Sunday 12th October – Can you see?

12-10-2025, Can you See?, Luke 17:11-19, pastor adrian kitson

¹¹Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus travelled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. ¹²As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance ¹³and called out in a loud voice, ‘Jesus, Master, have pity on us!’

¹⁴When he saw them, he said, ‘Go, show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were cleansed.

¹⁵One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. ¹⁶He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him – and he was a Samaritan.

¹⁷Jesus asked, ‘Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? ¹⁸Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?’ ¹⁹Then he said to him, ‘Rise and go; your faith has made you well.’

We have recently been in ‘border places’. We have been in those international border places called airports. We were on the border of Qatar, Spain, the UK, Germany and then of course, home – Australia.

They are very interesting places. There are people from who knows where right there with you in the line – different languages, dress code, ethnicity, race….

On the border it is easy to ‘shut up shop’ and not relate, show interest or even really noticer who and what is around you. In a way, it is a bit safer or less stressful. You are already in an unknown space. Why add to that by relating to unknown people?!

Jesus is in a border place, we hear. He is on the border between a safe and known home country and a much maligned, judged and dangerous neighbouring people – Samaria and Samaritans.

He is heading somewhere else – a city He is heading for Jerusalem, and all that will happen there.

Luke tells us this little account. It unfolds according to fairly standard movement.

People cry out to Jesus for healing from their disease.
Jesus responds by telling them they have been healed.
To give them their life in their family and community back, he tells them to go to the priests in the area to confirm their dreaded skin disease is officially gone.

But then, some things that are not so according to the usual plans.

This all happen in a ‘border-lands’ place. Seems like Luke is saying that God’s action in your life can surely happen in places where there is difference, tension, insecurity, vulnerability.
But this is also a known human place. The ten people with a very human disease, the mixed nature of the group in this border-land, the human voice of Jesus, the act of worship – lying in the dust at Jesus human feet – of the one who returned, the heart-felt thanks for a great gift of new life back again…. This confirms for me that God is involved in our humanness, our disease. He is most able to work in my ordinary. Ordinary things/ ordinary people, human things are no wall; no uncrossable border for him.
And then the bombshell different thing. Only one person truly sees; truly notice what is happening in this border-land. His returns shows this. He does what is rare – a 1in 10 chance. Even more rare. He is different. He is ‘double-different’ – outcast on two counts – nationality/ethnicity and disease. A Samaritan, of all people, returns to worship Jesus and give thanks to God for what he has received from God.

He sees. He sees that what he has been given is not just nice skin or an end to physical pain. He has been given a whole new life. He is now free to be with his family, with his community, in his temple – a fully accepted person once again – after al the years of isolation and judgement and shame.

He sees something profound.

What happened Mt Gerazim? What happened to the usual rhythm and value of that place as the place to seek God and give thanks? Mt Gerizim was the place to worship and give thanks to God. And what happened to the other place of worship those Jewish neighbours always banged on about – Jerusalem?

There seems to be a new place of worship now and it is not a place. It is a person. It is this Jesus of Nazareth on his way to give his life for the life of both and all cities and mountains and people.

Have you seen what he has given you lately?

Lots of people ‘believe in God’ as some benevolent power behind the goings on of life (or not benevolent). Some people believe in Jesus too. That he lived, spoke, died and even rose from the dead. But maybe not actually FOR ME.

The nine who never came back out to the border where the gifts were given did not seem to see what they had been given. I guess it is easy to ‘take the money and run’.

It is easy to live your Christianity as a series of transactions. God gives his gifts and we enjoy the benefits and go out our life as we did before we ever received them.

Not here. Not for 1 in 10. This man’s whole direction, his whole heart, his whole being is different. No more borderland for him when it comes to God or ethnicity or nationality. He, a Samaritan, has found the universal, international, global entirely human and yet wonderfully divine place of worship, thanks and praise – the source of life, the giver of healing, the gracious lover; God. He is right there in front of him.

He is here in the safe family space. He is there in your borderlands of different people, different faiths, different values and attitudes wherever you enter those border-land places.

And what he does for you and in you in both places is complete. This guy asked for a skin disease to be healed and got his whole self healed. He was asked to do the legal thing and go and be declared healthy by the temple people but then totally turned around and headed toward the source of his new life to be lived.

You turned around lately?

Friends, how long has it been since you ‘saw’ that you have been healed/restored, made whole and how long has it been since you fell at his feet and said, “Thanks Jesus. I see you now and I know you see me. You have all along. Forgive me for missing you so much of the time….”?

I was recently in a literal ‘no mans land’. It was in the empty once deadly space between East and West in Cold War Europe – near the Berlin Wall.

In that border land there are hundreds of pictures of people and stories about those real people who were shot trying to get over that wall to a new place; a new life; to be reunited with their family, their country, their friends….

It struck me that Jesus was like those people on that same wall in 1989. When Mikael Gorbechov had the courage to respond to the Ronald Reagan’s call the ‘tear down that wall’ thousands of people got on that wall and literally punched a whole in that wall with whatever they had. That iron barrier that had cause so much death and separation and grief in the world came down. The murderous border land was disarmed and the country united.

Of course, the wall Jesus smashed through was bigger and more universal to all nations that one wall in the city of Berlin. The wall he smashed down could only be truly seen atop a cross – a wall barring all people from God’s gracious healing and life; a diving wall between darkness and light, evil and good, life and death, disease and healing, suffering and joy, despair and hope.

And Jesus’ wall took a lot more than some picks and axes to smash down. It took God to smash this wall. It took the holy, pain-filled, all-out sacrificial love and commitment of God to smash down the dividing wall that once separated Jews and Samaritans; Jews and Gentiles from his grace and life (Ephesians 2:18).

This restored man saw it that day. I pray you can see it today in whatever your ‘border-land’ may be – those places that you feel separated from God, incomplete, dis-eased, unsure…

Loss, physical pain, emotional pain, broken friendship, insecurity, anger at others, worry about immigration, nations fighting, deep hatred between people-groups we witness nightly…..

Luther saw what that ‘1 in 10 man’ saw.

When asked to describe the nature of true worship, he responded succinctly: “the tenth leper turning back.”

That is what we are doing this morning. Ten lepers turning back.

The returning means, to bring home again to God the grace and goods received, not to keep them, not to boast of them or exalt self above others, or praise self on their account, not to reap honour thereby nor wish to be better than others, not to be satisfied with self, not to have joy in them, but to have all such joy, pleasure, honour and praise, only in him who has given them, and stand there willing and quite composed, when he shall again take them from you, and none the less just then to love and praise him.

(Martin Luther Sermon on Luke 17:11-19, martinlutherpostil.com)

See it today. See him today. When you do, you know what to do.

Change direction. Head back to him.

You know what he says:

Rise and go. Faith has made you whole.