Last week, I wrestled with what Jesus in Luke said faith was and wasn’t. Picking up where I left off in Luke, this week I see what faith — even faith the size of a mustard seed — looks like in action. I also get glimpses of what having even more faith can do.
In Luke 17:11, I read that Jesus is journeying through Samaria and Galilee on his way to Jerusalem. This man Jesus is totally open to the will of his Father. That’s one way I would define faith — openness to the will of God that, when unobstructed, means union with God. This faith leads Jesus into the less-than-friendly territory of Samaria. Later, it will lead him to suffer and die and return to life, never to die again.
In verse twelve, faith allows him to hear pleas for help — pleas from people his culture has teaches him he needs to stay away from so that they don’t make him unclean and ostracize him, too. Faith leads Jesus to cross geopolitical, cultural, and spiritual borders. Faith leads Jesus to put the needs of others ahead of his own security and convenience.
Faith — perhaps closer to the size of a mustard seed — leads ten ill people to call out to Jesus for help — even if only from a distance, in deference to the human laws they’ve been compelled to obey.
Jesus responds differently than he does in other stories of healing. He doesn’t heal by touch. The passage suggests the people he heals aren’t even healed in his presence. They’re “cleansed” on their way to “show themselves to the priests” (Luke 17:14). This part of the story offers a number of lessons:
- God isn’t limited by laws and rules such as the ones first-century people were subject to regarding what we would today call Hansen’s Disease. Yet in this story, God works in the midst of those codes. God still usually works within certain scientific laws, and Divine Goodness can be recognized within any prudent and just regulations we establish today.
- Cleansing and healing often don’t happen suddenly but as we are continuing about our business.
After we read about Jesus’ instructions to the group of ten, we learned that one of them “realiz[ed” he had been healed [and] returned, glorifying God in a loud voice, [falling] at the feet of Jesus and [thanking] him” (Luke 17:15-16). When I first heard these verses this week, I interpreted them the way I usually hear other people interpret them. I understood them to say that the whole group realized they were healed, but only one person came back to praise God and thank Jesus.
But now I’m wondering if only one of them even realized he was healed. It would be strange if someone didn’t realize he or she was healed of Hansen’s Disease. However, I find it relatable that someone can experience another kind of healing or another gift and not realize she’s received it for a long time or ever. And I know what it’s like to wait and wait for solution to a problem, only to go on about my business without appreciation or gratitude until I encounter another difficulty that I want smoothed over. So maybe the one who came back was both the only one to realize what he had received and the only one who offered thanks for it in Jesus’ presence.
In response to the man’s gratitude, Jesus wonders out loud where the other nine are (Luke 17:17). That’s a relatable response, too. Who, after helping ten people and being thanked by only one of them wouldn’t wonder where the other nine are? As Jesus wonders this, he points out that the man who returned is a “foreigner” (Luke 17:18). He then tells the man, “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you” (19).
Here’s what this story tells me about what the faith that saves the man isn’t:
- It isn’t a particular posture.
- It isn’t identifying with a particular group.
- It isn’t words.
Faith is a response .of the heart, the mind, and the will that may be expressed by one or more of the above and by what a person does with that faith as she continues on her way. Faith, in the story explored for this post, is expressed with humility, awareness, and gratitude. To encounter these qualities, it’s often necessary to pause in the midst of our busy lives. We are meant to pause, but not to stop traveling permanently. Instead, the pause helps us to be mindful of God as we journey on.
Work cited
The Bible. The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
Sitting with the Sacred 