Outsiders No More

Text: Luke 17:11-19

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

            When His people came to the Promised Land, the Lord commanded the Hebrews that they were forbidden from marrying Moabites, for no Moabite was to be permitted into the assembly of the Lord, that is, into His presence, even to the tenth generation. So when we reach the account of Ruth, as we heard read this morning in our Old Testament lesson, we run into a sticky situation. Ruth, a Moabite woman, had been married to an Israelite man. But when her husband died, she insisted on returning to the land of Judah with her mother-in-law Naomi. This was not supposed to happen on multiple grounds: as a Moabite, she was never supposed to have married an Israelite man, and strictly speaking, she was not to enter the presence of the Lord in the land He had chosen to dwell in, the land of Judah. And yet, Ruth was permitted to stay with Naomi, to come into the land of Judah, and to take a kinsman redeemer husband from the people there. Through this marriage, she was even given the privilege of becoming an ancestor of the coming Messiah and Redeemer, Jesus.

            Similarly, in our Gospel reading we hear of ten lepers crying to Jesus as He traveled between Samaria and Galilee. When they asked Him for mercy, He told them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went they were cleansed. It’s not until after their miraculous healing that we find that one of these lepers that Jesus sent to the priests was a Samaritan, one who was never supposed to enter the temple, where the on-duty priests would be found who could declare him cleansed from leprosy and ready to reenter society. Over the gate of the temple there was engraved a warning, “Nothing foreign shall enter.” And yet, Jesus sends this Samaritan—a foreigner, by Jesus’ own words, using the exact same word on the temple gate—yet Jesus sends this Samaritan foreigner to the temple.

            Why? Is God ignoring His own Law? He is winking at what He told His people long ago about cleanness and the risks of falling into the idol worship of the nations around them? Was He not serious when He gave those commandments about His temple and worship and faith and uncleanness? Or, perhaps an even more frightening thought, did He change His mind? Because if He changed His mind about these people who were outside His favor once, He could change it again, arbitrarily, and they would be lost once more.

            So, we must ask, why did these things take place? Why were those who were outside and forbidden from entering God’s presence—whether it was Ruth the Moabitess or a Samaritan leper—why were they now admitted? The answer, of course, as always, is Jesus. Jesus changes everything.

            God did not ignore His own Law. He did not change His mind about it or come around to a fallen mortal point of view about whether these commandments were good or not. No, He held to it. But what He did was take the force of it upon Himself. Jesus would become the ultimate outsider. He who knew no sin would become sin for us and then die—killing sin—on the cross. He who was one with the Father would cry out, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?” as He became the One outside God’s covenant, permitting all of mankind to rush into the merciful presence of the Lord. He would take Ruth’s place outside of the assembly as He was cast out of the walls of Jerusalem to be crucified on Golgotha, so that she could be brought into the holy lineage of the Son of Man. He would absorb the Samaritan leper’s disease and uncleanness, his status outside of the people of God, as the Father turned His face from Jesus those three hours on the cross, all so that the Samaritan could run to the temple made flesh in Jesus and be brought into His grace. Jesus was the fulfillment of all that God had declared, taking it all upon Himself, so that all would be redeemed and brought into the forgiving presence, mercy, and love of the Triune God.

            Ruth finds her acceptance through the Messiah that would come from her own descendants. The coming Savior would cleanse His great-great-great-great-and-so-on-grandmother. His work on the cross towers over all time and space, even reaching backwards and redeeming her. The ten lepers were restored to the lives that they once had. But in an even greater miracle, Jesus incorporates a lost Samaritan into the presence of God, found in Jesus Himself, as the Samaritan runs back to Jesus and kneels at His feet worshiping Him as the true God who saved him. And it continues in our epistle reading, the letter written to Timothy, a young man and companion of St. Paul, whose mother and grandmother were Hebrews and taught Timothy the Scriptures, but whose father was a Greek. Yet because of what Jesus accomplished in His cross and resurrection, Timothy is counted as one of God’s people, the Church, through faith. He even becomes a pastor and bishop in those critical early days of the Church.

            What are we to make of all this? We can, of course, draw the lesson to not reject outsiders from God’s grace, from the Church. And that is an important lesson—God’s forgiveness, mercy, and desire to save extends to more than just those who we think are in the right crowd, no matter how our fallen natures want to draw the lines. But there’s something even deeper going on. Each one of you was once an outsider, belonging to the kingdom of this world, under sin, bound to the separation from God that the Law demanded. And yet, Christ brought you in. He made you one of God’s own people. He incorporated you into His family, making you His child and co-heir to eternal life in Baptism, when water and His promises poured over you and made you someone new, someone who belongs, someone who can now enter His presence. He unites Himself to you and all believers when He gives you His body and blood to eat and drink in faith, finding unity in the confession of the same faith that we all believe, our common trust in Jesus’ words, receiving forgiveness so that no matter what has happened in the last week, you’re reconnected to your forgiving God. You stand in His presence, pure and cleansed, once more. He speaks His forgiving word and He washes you clean, He releases you from your sin, He promises you healing and resurrection when He returns. He sends you to where He is present in His body, His blood, His Church, His Word. You have been brought into the richness of God’s promises. Your fellow believers have been brought in alongside you. And now you are part of His family, His people, to be in His presence forever. In the name of Jesus, who redeems us. Amen.