Proverbs 4:10-23; Galatians 5:16-24; St Luke 17:11-19
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Did you see Him as He entered the village? Recognize Him from His last visit to Nain when He raised the widow’s little boy? Maybe you overheard others going into and out of the village talking about the Man from Nazareth coming with His disciples; passing through on the way to Jerusalem.
Certainly you’ve heard of His unique willingness among the rabbis to trespass the barrier between the clean and the unclean; how He had allowed defiled women to wash His feet. How He ate with tax collectors and outcasts. How He’d actually touched the coffin of the boy from Nain! Those stories get around. Even His disciples don’t all the elaborate ceremonies of washing their hands after interacting with Gentiles in the market place before sitting down to eat. They associate with the unclean and outcast too because they are with Him.
Still. You dare not approach Him. Not you. Everyone knows who you are. You can’t hide your sin like others. Your uncleanness is on the outside. Everyone who sees you turns aside in horror. As if that weren’t enough, you have to shout out, “Unclean, unclean” if anyone even comes near. You have no one. No home. No coworkers. Just your companions. Even your family stays away.
So what have you got to loose? You convince the others and you all start banging on your pots and pans. You all lift up your voices to the One who is far from you. Like everyone else - far from you. But He’s different. Maybe He’ll hear you. Maybe He’ll listen. Maybe He, unlike anyone else, will at least acknowledge you as a person and at least greet you.
Do you recognize by now, dear Christian, that you are among the lepers? A lonely little congregation of sinners, cast out from everywhere. You can’t go to the Temple. You can’t go home. You can’t even walk the streets of the village, but have to stay outside the gates. As you crave community and acceptance, you feel in your gut what Cain must have felt when God expelled them from the family, away from His presence, sent off to live apart from His provision, outside of His grace.
This is what sin does. These are its consequences: separation from God and from community; clean cut off from everyone. Sin isolates and alienates. It creates a self-loathing, but without repentance. A hatred, but without contrition.
These lepers are the inverse of the picture of Dorian Gray. He could hide his sin, his licentiousness. Squirrel it away in the back corner of his secret closet. All the while maintaining a facade of purity and beauty while his portrait suffered the gruesome ravages of his trespasses. But these lepers though wear their uncleanness and shame on the outside. Their bodies riddled with lesions, plagued by infections and wounds, unaware even of the pain, on account of the deadening of their nerves.
To be sure, we are pretty good at hiding our sins. In this way, we are more like miserable Mr Gray. Pretty on the outside. Hideous within. We can look like we have everything together, things are fine. But hidden away in the dark recesses of our souls are the effects of our sins; the slow deformity of our humanity by our hidden faults.
But then, in this same way, we are more like the lepers than we know. You see, leprosy affected the nerves. Prolonged bacterial infection caused nerve damage in the extremities so that as fingers and toes and noses were susceptible to injury and became infected, they slowly fell off as the body. But one won’t feel it. The disease had killed the pain receptors, deadened the nerves, so that as you lost part of yourself, you didn’t even know it was gone until one day you looked, and it wasn’t there.
And this is what those secret sins, those hidden faults do to use. We hide them from others, cover over them with the cloak of darkness and squirrel away those thoughts of guilt and shame. Maybe, if they get really bad, we get prosthetic appendages. Pornography has so deaden my soul from feeling real love that i’ll just fake what I think its supposed to be. Depressed and alcohol have become so intertwined I can’t tell which is the problem anymore. I have become my covetousness, my greed, my anger, my gossip, that I just figure, this is my personality, my character. Just flaws I have to live with, not sins of which I need (or even want) to repent.
Before we know it, we find ourselves standing with the lepers. Our terrified conscience afraid to even approach Jesus for fear He will cast us away, or worse. Laugh at us? Mock us? Tell us He didn’t come for the likes of us?
Beloved, do not listen to your conscience at such times! Have no ear for the Law when it throws your sin and transgressions in your face!
Rather, listen to Jesus. He has heard your prayer and your plea for mercy. And He answers you immediately: Go and show yourselves to the priests. This is delivery of the fulfillment of the Law from the mouth of the One who is the fulfillment of the Law. He has His face set toward Jerusalem. He goes to lay down His life; to be clean cut off from the mercy of the Father by enduring the pain and punishment of His wrath. He has become your leprosy, taking your sin into Himself and so completely identifying with it that as you behold Christ crucified you must behold your sin nailed to the cursed tree.
For He who walked by the Spirit, never gratifying the desires of His flesh, took into His very flesh the putrid stain, the vile disease of your leprous flesh and hearts. He bore it all. He became the adulterer, the thief, the gossip, the liar, the aggressor, the leper. He is a worm and not a Man. And men hid their faces from Him; made Him the outcast, shamed and despised. He walked the village streets of Jerusalem, bearing your sin, and was thrown outside the gates to rot and die.
But as the Psalm right before ours today says, The Stone that the builders rejected has become the Cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes (Ps 118:22-23).
An so with the ears of faith you are attentive to the Wisdom of Christ Jesus. Grabbing hold of His promise you do not let them escape from your sight. With trust you keep them within your heart. For - what does it say? - they are life to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh. Healing, restoration, to all their once leprous flesh.
And so while the others run off to the priests and the Temple and offer the animal sacrifice, you - the Samaritan - return to your Great High Priest, the True Temple made without Hands, and offering the sacrifice of thanksgiving and render unto the Lord your God who is gracious and merciful to you, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
Why are you the Samaritan? Even though cleansed of leprosy he is still ethnically outcast. Just like you. Even if you manage to put away all your secret sins, to straighten up and get clean. You are still not clean. Your ethnicity, your heritage, the lineage of your first parents Adam and Eve, has infected all of their children.
But this Jesus, who though on His way to Jerusalem, cuts through Samaria and Galilee - He comes to the land of the Gentiles - and has taken you, a foreigner and stranger, and adopted you as an heir and brother. For He is the Second Adam, who by His faithful obedience has made a way back, not only for the Jews, but also for you Gentile Samaritans. For all. As it is written,
Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written,
“Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles,
and sing to your name.”
And again it is said,
“Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.”
And again,
“Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles,
and let all the peoples extol him.”
And again Isaiah says,
“The root of Jesse will come,
even he who arises to rule the Gentiles;
in him will the Gentiles hope.”
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. (Rm 15:8-13).
In such hope, beloved, you turn back, that is, in repentance and faith you praise God with a loud voice and fall at the feet of Jesus in faithful worship, offering Him the sacrifice of thanksgiving.
Where are the nine? He wonders, for He wants them here too.
But He delights in you, His dear one. He welcomes you back to Himself, into fellowship not only with Him and His Father with the Holy Spirit, but into the community of holy ones, the communion of saints, those in heaven and those on earth, gathered in life together around the throne of the Lamb forever singing His praise. And to you He says, Rise and go your way; your faith has saved you.
And such saving faith is bound to bring forth fruit, walking in the way of the Spirit in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. For in calling out for mercy to Jesus your Master, in receiving His healing Word and then in returning to Him who is God in the flesh and giving Him thanks, you belong to Him and have crucified the flesh - your old sin and shame and leprosy - with its passions and desires. And the new man, made clean in the blood of Christ, washed in the forgiveness of His Word, arises daily to live before Him in righteousness and purity, walking by the Spirit. For you have been grafted into the Vine.
And behold, the fruit of He who is the Vine: His Body and Blood, offered to you here as your High Priest and true Temple, the even you Gentiles may draw near and partake. For here, returning to Jesus in faith, your hearts are lifted up unto the Lord and kept with all vigilance, from it flowing the springs of life in He who is your life and salvation, your Wisdom and your Righteous Path, your Dwelling Place, your Shield and your God.
Your soul longs, yes faints for the courts of the Lord; your heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God (Ps 84:2).
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Did you see Him as He entered the village? Recognize Him from His last visit to Nain when He raised the widow’s little boy? Maybe you overheard others going into and out of the village talking about the Man from Nazareth coming with His disciples; passing through on the way to Jerusalem.
Certainly you’ve heard of His unique willingness among the rabbis to trespass the barrier between the clean and the unclean; how He had allowed defiled women to wash His feet. How He ate with tax collectors and outcasts. How He’d actually touched the coffin of the boy from Nain! Those stories get around. Even His disciples don’t all the elaborate ceremonies of washing their hands after interacting with Gentiles in the market place before sitting down to eat. They associate with the unclean and outcast too because they are with Him.
Still. You dare not approach Him. Not you. Everyone knows who you are. You can’t hide your sin like others. Your uncleanness is on the outside. Everyone who sees you turns aside in horror. As if that weren’t enough, you have to shout out, “Unclean, unclean” if anyone even comes near. You have no one. No home. No coworkers. Just your companions. Even your family stays away.
So what have you got to loose? You convince the others and you all start banging on your pots and pans. You all lift up your voices to the One who is far from you. Like everyone else - far from you. But He’s different. Maybe He’ll hear you. Maybe He’ll listen. Maybe He, unlike anyone else, will at least acknowledge you as a person and at least greet you.
Do you recognize by now, dear Christian, that you are among the lepers? A lonely little congregation of sinners, cast out from everywhere. You can’t go to the Temple. You can’t go home. You can’t even walk the streets of the village, but have to stay outside the gates. As you crave community and acceptance, you feel in your gut what Cain must have felt when God expelled them from the family, away from His presence, sent off to live apart from His provision, outside of His grace.
This is what sin does. These are its consequences: separation from God and from community; clean cut off from everyone. Sin isolates and alienates. It creates a self-loathing, but without repentance. A hatred, but without contrition.
These lepers are the inverse of the picture of Dorian Gray. He could hide his sin, his licentiousness. Squirrel it away in the back corner of his secret closet. All the while maintaining a facade of purity and beauty while his portrait suffered the gruesome ravages of his trespasses. But these lepers though wear their uncleanness and shame on the outside. Their bodies riddled with lesions, plagued by infections and wounds, unaware even of the pain, on account of the deadening of their nerves.
To be sure, we are pretty good at hiding our sins. In this way, we are more like miserable Mr Gray. Pretty on the outside. Hideous within. We can look like we have everything together, things are fine. But hidden away in the dark recesses of our souls are the effects of our sins; the slow deformity of our humanity by our hidden faults.
But then, in this same way, we are more like the lepers than we know. You see, leprosy affected the nerves. Prolonged bacterial infection caused nerve damage in the extremities so that as fingers and toes and noses were susceptible to injury and became infected, they slowly fell off as the body. But one won’t feel it. The disease had killed the pain receptors, deadened the nerves, so that as you lost part of yourself, you didn’t even know it was gone until one day you looked, and it wasn’t there.
And this is what those secret sins, those hidden faults do to use. We hide them from others, cover over them with the cloak of darkness and squirrel away those thoughts of guilt and shame. Maybe, if they get really bad, we get prosthetic appendages. Pornography has so deaden my soul from feeling real love that i’ll just fake what I think its supposed to be. Depressed and alcohol have become so intertwined I can’t tell which is the problem anymore. I have become my covetousness, my greed, my anger, my gossip, that I just figure, this is my personality, my character. Just flaws I have to live with, not sins of which I need (or even want) to repent.
Before we know it, we find ourselves standing with the lepers. Our terrified conscience afraid to even approach Jesus for fear He will cast us away, or worse. Laugh at us? Mock us? Tell us He didn’t come for the likes of us?
Beloved, do not listen to your conscience at such times! Have no ear for the Law when it throws your sin and transgressions in your face!
Rather, listen to Jesus. He has heard your prayer and your plea for mercy. And He answers you immediately: Go and show yourselves to the priests. This is delivery of the fulfillment of the Law from the mouth of the One who is the fulfillment of the Law. He has His face set toward Jerusalem. He goes to lay down His life; to be clean cut off from the mercy of the Father by enduring the pain and punishment of His wrath. He has become your leprosy, taking your sin into Himself and so completely identifying with it that as you behold Christ crucified you must behold your sin nailed to the cursed tree.
For He who walked by the Spirit, never gratifying the desires of His flesh, took into His very flesh the putrid stain, the vile disease of your leprous flesh and hearts. He bore it all. He became the adulterer, the thief, the gossip, the liar, the aggressor, the leper. He is a worm and not a Man. And men hid their faces from Him; made Him the outcast, shamed and despised. He walked the village streets of Jerusalem, bearing your sin, and was thrown outside the gates to rot and die.
But as the Psalm right before ours today says, The Stone that the builders rejected has become the Cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes (Ps 118:22-23).
An so with the ears of faith you are attentive to the Wisdom of Christ Jesus. Grabbing hold of His promise you do not let them escape from your sight. With trust you keep them within your heart. For - what does it say? - they are life to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh. Healing, restoration, to all their once leprous flesh.
And so while the others run off to the priests and the Temple and offer the animal sacrifice, you - the Samaritan - return to your Great High Priest, the True Temple made without Hands, and offering the sacrifice of thanksgiving and render unto the Lord your God who is gracious and merciful to you, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
Why are you the Samaritan? Even though cleansed of leprosy he is still ethnically outcast. Just like you. Even if you manage to put away all your secret sins, to straighten up and get clean. You are still not clean. Your ethnicity, your heritage, the lineage of your first parents Adam and Eve, has infected all of their children.
But this Jesus, who though on His way to Jerusalem, cuts through Samaria and Galilee - He comes to the land of the Gentiles - and has taken you, a foreigner and stranger, and adopted you as an heir and brother. For He is the Second Adam, who by His faithful obedience has made a way back, not only for the Jews, but also for you Gentile Samaritans. For all. As it is written,
Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written,
“Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles,
and sing to your name.”
And again it is said,
“Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.”
And again,
“Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles,
and let all the peoples extol him.”
And again Isaiah says,
“The root of Jesse will come,
even he who arises to rule the Gentiles;
in him will the Gentiles hope.”
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. (Rm 15:8-13).
In such hope, beloved, you turn back, that is, in repentance and faith you praise God with a loud voice and fall at the feet of Jesus in faithful worship, offering Him the sacrifice of thanksgiving.
Where are the nine? He wonders, for He wants them here too.
But He delights in you, His dear one. He welcomes you back to Himself, into fellowship not only with Him and His Father with the Holy Spirit, but into the community of holy ones, the communion of saints, those in heaven and those on earth, gathered in life together around the throne of the Lamb forever singing His praise. And to you He says, Rise and go your way; your faith has saved you.
And such saving faith is bound to bring forth fruit, walking in the way of the Spirit in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. For in calling out for mercy to Jesus your Master, in receiving His healing Word and then in returning to Him who is God in the flesh and giving Him thanks, you belong to Him and have crucified the flesh - your old sin and shame and leprosy - with its passions and desires. And the new man, made clean in the blood of Christ, washed in the forgiveness of His Word, arises daily to live before Him in righteousness and purity, walking by the Spirit. For you have been grafted into the Vine.
And behold, the fruit of He who is the Vine: His Body and Blood, offered to you here as your High Priest and true Temple, the even you Gentiles may draw near and partake. For here, returning to Jesus in faith, your hearts are lifted up unto the Lord and kept with all vigilance, from it flowing the springs of life in He who is your life and salvation, your Wisdom and your Righteous Path, your Dwelling Place, your Shield and your God.
Your soul longs, yes faints for the courts of the Lord; your heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God (Ps 84:2).
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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