Trinity 14 (September 13, 2020)
“Jesus,
Master, Have Mercy on Us” (Luke 17:11-19)
Shared
pain can bring people together. There
are support groups for all kinds of people … those with addictions, those
dealing with grief, those with various health issues. You name it, there’s probably a support group
out there for it. And people from all
walks of life, all different backgrounds, all ethnicities, are drawn together to
find strength to work through whatever they are experiencing.
Shared pain
brought together the men in our Gospel reading for today. They were lepers. In the Bible, “leprosy” is a generic name for
some type of obvious skin disorder which made people unclean in the eyes of
their community. The Law of Moses declared
that they were supposed to live outside the city walls and wear torn clothes,
let the hair of their head hang loose, cover their mouth with a mustache or
their hand, all of which were external signs of grief. When anyone approached, they were to cry out “Unclean!
Unclean!” It was a miserable existence, isolated,
alienated from their families and friends, and unable to participate in the
worship life of the community unless they underwent certain cleansing rituals
after their disease cleared up.
In this group
that Luke describes, most were apparently Jews, but there was one
Samaritan. And you may remember from
last week’s sermon their history and how Jews and Samaritans hated each other. But for these lepers, their ethnic
differences didn’t matter any longer.
Barriers were broken down. Their
alienation from their communities, their loneliness, their brokenness, their
pain brought them together. And with one
voice, they cry out as they see the Savior approaching, “Jesus, Master, have
mercy on us”
If only
people today would recognize their shared pain.
That would go a long way toward solving so many of the ills in our world
today. I don’t mean the pain that is shared
in a support group. The brokenness in
our bodies and our lives is evidence of a greater brokenness … the brokenness in
our souls. It’s the leprosy of sin, the
disease that mars our human nature. And more
than mars. It utterly corrupts. The uncleanness inside of us leads to all the
rotten works of the flesh that Paul enumerates in Galatians 5: “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality,
idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries,
dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.” And he adds this stern warning: “Those who do
such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” You probably figured some of those things
deserved condemnation. That’s a pretty
nasty list. But even things like jealousy
and rivalries and divisions and envy will keep you from the kingdom of God. Is that really what you want?
You, see,
Paul lays out the symptoms of our problem here, which reveals the diagnosis
that we are all desperately broken, desperately in need of healing. Too often, though, we ignore it, like a proud,
stubborn man who refuses to go to the doctor and just decides to suck it up. You might even brag to yourself about how
together you have it, how much better you are than the rest of the common
rabble. You don’t think you need help. You can handle this on your own. And so, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on me,” is
not naturally your first cry.
It’s
obvious that something is seriously wrong with our world. Look around.
Listen to the news. We see what
Solomon observed: “For they cannot sleep
unless they have done wrong; they are robbed of sleep unless they have made
someone stumble. For they eat the bread
of wickedness and drink the wine of violence.”
But we also need to recognize the problems in our own hearts … our own sin,
too … and cry out “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”
And he
does. Jesus came and shared our pain in
order to reconcile us to the Father. As
the Incarnate Son of God, Jesus knew suffering his entire life. He was chased out of town several times, even
once before he reached the age of two by King Herod who sought to kill him. Jesus knew temptation and hunger. Jesus knew what it is like to grow tired and
weary. Jesus knew grief and sadness, evidenced
by the tears he shed for his dead friend Lazarus. Jesus felt compassion for all who endured the
consequences of Adam’s Fall … the blind, the lame, the deaf, the demon
possessed. Jesus knew the hurt of being
falsely accused and mercilessly mocked.
And Jesus knew the pain of being tortured with whips and thorns and
nails and a cross. All to bear the punishment
of the sin of the world … your sins and mine … and to shed his blood so that we
could be forgiven and brought back into a relationship with God.
As the living Word of God, Jesus brings
the Word of God to our hearts and souls.
And his healing word works. The
lepers obeyed the word of Jesus even before they were healed … that in itself
is an act of faith. They departed and
discovered along the way that they were healed.
But only one returned to give thanks … the Samaritan, of all people …
the one who was originally one of the outsiders, outcast, doubly despised
because he was a foreigner. He fell at
Jesus’ feet in reverence and awe and gratitude.
And Jesus says to him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you
well,” which literally is “your faith has saved you.” It’s not that faith in itself has any saving
power. Faith is simply receiving and
trusting in the saving gifts that come from God. And along with those saving gifts comes the
promise of wholeness … shalom, as it is in Hebrew … peace, as it is sometimes
translated. All things were new again for
this man. All the things that once made
him whole were restored to him. He was
clean before God and could now return to his family and friends. No longer would he be lonely and isolated and
looked down upon. No longer would he
feel as if he was cursed by God. He knew
God’s compassionate care. And he
demonstrated the presence of true faith in his heart through his grateful
return to Jesus.
The word
of Jesus comes to us today and fills us and forgives us. Baptized into Christ’s death, the desires and
passions of our sinful flesh are crucified.
And we are raised up to new life.
“Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.” Rise.
That’s a resurrection word. We
rise up from the waters of baptism to live a new life, united to Christ’s
resurrection, and we enter into God’s Shalom … God’s wholeness. We have a restored relationship with
God. The Spirit gives us a desire to restore
our relationships with others. We have a
life of community with the Church, peace of mind and heart, and hope for eternity. And among the baptized, the barriers which once
stood between us are broken down, as St. Paul writes in Galatians 3, “There is
neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male nor
female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28).
Having
been raised up, we can fall again at the feet of Jesus in reverence and awe and
gratitude. The faith that we are given
and the faith that saves us is demonstrated in the fruit that the Spirit produces
in us: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness, and self-control.” Instead
of craving the bread of wickedness and the wine of violence, we crave the bread
of righteousness and the wine of peace … the body of Jesus that earned the
verdict of “not guilty” for us, and the blood of Jesus that covers our sin so
that we can be at peace with God. From
this table, we rise and go our way. Jesus,
our Master, has had mercy on us. For
that, we give him thanks. INI
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