however, had no trouble leaving out the parable of the Prodigal Son because they wanted to put it elsewhere. Why the ten lepers now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reason is: Thanksgiving in Canada is the second Monday in October. That\u2019s tomorrow, October 13th<\/sup>. Happy Thanksgiving to the Canadians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lectionary Committee sets the texts for the whole world, and in the fall, at least in the Northern hemisphere, there are harvest festivals everywhere, Thanksgiving festivals. Therefore, we have the ten lepers today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our Old Testament lesson is the story of Naaman, another leper who was healed. Both stories feature an outsider. In both cases the outsider does something the better way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story in 2 Kings is about this general in Syria, Naaman. He was the commanding general of the army, a man of mighty valor, but he had leprosy. That was a terrible disease and there was nothing he could do about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Naaman\u2019s wife had a little slave girl from Israel, and she said to her mistress: \u201cWhy don\u2019t they go to the prophet in Israel? He could heal him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naaman went to the king of Syria and said: \u201cGive me permission to go.\u201d He took a gift of about $10,000 and went to the king of Israel and said: \u201cHeal me.\u201d And the King of Israel said: \u201cI don\u2019t know how to do that. You\u2019re just trying to make trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But fortunately, one of the servants of the King of Israel said: \u201cThere\u2019s Elisha down the road. He can do that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Naaman took his gift and his entourage and went down to see Elisha, but Elisha sent his servant to meet Naaman and the servant said: \u201cGo to the River Jordan and dip yourself seven times.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naaman got mad and said: \u201cWhat in the world? Shouldn\u2019t Elisha at least have come himself and waved his hand over me or something?\u201d Naaman thought: \u201cDon\u2019t we have good rivers in Syria, just as good as here?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But fortunately, one of Naaman\u2019s servants said to him: \u201cIf he had asked you to do some big thing, you would have done it, so why not go?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Naaman went and he did this and he was healed and said: \u201cBehold, there is no God in all the earth but in Israel\u201d (2 Kings 5:15).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our second leprosy story today is the one about the ten lepers in Luke 17. The Samaritan could go with the nine as Jesus had told them to do, but when he saw he was healed, he turned back and fell at Jesus\u2019 feet in thanks and praise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Jewish law required that the nine go and show themselves to the priest to have their healing legally certified. Perhaps that didn\u2019t count for the Samaritan, who was not a Jew. But it was practical to have that certification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do we make of these accounts? You may think the message for today in both stories is: \u201cBe like the outsider. Both of them chose the better way. We should, too. Amen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But no, that\u2019s not what the texts are really about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we look at the Bible there is a danger that we treat the Bible like a law book. What we look for in there is God\u2019s laws about what we should do, when, in fact, it\u2019s really about something else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take, for example, this account about the ten lepers. Some years ago, at a Thanksgiving service the pastor read this text about the ten lepers, but he left out the one verse, verse 16, which says of the one who came back: \u201cNow he was a Samaritan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How could the pastor do that?! Didn\u2019t he get it? That\u2019s the main point. The one who turned back was a Samaritan!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who were the Samaritans? They were like first cousins of the Jewish people. They held to the first five books of Moses. But they did not worship in Jerusalem; they worshipped at Mount Gerizim. The Jews hated them because they kept the law in their own way, not the Jewish way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we look at the Gospel of Luke, we see the same thing happening in Luke 10 about the Good Samaritan as happens in Luke 17 about the Samaritan leper who was healed along with nine other lepers who were Jewish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We misunderstand the parable of the Good Samaritan when we think it\u2019s about doing the right thing. The Jewish people knew from Leviticus 19:18 who was the neighbor. The point of the parable is that it was a Samaritan, not that somebody did the right thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The whole parable has to do with Jewish law. It says the priest and the Levite went on by the side because the law said you have to keep yourself ritually clean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same is true in the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-32. That parable should really be called the parable of \u201cthe two brothers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The one brother said: \u201cI\u2019ve kept the law and you didn\u2019t do anything for me, and here you are doing all this for the one who went off breaking the law and even working with pigs!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the father responded that what\u2019s important is that the lost has been found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the Gospel of Luke, the message is: God favors people who are not those we expect him to favor. We are like \u201cthe Jews,\u201d who follow the law and are clean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Luke 7:32-50 there is the prostitute who washes Jesus\u2019 feet. In Luke 19:1-10 there is Zaccheus the tax collector, a hated collaborator with Rome. Jesus rescues him. The way it works is not that kind of simple purity and doing the right thing that we like to think. It’s all very different from our logic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Book of Acts (which Luke also wrote) we read in Acts 10:11-16 about the sheet full of animals coming down from heaven and how Peter said: \u201cThey are unclean.\u201d And the Lord\u2019s answer is: \u201cNo, they\u2019re not. I declare that those rules about clean and unclean food don\u2019t count any longer. My mercy and my ways are different from what you think.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The question is: How is God working? Remember in Genesis 12:1-3 the Lord says to Abraham: \u201cGo forth from your country and your kindred and your father\u2019s house to the land I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation and . . .  by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But by the end of Isaiah, the land has disappeared, the people have all gone into exile, and the temple was destroyed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then comes Isaiah 66:23: \u201cAll flesh shall come to worship before me, says the Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can that be when the land is gone, the people in exile, and the temple gone? It\u2019s against the way our logic, our thinking, our calculations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same is true in the New Testament in an entirely different way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It never occurs to the people in the Old Testament that God himself will come. In the Old Testament there are divine appearances, called theophanies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Genesis 18 there are three angels who come to Abraham, and then just the one speaking as the Lord (Gen 18:10, 13-14), but the Lord wasn\u2019t truly there; it was another theophany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It never occurred to the ancient Hebrews that God himself would truly come to be one of us. And then to die on the cross. It\u2019s against our thinking, our logic, our categories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story of Naaman, the parable of the ten lepers\u2014these accounts are remarkable ways of describing how God\u2019s ways are different from our calculations, and we can be thankful for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And what about you and me? Remember how Naaman he got mad that Elisha didn\u2019t come out, and the servant said to him: \u201cIf Elisha had asked you to do some great thing, you would have done it, so when he says to you: \u2018Wash and be clean,\u2019 why not just go do it?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luther in the Small Catechism writes of Baptism: \u201cHow can water do such great things\u2014give the forgiveness of sin, deliverance from death and the devil, and grant eternal salvation?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can baptizing with ordinary water do that? It\u2019s such a small thing. And the answer comes: \u201cIt\u2019s not the water alone that produces these effects but the Word of God connected with the water.\u201d Wash and be healed, forgiven, redeemed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

God\u2019s ways are different from our calculations, and we can be thankful for that. Amen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Luke 17:11-19<\/p>\n

A sermon for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost<\/p>\n

We heard the Gospel text about the ten lepers, and you may have thought: The ten lepers today? Isn\u2019t this usually a Thanksgiving text? What\u2019s going on?<\/p>\n

To be sure, we are marching through Luke, more or less. But the Lectionary Committee, however, had no trouble leaving out the parable of the Prodigal Son because they wanted to put it elsewhere. Why the ten lepers now?<\/p>\n

Select here<\/a> to read more or select here<\/a> for a pdf version.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10981"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10987,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10981\/revisions\/10987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}