Luke 17

The Word Made Fresh

1Jesus said to his disciples, “There are plenty of opportunities to stumble, but too bad for anyone who sends those opportunities! 2It would be better for you to be thrown into the sea with a millstone hung around your neck than to cause even one of these children to stumble. 3So, be careful! If your brother sins you must chastise him. If he repents you must forgive him. 4If someone sins against you seven times a day, but comes back and repents, you must forgive him.”

5The apostles begged the Lord, “Strengthen our faith.”

6The Lord answered, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed you could tell this mulberry tree to be uprooted and replanted in the sea, and it would obey you. 7Would you tell your servant who has just come in from working in the field to come in and dine at your table? 8Wouldn’t you tell him instead to prepare supper for you and say to him, ‘Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink, and you can eat and drink later’? 9Do you thank your servant for doing what you told him to do? 10The same applies to you; when you have done everything you were ordered to do you have to say, ‘We are worthless servants – we only did what we were supposed to do.’”

11On the road to Jerusalem Jesus passed between Samaria and Galilee. 12As he entered a village he was met by ten lepers. They kept their distance, 13but called out, “Jesus, Master, take pity on us!”

14Jesus said to them, “Go show yourselves to the priests,” and as they were going, they were healed. 15One of them turned back, loudly praising God. 16He fell at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. He was a Samaritan.

17Jesus asked, “Weren’t there ten of you who were healed? Where are the other nine? 18Is this foreigner the only one of them to return and give praise to God?” 19Then he said to the man, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has healed you.”

20On another occasion the Pharisees asked him when the kingdom of God was coming. He told them, “The kingdom of God isn’t coming in ways that you can see. 21People won’t be saying, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ The truth is that the kingdom of God is within you.”

22Then he told his disciples, “The days are coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you won’t see it. 23People will say to you, ‘Look over there!’ or ‘Here it is!’ But don’t pay any attention to them. 24When the day of the Son of Man arrives it will be like lightning flashing and brightening the sky from horizon to horizon. 25But first, he will have to endure suffering and rejection. 26The days of the Son of Man will be like the days of Noah. 27People were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage until the day Noah got aboard the ark, and the flood came and wiped all of them out. 28And it will be like the days of Lot, with people eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, 29but on the day Lot left Sodom it rained fire and sulfur from heaven and destroyed all of them. 30That’s what it will be like when the Son of Man is revealed. 31If you’re on the rooftop when that day comes, don’t waste time to take your belongings out of the house. If you’re working in the field, don’t turn back. 32Remember what happened to Lot’s wife. 33Whoever strives to keep their life will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it. 34I’m telling you, on that night there will be two in one bed; one will be taken and the other will be left behind. 35Two women will be grinding grain together; one will be taken and the other left. 36Two will be working in the fields; one will be taken and the other left.”

37“Where will this take place, Lord,” they asked.

And Jesus replied, “Where the dead body lies, the vultures will gather.”

Commentary

1-4: Jesus turns again to his disciples. Temptations are sure to come, and some may fall to temptations. The way to handle sins is to confess, and the way to handle confessions is to forgive, he tells them. The main thing is, don’t be the source of temptations for others.

5-6: I don’t believe Jesus meant us to understand that faith is equivalent to magical powers or has anything to do with the concentration of mental powers, or the ability to focus one’s attention. Faith is not mind over matter. To have faith like a grain of mustard seed is simply to be so attuned to the will of God that we can do only God’s will and nothing else. That’s all a mustard seed can do.

7-10: To make the point further, faith means doing what God wants us to do without regard for rewards.

11-19: Luke has chosen to insert the account of the ten lepers at just this point in his narrative because it fits so well with the teachings just presented. For example, Jesus has emphasized to his disciples that they must practice mercy toward one another (verses 3-4); here the lepers beg Jesus for mercy. Jesus has just pointed out that a master doesn’t thank servants for doing their jobs (verse 9); here the Samaritan leper thanks Jesus for healing him, thus putting Jesus in the position of the master and the leper in the position of servant. Jesus has just responded to the apostles’ request to increase their faith (verse 5); here Jesus comments on the leper’s faith. There are other surprising things about this story. A Samaritan, a foreigner, may have just as much faith as a descendant of Abraham. That one of the ten lepers was a Samaritan indicates that there was more community and tolerance and acceptance among them than in society in general. Jesus is not said to have healed them. He only saw them at a distance. He did not say to them, “Be clean.” He only told them to go show themselves to the priest. Their action in going proved their faith.

20-21: The Pharisees are still hanging around. They want to know when this much-ballyhooed “kingdom of God” is coming. Jesus tells them there are no signs for the coming of the kingdom because it is “within you,” or “among you.” In other words, the kingdom is the internalization of the way God wants us to live.

22-37: In these verses, and nowhere else in the gospels, Jesus tells his disciples about the “days of the Son of Man,” a phrase that most agree is a reference to the Second Coming. It is a difficult passage to understand, and the reader might profitably spend much time in it without exhausting all the insights it has to impart. We can only offer a few observations here. The “day of the Son of Man” is not to be understood as something that is immediate, although I doubt Luke ever dreamed it would be more than 2000 years. It might be preceded by sudden and brief appearances (verse 24), but when the day comes there will be no mistaking it. It will be a time of terror for many, an unsettling thought. The destruction, however, will be highly selective: of two people sleeping in the same bed or working side by side, one will not be affected while the other will. One thing is for sure: a fundamental and permanent change will occur in the very fabric of reality, although details are impossible to discern. The most familiar part of these verses, however, is the saying about preserving your life by losing it. Death, for those who believe, is a door that leads to more abundant life.

Takeaway

We can live for ourselves and strive to make only those choices that benefit us; or we can live as God’s people and strive to make those choices that will make the world a better place to live for all of us.