“CHRIST HATH MADE THEE WHOLE”
Saint Luke 17: 11-19
14th Sunday After Trinity: 6 September Anno Domini 2015
Father Jay Watson SSP
The Lord healed 10 lepers. So why hasn’t he healed you? He rid 10 men of disease and fully restored them but why do you still have disease; why do your loved ones and family members still lay in hospital and hospice beds; and why do your pains become chronic rather than dissipate at His healing touch? God healed Naaman—a Syrian, but He won’t help you a good Lutheran?
O give thanks unto The Lord for He is good and His mercy endureth forever.
You’re with Him in the boat; and do waves of old age and the sea-spray of discomfort cause you to think the boat is going to sink? You’ve seen him bring babes back from Satan’s bondage and feed His flock His very Body and Blood; and yet you give in to doubt, resentment and anger? Repent. You are His no less than the 10, and you are His brethren no less than the “12.” This Scriptural miracle is not proscriptive and standard operating procedure for the Flock, rather it is descriptive of an event on The Lord’s way to The Tree. Christ cleansed 9 Jewish men and one Samaritan man from leprosy—He did not heal all lepers in Galilee, Samaria, and Judea. This sign was for the benefit of both His Disciples and His Church. This revelation of His Person—His “flash of God Nature” confirmed Him as Messias!
That historical tableau described by Saint Luke gives you the truth of Who you believe, teach, and confess—Who you worship! It points you to Who to look to in your pains, loss, and long dark nights of the soul. You don’t get cancer because you sin in one or another particular way. Your Father or sister did not die from heart disease because they trespassed on occasion egregiously. But, your pain and upcoming death is the result of not just the Fall, not just Adam, but also your own stained nature. You have leprosy in one form or another because you are a sinner. The wages of sin is death.
If you could keep the 10 Commandments you would live—live without disease. But you don’t keep the Decalogue and neither did the 10 from that “certain village.” You have been called by The Spirit and enlightened with His gifts: Christ’s adoption as sons. You now can and do cry with those hurting lepers “Kyrie eleison.” Jesus’ mercy is so great for you that He doesn’t just do what penicillin, surgery, or advanced scientific breakthroughs may do—prolong your earthly existence a few years or decades. Jesus forgives you your sickness—your sin—and thus ensures your eternal health and His everlasting banquet and Kingdom.
Priests were to make sacrifices to the Lord on behalf of sinful Israelites. Jesus the True Israel sacrificed Himself in their behalf; in their place. The Lepers could go to the priests to have themselves brought back into the assembly—the family of faith—because Jesus was brought out like the garbage of sin, the refuse of uncleanness to be crucified outside the City of Peace.
You give glory now this morning when you “kneel” at the rail and worship Christ, giving Him thanks. For your true Eucharista is in receiving Him and eating and drinking His forgiveness. For where there is forgiveness of sins there is also life and salvation. From His bloody feet drips your covering garment of Redemption. From His pierced side gushes out your flow of watery-bloody absolution. Jesus flows into the Font and overflows now into the Chalice. Naaman at the Jordan and you blessed Saints at Table.
The Lord has taken all of your loneliness and depression; all of your physical suffering and fear. He carried them with Him when He kept your failures to love His Father with all your heart and your failures to love your neighbors as yourself. He let your leprosy be nailed into His flesh—pure immaculate, sinless flesh, so that you would have newness of heart, restored spirit, and become flesh of His flesh as Bride becomes one with her Groom.
Fellow Samaritans arise and come forward to your wholeness. The faith Jesus gives you is hungry again for the focus of its hunger: forgiveness and peace in His Body, Blood, and Word of mercy.
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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