Luke 17

1 Jesus said to his disciples, ‘It is inevitable that there should be temptations but sorrow awaits the person who does the tempting!

2 It would be better for them if they had been flung into the sea with a millstone round their neck, rather than that they should cause even one of these little ones to stumble.

3 Be on your guard! If your brother or sister does wrong, rebuke them; but if they repent, forgive them.

4 Even if they wrong you seven times a day, but turns to you every time and says “I am sorry,” you must forgive them.’

5 ‘Give us more faith,’ said the apostles to the Master;

6 but the Master said, ‘If your faith were only like a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree “Be uprooted and planted in the sea,” and it would obey you.

7 Which of you, if he had a servant ploughing, or tending the sheep, would say to him, when he came in from the fields, “Come at once and take your place at the table,”

8 Instead of saying “Prepare my dinner, and then make yourself ready and serve me while I am eating and drinking, and after that you will eat and drink yourself”?

9 Does he feel grateful to his servant for doing what he is told?

10 And so with you – when you have done all that you have been told, still say “We are but useless servants; we have done no more than we ought to have done.”’

11 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus passed between Samaria and Galilee.

12 As he was entering a village, ten lepers met him.

13 Standing still, some distance off, they called out loudly, ‘Jesus! Sir! Pity us!’

14 When Jesus saw them, he said, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priest.’ And, as they were on their way, they were made clean.

15 One of them, finding he was cured, came back, praising God loudly,

16 and threw himself on his face at Jesus’ feet, thanking him for what he had done; and this man was a Samaritan.

17 ‘Were not all the ten made clean? exclaimed Jesus. But the nine – where are they?

18 Were there none to come back and praise God except this foreigner?

19 Get up,’ he said to him, ‘and go on your way. Your faith has delivered you.’

20 Being once asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was to come, Jesus answered, ‘The kingdom of God does not come in a way that can be seen,

21 nor will people say “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!”; for the kingdom of God is within you!

22 The day will come,’ he said to his disciples, ‘when you will long to see but one of the days of the Son of Man, and will not see it.

23 People will say to you “There he is!” Or “Here he is!” Do not go and follow them.

24 For, just as lightning will lighten and flare from one side of the heavens to the other, so will it be with the Son of Man.

25 But first he must undergo much suffering, and he must be rejected by the present generation.

26 As it was in the days of Noah, so will it be again in the days of the Son of Man.

27 They were eating and drinking and marrying and being married, up to the very day on which Noah entered the ark, and then the flood came and destroyed them all.

28 So, too, in the days of Lot. People were eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building;

29 but, on the very day on which Lot came out of Sodom, it rained fire and sulphur from the skies and destroyed them all.

30 It will be the same on the day on which the Son of Man reveals himself.

31 On that day, if a person is on their house-top and their goods in the house, they must not go down to get them; nor again must one who is on the farm turn back.

32 Remember Lot’s wife.

33 Whoever is eager to get the most out of their life will lose it; but whoever will lose it will preserve it.

34 On that night, I tell you, of two people on the same bed, one will be taken and the other left;

35 of two women grinding grain together, one will be taken and the other left.’

36

37 ‘Where will it be, Master?’ asked the disciples. ‘Where there is a body,’ said Jesus, ‘there will the vultures flock.’