“ELEISON”
Saint Luke 17. 11-19
The Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity: 17 September Anno Domini 2006
Fr Watson
What a marvelous event, our Lord healing the ten lepers you think to your self; and then you mentally shudder with relief, “and thank the Lord that I don’t have leprosy.” Oh, really? Dear ones, you do have leprosy, just a different strain. Those distant ten had the “fast acting” kind. One could see them all rotting away day by day; part of an ear gone tomorrow; a finger tip next Thursday; face un-recognizable in a year or so.
The Laws of God are ten. They are commands and not mere goals or aspirations. Do them perfectly or rot in the continual leprosy of hell.
But you can’t fulfill the perfect will of God anymore than your first parents who “pulled the plug” on perfection, obedience, and life. They were told that in the day they ate from their own “will” they would die. They elected, the only election man can ever do on his own, to sin and to die. Adam and Eve were buried in the dirt whence Adam came from and they both rotted away from the leprosy of death.
The devil wants you living by sight and not by faith. He wants you to be lulled in to a dreamy like state of complacency and preoccupation. Just because you can’t see your leprosy doesn’t mean that it isn’t there. Leprosy is metaphorically the “old sinful nature;” it is the hidden thoughts that are in your heart. Out of the heart proceed all sorts of evil said Jesus. Your neighbor may not know what your craving, lusting for, and plotting, but the Lord does. You may not see your blemishes in the mirror, but the Lord does.
The Law of God is ten. This Decalogue not only slays in word and binding declaration but it slays physically as well. The wages of sin is death wrote the Apostle. You age and grow older because you are sinful. The ten men simply were you, at an advanced rate and stage.
The Law of ten is meant for your salvation. The law must get your attention so that you stop self-medicating yourself on more poison and instead are ready for the Good Physician to heal you to life.
The text this morning starts off with those felicitous words: “And it happened.” With God this is His way. God makes things happen. With the creator who can create something out of nothing, so too He is the Redeemer who can make purity out of filth, health out of disease, life out of death and baby-like skin out of leprous lesions. How and why this is so is that Jesus is the Lamb of God. He was on His way to Jerusalem to suffer and to die for those ten men who could not keep the ten commands; He was on His way to the Cross for all of you; for such did He come.
When your hideously deformed ancestors realized their appearance they hid in the Garden from the Savior. That is what sin does; it keeps one at a distance from the Trinity. But Jesus came to them, not worried about the social mores and Levitical niceties of the proper interactions with Lepers; the Lord came right into their presence. This is what He does this morning here as well, here into this camp of sickness. The Law had worked on the ten; they knew Who He was. Oh their theological expertise may not have been that of a Luther or a Chemnitz, but they knew He was good; they knew He was the Healer; they knew only He could help them and that He would. That’s what faith does, even when it’s imperfect and fledgling; it holds on to Jesus and cries out to Him in all its needs. They referred to Jesus as “Master” a title much closer to “Lord” than to simply rabbi, or teacher. They lifted up their voices in the perfect prayer that only faith can produce: “Elesou,” that is, “have mercy.”
There you have it. There is your Gospel, your evangel, your good news. Mercy in the flesh and blood came to those who were dead-men walking. Mercy in the Word made Incarnate came to all of you who were satanic zombies of the dead. “And it happened” we read again. And it happened by the Word of God that the ten sinners were all cleansed by the One Who would take their place in the fires of hell.
The ten sinful sons of Israel (Jacob) did not love their Father or their brother, and thus they threw Joseph into a pit and sold Him into slavery. Joseph years later repaid their evil and treachery by forgiving them, embracing them, shedding tears for them and “Elesou,” that is, having Mercy on them. Joseph pointed to Jesus; the One Who would be slain by His “brothers & sisters” sins, and thrown into a pit.
After the ten tribes revolted against the United Kingdom which was won and built by David and Solomon, only spiritual death haunted the kings and people of Israel. But like Joseph before him, the Lord raised up Elisha to be His man and bear His word of mercy. Yes the prophet preached the ten commands; and did so as harshly and uncompromisingly as His mentor Elijah, but when confronted by the great Assyrian General Namaan, a man who for all his power, glory, and wealth, was a leper, daily dying in doses of decay, Mercy was shown. By being bathed in the waters of the Jordan, a clear picture of the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, the Word of God made that foreign General as spotless as Jesus would make the nine Jews and the one Gentile. “And it happened.”
“And it happened” that on Good Friday the Prince of Peace became the spotless and pure victim, the substitute of you who shatter the ten commands. “And it happened” that on the Third Day He rose again to life to declare to His Church what He had declared moments before He had given up the ghost: “Elesou.” “And it happened,” “in time” that the “Master” came to you, not in the Jordan, but at the Font, (as He came to Marie Evelyn this morning) and there/here again was Mercy overflowing; inexhaustible. “And it happened” that He has ordained a royal feast that will go on forever, of which you even now participate in.
What a joy to sing “Kyrie Eleison” knowing that He has, and does. Mercy to you:
In the Name of The Father and of The Son + and of The Holy Ghost