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The Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Lord, we pray thee that thy grace may always precede and follow us, and make us continually to be given to all good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Proper 23)
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The Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost
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Scripture citation(s): Luke 17:11-19
A Sermon by
The Rev. Matthew Moretz
on
Luke 17:11-19
✛
A Rogue’s Gallery of Grace
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There’s a secret running through Luke’s Gospel: something hidden in plain sight. It’s not in the parables or the miracles, but in a single word: the name Jesus. For all the long movement of Luke’s story — the steady ascent toward Jerusalem and the cross — only four times does anyone speak to Jesus using his own name. Not “Lord,” not “Teacher,” not “Master,” but simply, Jesus. Only four.
It’s a small detail that reorients the whole landscape when you notice it. For who are the ones who name him so directly? You might expect it would be his friends, his disciples, those closest to him. But no. Peter never does. None of the several Mary’s in his life, do.
The only ones who speak his name aloud are those beyond the circle of belonging: the possessed, the diseased, the dying. The ones who need him the most.
The first to speak his name is a demon. It’s a strange and unsettling beginning for this Name. It happens in the synagogue at Capernaum, while Jesus is teaching. Out of the beauty of holiness comes an eldritch voice: “Ha! What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”
It is the mocking voice of one who knows too much.
Is it afraid here? Is it trying to mask terror with contempt? The unclean spirit names him Jesus, with the knowledge that this rural rabbi’s presence means his time is up.
The irony is sharp though: the first to address him by name is no saint, not even a friend, but the very thing that defies him. Yet even in that naming, trying to claim and shame him, that power collapses, all the same. The word of defiance becomes a confession. And with a single command, Jesus silences the voice and frees the man who bore it.
Then, across the Sea of Galilee, there is another demonic cry: another voice from the edges of our world. This time coming from the tombs, from a man whose life has been claimed by that deathly place.
Once again, the name of Jesus is spoken: not in worship, but in recognition. Somehow here, in the land of the dead, the Name is known. “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?”
It is the same sentence we heard in the synagogue, yet spoken with a different purpose. The demonic defiance has given way to demonic pleading. The possessed man kneels before him, begging him for mercy: “I beseech you, do not torment me.”
The legion of voices within him dreads what lies beyond, they speak of the abyss, some depth that makes even demons lose sleep at night. But Jesus does not send them there. Even in his judgment, there is mercy. The spirits are allowed to flee into a herd of swine, an odd almost tragic permission, and the animals rush headlong into the sea.
The man is left clothed and in his right mind, sitting at Jesus’ feet, in silent shock.
And then our survey shifts to the borderland between Samaria and Galilee: a place neither here nor there. It is in this grey zone that ten lepers stand at a distance, keeping that required space between themselves and the living world.
They don’t approach; they can’t. But from across that chasm, they lift their voices and cry, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”
This is the first time in Luke’s Gospel that any human being speaks Jesus’ name aloud. These are not the pure or the powerful; they are the diseased, the outcast, the ones whose bodies have become unholy symbols of abandonment. They have perhaps lost parts of themselves, perhaps their faces, perhaps even their own names. And yet they call Jesus by his.
But let us not overlook the reaction that these ten figures would have caused for those travelling with Jesus on the road. Rather than stirring pity, would have raised the alarm the reddest of the red
To be a leper was to become untouchable. You were sent beyond the camp, beyond the edge of belonging. You lived outside the walls, in the space between life and death. When you moved, you warned others away with the cry, “Unclean! Unclean!” It would be up to you to remind others to stay away.
To touch a leper was to risk defilement, to jeopardize your own place in the worshipping life of Israel. And so, just one leper carried not only the marks of illness, but the whole weight of a society’s fear, a fear that cast out any shred of kindness or compassion.
But ten of them together! Who could stop this colony of contamination if they chose run to you? There is this very real risk being drawn into their desperate world.
The danger they represented was real, but so was their courage. When they lift their voices across the void, it is astonishing. They call him by name. They call him Master: the title his disciples use. They speak as though they already belong to him, as though something in him has already recognized them. “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”
He answers without hesitation. “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” It is the proper command. The priest was indeed the one who could declare a leper clean. But it is almost laughably simple.
[This reminds me of that time Jesus gave those professional fishermen the advice, “Throw the net on the other side of the boat.”]
Nevertheless, the lepers obey, beginning their shuffle towards the Holy City. And as they go, they are healed. The law’s mercy has met its fulfilment. But one of them stops, the only one to notice that the healing has already taken place, and turns back, seeming to disobey his Master’s command, compelled by an overwhelming gratitude. He runs to them, alarmingly close, and falls at Jesus’ feet.
And Luke gives the detail that is so striking: he was a Samaritan. A foreigner. One who would decidedly not be welcome before the priests in Jerusalem. So this new man returns instead to the priest for him. The nine go to those who can pronounce them clean. The Samaritan stays with the one who can make him whole.
And Jesus’ words to him give us a window into the hidden forces at play: “Your faith has made you well.” Healed, clean, and alive again.
And then we come to another badland: where Roman rule established hell on earth, Golgotha, Skull Point. And here, between two of the others who are condemned, the final voice speaks to Jesus, an exhausted and dying plea.: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
It is the last form of address that he hears.
Not “Lord,” not “Messiah,”: only “Jesus.”
Like the demoniac who begged not to be cast into the abyss, this man too pleads for mercy, but with no fear or desperation. And once again, that name, that unseemly familiarity, becomes the language of faith.
And Jesus answers. There is no distance left to close. He’s there on the cross with him. There is no purity to prove, Christ is just as defiled as him. No ritual to perform. Only this promise, spoken with simple and unguarded love: “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Welcome home.
So what do we make of this rogue’s gallery of grace? The only ones who speak his Name to Christ as familiar friends: the possessed, the unclean, the condemned.
To say Jesus’ name is not presumption; it is faith.
Each of these voices shows us faith in its distilled form:
the demons know him and fear,
the lepers know him and hope,
the thief knows him and trusts.
And each stand for the whole world,
a world that cannot save itself,
yet finds itself healed or remembered
when it summons the courage (or the foolishness!) to speak his Name.
So the Church still speaks his Name.
We proclaim it, we sing it, we breathe it,
that same Name first spoken by the fearful, the outcast, the dying. Their cry has become our prayer.
And the miracle and wonder is that the living God still answers. “The Love that moves the sun and the other stars” (as Dante put it) has come so near that we may speak to him as one person speaks to another. The distance between heaven and earth, even more, the distance between heaven and hell is crossed in a single breath: “Jesus.”
