Audio recording Sermon manuscript: At Mt. Sinai God gave Moses and the Israelites laws about cleanness and uncleanness. Things that are clean are available for use and consumption. Unclean things are to be avoided if at all possible. Unclean things make the person who comes into contact with them also unclean. Those who are unclean need to be made clean before they can participate in worship or be exposed in any way to God’s presence. Generally speaking, practically all things in this world were clean. What was unclean was specifically laid out in the laws given to Moses. One common denominator among many of these laws was that contact with what was dead, and especially contact with putrid things, would render that person unclean. Dead and dying things were to be avoided. Leprosy is a disease where a person’s skin gets covered with bumpy, disfiguring rashes. The flesh deteriorates until there is a loss of feeling. Eventually fingers and toes and other body parts can simply fall off. As far as cleanness is concerned, here we have death within a person’s own body. Obviously it made the person unclean. Anybody with leprosy was removed from common society lest their uncleanness be communicated to those who were clean. If a person recovered from the disease, he or she would have to go to the priest, so that they could be examined for any signs of the disease. Then, after rendering a sacrifice, they could return to society. In our Gospel reading Jesus came into contact with ten men who had been excluded from society because of their leprosy. They cried out to him, “Jesus, master, have mercy on us!” Jesus responded, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” It was as though Jesus already regarded them as healed and clean. All they needed to do now was to go to the priests to make it official. Fortunately, they believed Jesus’s promise of being healed. They followed his instructions, and as they were on their way they all saw that their leprosy had gone away. The focus of Luke’s account of this miracle, however, is not so much on this removal of leprosy. It is on what follows afterwards. One from the ten did not continue his journey to the priests. He turned back. He glorified God with a loud voice. He fell on his face at Jesus’s feet, thanking him. And he was a Samaritan. The Samaritans believed and taught many things that were wrong about God and God’s Word. The Jews understandably looked down on them. But here was somebody from outside the orthodox camp who was worshipping God in spirit and in truth. Although the theology of the other nine presumably was in better shape than this foreigner’s, they were nowhere to be found. This is a breaking of the second commandment. The second commandment requires us to use God’s name rightly. Using God’s Name rightly means that we should call upon him in every trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks. The nine did not give thanks. This commandment condemns them. So what might be done with these nine or with others who, like them, are ungrateful? Perhaps we could go after them with a birch branch and start smacking them. We could punish them by beating them until they fall on their knees with folded hands and start to say their prayers. “Let that be a lesson to you!” So long as we have been put in a proper position of authority, according to the Law we would be entirely within our rights to carry out something like that. God threatens to punish all who break his commandments. They broke the second commandment. They are liable to punishment. Parents and other authorities have the right to compel those under their charge to do outward things like getting on their knees and folding their hands. And yet, we can tell that this won’t exactly work. Requiring a certain posture is one thing. Bringing about a change of heart is another. All of God’s commandments can compel outward compliance if the punishments are severe enough. But those commandments and punishments do not have the power to bring about a