The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost - The Rev. Colette Hammesfahr
Luke 17:11-19
– October 12, 2025
Joni Eareckson was born in Maryland in 1949. She was very
active and athletic. She came from a family of athletes. Her father was an
Olympic wrestler. The youngest of four daughters, she was the adventurous one.
Her family and friends described her as being energetic, independent, and full
of life. She grew up riding horses, playing sports, and doing what she loved
most, swimming. In 1967, when she was just 17 years old, whe went swimming with
one of her sisters in the Chesapeake Bay. They were out on a raft when Joni
decided to dive into the water. She didn’t know how deep the water was or what
was at the bottom of the bay. When she dove in, she struck her head on either a
rock or the sandy bottom of the bay and immediately lost all movement below her
shoulders. Not being able to swim, she was saved from drowning. She was rushed
to the hospital where the doctors confirmed a fracture between the 4th
and 5th cervical vertebrae. Paralyzed from the shoulders down, she
and her family were told that she would never walk again and have only limited
use of her arms.
For someone so young, someone so active, this news was earth
shattering. Confined to a hospital bed for months, her days were filled with
grueling rehabilitation. When alone, she would sit in anger and despair. She
questioned her faith. She questioned why God hadn’t protected her. She
questioned why God wasn’t healing her. She attended faith-healing services
where she pleaded with God to heal her. At one point she begged her friends to
help her end her life. Joni longed for healing.
Like Joni, the ten lepers in Luke 17 also longed for
healing. They wanted their brokenness to be fixed, their lives to be restored.
In those days, if you had leprosy, you may as well not have existed. In the
story, there are ten lepers, one Samaritan and the rest Jews. Under normal
circumstances Jews and Samaritans had no use for one another. Yet, here, they
came together because of what they had in common. All racial and national
barriers had been broken down. They forgot who they were and where they came from,
they only knew that they were in need. Their common need was for heeling. Their
common need was for God.
Lepers were known as second-class citizens. They were to
keep to themselves and to stay away from the “healthy” people. It was said that
when they were windward of a healthy person, the leper should stand fifty yards
away. Can you imagine living in that isolation? Because of an illness,
something they had no control over, they were often banned from even entering
the gates of their city.
These ten lepers have heard about Jesus and his healing
power. As he enters the gates of a village where they are sitting they call out
to him for healing. It’s their only hope. They call him “Master.” They know and
believe in who he is. Jesus doesn’t hesitate. He simply tells them to go to the
priests. By Levitican Law, people had to be “certified” by a priest as being
clean before they could go back into society. As they were going to the priests,
they were made clean.
Out of ten lepers who had just been healed by Jesus, one of
them, the Samaritan, goes back to Jesus, falls on his knees in front of Jesus,
and thanks him for what he has done. The other nine have gone on their way. That’s
not to say they weren’t thankful for what Jesus had done. They were expectantly
excited. Imagine what it would have been like to be rid of the sores and
allowed back into society after who knows how many years. Imagine being allowed
back into your home with your family and friends. What do you do in your
excitement when something joyous and glorious has happened in your life? Shout
for joy? Run to tell you friends?
Jesus questions where the others are. They were made clean,
just as the Samaritan had been made clean, yet they didn’t think to come back
and thank Jesus. Jesus tells the one healed man, “Get up and go on your way,
your faith has made you well.” He had been healed already. Why would Jesus now
say he was made well?
We had a good discussion on Wednesday at the healing
service, trying to figure out what Jesus was saying. What does it mean to be
made “well?” A quick Google search told us that “well” can be an adjective that
describes health and wholeness. It can be an adverb describing how something is
done. It can be a noun, as in a well of water. It can also be an interjection. The
Greek word that was used in this text is the verb “sozo.” In our Bibles, it is
translated many different ways: well, healthy, healed, saved, delivered, but’s
it’s in the King James version that I think we get the true meaning. In the
KJV, it reads, “Your faith has made you whole.” In Greek, “sozo” means to make whole. To be
made whole has more to do with spiritual
wellness than physical wellness.
The leper was cleansed by Jesus but what made him whole is
when he came back to Jesus and with a loud voice he praised him. His disease
was gone. His skin was restored. The man was made whole when his soul was
restored. He wasn’t whole until his sould was restored. It was about inner
restoration, not outer healing.
In our Psalm this morning, we read about praising God, how
we can be tested through hardship, and then, in the end, we are made whole. Wholeness
comes when our hearts, purified by struggle, overflow in praise — because we
see that even in the fire, God is faithful.
In her autobiography, Joni: An Unforgettable Story, Joni Eareckson says she cried out, “God,
if I can’t die, then show me how to live.”[1] Through the support
of her friends, and in her lament, her faith deepened. She came to understand
that “being made well” meant that she had been transformed on the inside and
not fixed on the outside. During her time in rehab, Joni taught herself how to
paint using her mouth. What started as part of her therapy became a way to
worship. She then began writing and singing and even recorded albums of worship
music. Her voice became a way of worship and praise. In 1979 she founded, “Joni
and Friends,” an international ministry to help people living with
disabilities.
Just as the Samaritan leper returned to Jesus to give thanks, and
his gratitude became his wholeness, Joni’s life of gratitude became the
expression of her healing. Even though she couldn’t walk, she stood tall in her
faith. Even though people in the world saw her as “different,” she knew she was
“well” in Christ. Today, Joni says, “I would rather be in this
wheelchair knowing Jesus than walking without Him.”[2]
Praise can rise from brokenness. When we live as people who
have been made whole, our peace and gratitude spill over, blessing our homes,
our church, and our community. Being made whole means letting our faith shape
how we see, love, and respond, especially when life isn’t easy. So let us be
the people who turn back to Jesus in gratitude, who walk into the world with
joy, and who live as signs of God’s healing grace.
God may not always change our situation, but God always
offers to change our hearts — and through changed hearts, God changes
everything. Amen.
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