Sermon for Trinity 14
Galatians 5:16-24 + Luke 17:11-19
We have much to be thankful for today. Two long-time wedding anniversaries were celebrated among our members this past week. One of our long-distance members celebrates a birthday this coming week. I received a short letter this week from a family I’ve never met in Missouri, who watch our services online every single week; they included an offering in honor of a birthday they celebrated this week. And, of course, we’ll be receiving two faithful Christians into our church membership today. All of that is in addition to the literally countless blessings, both physical and spiritual, that our God has given to each and every one of us here. For all this, it’s fitting and right to give thanks to God.
One of the ten lepers who were cured in our Gospel for today set a good example for us of such thanksgiving. But the other nine didn’t. They were all healed, as if they were all “new men.” But only one of those new men returned to give thanks to Jesus. Let’s take a look at the account of the healing of the Ten Lepers this morning and learn a few of the lessons the Lord would teach us here.
Ten men with leprosy approached Jesus, but from a distance. Leprosy was a disease that infected the largest organ of the human body: the skin. It left a person’s skin spotted and discolored, often covered with sores, and sometimes infected with gangrene. Maybe worse, God commanded, in the Law of Moses, that lepers in Israel be excluded from society; they were perpetually counted as unclean, and so couldn’t live among their fellow Israelites or participate in any of the festivals or temple activities.
Why was such a burden placed on lepers? Because there’s a life-or-death lesson God wanted to drive home to Israel under that first Covenant: The unclean cannot stand before God. Now, in reality, the outward state of your body doesn’t make you spiritually unclean in God’s sight. If you get dirty, or if you’re full of sores, that doesn’t make you unable to stand before God. It’s sin that does that—evil thoughts, and words, and deeds. But leprosy was an object lesson for Israel, teaching them that it’s not just the sins you commit that place you under condemnation. It’s the disease of your flesh, your sinful nature, the corruption and the ugliness of your soul—the soul of everybody born of Adam and Eve—that makes you unable to stand before God and unwelcome in the presence of His holy people. We refer to it as Original Sin, the disease of our nature that doesn’t fear, love, or trust in the true God, and that fills us with sinful desires, with longings for things that God labels sinful. All the actual sins we commit flow from this disease of our flesh, like spots on a leper, making it obvious that the person’s flesh is diseased. As St. Paul put it in today’s Epistle: the works of the flesh are obvious: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, indecency, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, murders, drunkenness, debauchery, and things like these. So, to demonstrate that to the people of Israel, God caused those who were afflicted with leprosy to bear a terrible burden: they were a visible sign to everyone in Israel that all of them, by nature, looked like this to God, if not on the outside, then surely on the inside, and needed to be cleansed if they were to live in His presence.
In our Gospel, we see Jesus mercifully providing the external cleansing of that disease for the ten men who came to Him in faith. They had obviously heard the good word about Jesus and believed it, that He was a kind and merciful Master. So they called out to Him in faith, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” And He did. Immediately. Go, show yourselves to the priests! He said. That was what the Law of Moses required for those who had been cleansed from leprosy. The priests had to examine them over the course of several days, and if they were diagnosed as being clean on the outside, then they had elaborate rituals prescribed for them, to make them officially and ceremonially clean. At last.
By healing these lepers, Jesus demonstrated that He is the one who not only heals outward corruption, but also the inward corruption of our diseased nature, our diseased soul. But the Scriptures are clear that He doesn’t heal us by getting rid of our sinful nature or by turning it in a clean nature. He heals us by forgiving us our sins and by creating a new nature within us, a clean and godly nature that lives side by side, as it were, with the sinful nature. The new nature, the “New Man,” is led by the Spirit of God and must continually choose to walk with the Spirit and to live according to the Spirit, as St. Paul wrote to the Galatians in today’s Epistle. We’ll come back to that in a moment.
But see what happens with those who believed in Jesus and were cleansed. Their cleansing happened not while they were standing there in front of Jesus but as they took Him at His word and started walking toward the priests, possibly having to go all the way to Jerusalem. As they went, they looked and realized that their leprosy was gone, and they surely rejoiced in it. But nine of the ten took that good and gracious gift that Jesus had given them and got so wrapped up in it, and in the new life they had ahead of them, that they forgot about Jesus, the source of their life, just that quickly. It no longer mattered to them that they had just had an encounter with God, who had done for them, freely, what no one else in the universe could do. They took their cleansed selves and walked away from God. When Jesus asks, Were not all ten healed? But where are the other nine? Were there none found to return and give glory to God except for this foreigner?, it was a solemn indictment of those nine men, and apparently those nine were Jews—lifelong church members—who should have known better.
That is the danger. Many have come to Jesus for healing—for the forgiveness of sins and the beginning of a new life—and many have received it and become Christians. But then many—maybe most!—end up squandering it, end up pursuing an earthly life that relegates Jesus to the background. “He’ll be there if we ever need Him again. Maybe we’ll stop by church to grace Him with our presence once in a while. But for now, we don’t need Him.” And the thought of taking time out of their important life to worship Him, to thank Him, to listen to Him doesn’t even occur to such people anymore. Their New Man gives in to the Old Man and eventually dies.
But the one leper, the Samaritan, returned to give thanks to Jesus, to “give glory to God,” as Jesus put it. The “New Man” in him remained alive! And notice, the Samaritan didn’t just fall on knees where he was along the road and say a prayer in his heart. He went to the place where God had made Himself available to the man, to the place where Jesus was. And Jesus affirmed that the man had not only been brought to faith, but had continued in the faith, which is just as important. Rise and go. Your faith has saved you. And so, yes, he would rise and leave Jesus for the moment, but he wouldn’t go back to life as usual. He would go on bearing fruit in the new life Jesus had given him. As St. Paul wrote, the fruit of the Spirit is: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
All of you here have received new life from Jesus. You’ve heard His Gospel, repented of your sins, looked to Jesus for mercy, and had your sins washed away in Holy Baptism, including Original Sin—the filthiness of your flesh, of your nature, as you stand before God. And you were given a New Man to walk with God’s Spirit every day, to produce the fruit of the Spirit, to do the good works God has prepared in advance that you should walk in them.
Now learn the lesson from today’s Gospel. Be careful to walk as the new people God has cleansed you to be. That begins with recognizing the great gift God has given you in Christ in the waters of Baptism, recognizing that your very life is a gift from God that you didn’t deserve, because you were spotted and diseased, and you still carry around that ugly flesh that’s always at war with the Spirit and the New Man and wants to dive right back into the filth of the world. But you were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. You’ve received new life from Jesus and for Jesus’ sake, who gave His life on the cross for you, that you might no longer live in filthiness and uncleanness, but in goodness and love.
Receiving new life from Jesus doesn’t mean you’re done with Him, just as a little baby isn’t done with his mother after he’s born. No, your life depends on Him and flows from the preaching of His Word and from His Sacraments, where He promises to be present to forgive out sins, to receive our thanks, and to give us His strength. So let us give thanks to God today for all His many blessings, and let us pursue a life that’s characterized, not by thanklessness, but by thanksgiving. Amen.
