Mercy For Lepers - Luke 17: 11-19

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The text is the Gospel lesson from Luke, read earlier.

Leprosy. It was to the ancient world what Covid-19 was five years ago, or AIDS in the 80s, or polio back in the 1950s: a dangerous, debilitating, likely life-threatening disease. Thank God – I use that literally – leprosy is relatively rare, so we are rather unfamiliar with it. Without getting into terribly gory details, leprosy rotted the flesh while also disrupting the nervous system. Imagine the worst case of sunburn you could possibly have – that deep, burning, aching feeling, where nothing really eases the pain that radiates into the bones. It hurts to sit, stand, lay; it hurts to move; it hurts to be still. It’s always there. That was leprosy - except a sunburn, eventually, goes away. Leprosy rarely did, if ever. And, unlike a sunburn, leprosy was also contagious. As a result, a person who was a leper was banished from town, forced to live in the leper colony. There, among the lepers, the diseased would live while passers-by, family and friends remained at a distance, warned off by the dry, raspy cries (the throat and vocal cords were also impacted by the dreaded disease), “Unclean! Unclean!” Adding insult to injury, the disease made them ceremonially unclean: rotten, as it were, physically and spiritually, inside and out. Contact was forbidden, but lest the touched person also become guilty by association, contaminated by contact. So the lepers were de facto ex communicated. Ex communicated: literally, from community; even more literal, away from within the unity. Outside the worshipping community, unable to attend worship, unable to make sacrifice, they were the unatoned-for. They were doubly, triply damned. They were reminded constantly of this as they sat, stood, or laid on the outside looking in.

Leprosy bacteria hi-res stock photography and images - Alamy

In every sense of the word, these lepers were dead men walking. Or sitting. Or lying, prostrate, unable to stand to wave off unaware travelers. In a way, death would be a blessed answer to prayer – at least, the pain would stop. And, they would no longer be the “Unclean” outside of town.

It is no wonder, then, that when Jesus passed by, their sad, melancholy chorus changed lyrics. Their uncleanliness was without question; their need unparallelled; their lives and any hope of returning to community from their leprous exile were at stake. Did they know who Jesus was? I suspect they heard of Him. Could they confess with Peter, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God?” Maybe not, but they knew enough to call to Him by name, Jesus, and speak of Him as Master, recognized Him as the Miracle Worker. Where no one else could help, no doctor able to fix leprosy, perhaps He would. “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”

“Have mercy.” It’s the cry of God’s people: have mercy on me, a sinner. We pray this in church, still today: Lord, have mercy – Kyrie, eleison. Mercy: it means don’t give us what we deserve! It’s as if they were saying, “Humanly speaking, we know the terrible end result of our disease, but instead, have mercy – don’t let us die, don’t let us die out here, don’t let us die away from God’s house and blessing. Restore us to the community, to our families, to the house of God, to relationship with God! Don’t leave us in this life of misery or in the life of agony to come!” No debating about merit or worth, here. Death is the great equalizer. Whatever their status had been before, whatever their sitz im Leben may have been previously, they were equal as lepers: sinners all, dying, abandoned, excommunicated, outside the congregation, outside the people of God, begging for Jesus’ mercy on them.

“Go, show yourselves to the priests.” I wonder how Jesus spoke. Did He call out loudly, like He was the coach calling to the right fielder to back up? Did He speak gently, like a grandfather’s calming voice to a child who was convinced he was about to bleed to death from a scuffed knee? Did He speak with the force of a wife commanding her husband to give up and go to the doctor!  We don’t know. It wouldn’t surprise me if it wasn’t the same calm, gentle voice He used when talking to the prostitute who escaped being stoned, or to Lazarus who had shinnied up a tree, or to Peter who a few days earlier denied Him thrice. I wonder, too, if the lepers weren’t somewhat disappointed. Jesus didn’t do anything dramatic. He didn’t spit in the dirt and make a salve for their bodies. The lepers weren’t given anything to do. There was no preparation before presentation - nothing like Namaan’s river washing or the Pharisees ritual public scrubbing. Just “Go.”

To their absolute credit, they went. They didn’t stay in the dirt, complaining, “What’s the use…it’ll just hurt all the more to be rejected again, sent back here.” They got up and went, as instructed. Their cry of faith was met with action of believing. Those ten men, those dying men, those dead men walking, they got up and started walking to town. Remember the picture of the Revolutionary War soldiers, bandaged up and bleeding, marching, playing a flute, a drum, and with a flag waving? I imagine a much less glamorous dectet of raggedy men: stinky, bandaged, limping, staggering, fly-chased lepers making their way down the road. What else could they do? They had nothing to negotiate with, nothing to offer, nothing to present to Jesus. “Nothing in my hands I bring…”…As if their hands could hold anything, anyway. All they had was faith, faith clinging to the mercy of Jesus, the Master.  

That’s what mercy does – more to the point, that’s what God’s mercy does in Christ Jesus. Mercy, remember, means “don’t give us what we deserve.”  Jesus takes our place. God takes what we deserve and He places it upon His Son, Jesus. “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us,” the Bible says. He dies the sinner’s death, paying sin’s wages. He dies, satisfying God’s wrath against sin’s corruption. He dies, so we do not die eternally. The cross stands as the eternal monument of mercy: the cross is not our instrument of suffering and death; instead, it becomes the instrument of salvation. Mercy takes Jesus to the cross; mercy spares us from the cross; mercy rescues us from eternal hell. Mercy is Jesus taking our place so we are restored to the Father, the separation caused by sin destroyed by the life, death and resurrection of Christ Jesus. 

In His mercy, Jesus doesn’t make us clean up, first, making ourselves presentable to Him. In fact, He doesn’t even make us crawl to His feet. He comes to us – even here, mercy overflows…

I wonder when they realized they were healed. Did it take ten steps? A hundred feet? A thousand yards. How long did it take to make that sudden realization: “My feet…I can feel the gravel beneath them…my hands don’t hurt…I can grasp my fellow leper’s arm for balance – but I don’t need it anymore!” Mercy overflows…

Yet, the Nine didn’t turn around. To be fair, I wonder if they even connected their healing with Jesus. After all, “Go” was a far cry from some of the miraculous actions He did elsewhere. There was no touch, no spitting in the dirt to make mud. Even after crying out for His mercy, did they realize His mercy was what healed?  Mercy prayed for, mercy received…mercy missed.

We criticize the nine for not turning around, perhaps rightly so. But, be careful: how often do we forget to thank God for His mercy in our lives? We have a bad headache (allergies, you know) and take two Tylenol. When the headache goes away, how often do we thank God? When our bellies growl and then our appetite is satiated with a bag of microwave popcorn, do we thank God for the simple snack? We are quick to point out the error of the Nine, only to realize we are among the Nine – tooling along, oblivious to God’s rich mercy in our daily lives.

But Luke says one returned, noting he was a Samaritan, giving thanks to God, Immanuel, God-in-flesh, whose simple word was rich in mercy. I wonder what was different about him, besides that he was a Samaritan. Maybe his leprosy was worse than the others; maybe he was closer than the others to death’s blessed door; maybe his leprosy had only recently begun and he saw what awaited him.  Regardless, after going, he returned thanking and praising God, falling on his face, that beautiful, restored, luxurious, radiant skin that would cause a dermatologist envy, falling prostrate to thank Jesus for the mercy that had been extended to him.

“He gives me…all this out of Fatherly Divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me. For all which it is my duty to thank, praise, serve and obey Him.”

What else can a formerly dead man do but give thanks and praise to God?

Yours, dear friend, is the baptized life. You, too, were formerly dead and now alive to God in Christ Jesus. “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life,” (Romans 6: 3-4).

Yours is a walking in that newness of life, enlivened by the mercy of God. Reunited to God, restored to wholeness with the Father thru Jesus, He also calls and gathers you into His body, the Church, into the congregation of believers made whole and holy by God’s grace through faith in Jesus.

It’s funny, if you think of it. The lepers were gathered together because of their mutual misery caused by a disease. We are gathered together by the Spirit of God to receive the mercy of Christ, but also to walk alongside each other through this journey through the valley of the shadow. This side of heaven, we still struggle, and for some of us, with the various aches and pains, greater or lesser, and illnesses and diseases, lesser or greater, those are truly a terrible struggle – not all that dislike what those lepers faced two millenia ago. 

The longer I serve as a pastor, the more I understand the depth, and the yearning, behind St. John’s final words in the Bible: “Come quickly, Lord Jesus, come.” As much as I appreciate medical professionals and the skill God has given them, I yearn for the day when doctors and nurses are unemployed because in the resurrection, they will no longer be needed. I am eagerly awaiting the day when every cop, fireman and paramedic no longer has to see the worst that society has to offer, and when pastors no longer have to hold grieving mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, while they stand at the foot of a hospital bed, unable to do anything but pray, commending the beloved to the Lord. I am eagerly anticipating the day when Jesus voids the “lifetime warranty” of graves, caskets, and vaults when Jesus returns and raises the dead.

Isaiah speaks about the day when sorrow and sighing will pass away. To that, we add those things that cause sorrow and sighing – leprosy, Covid, cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer’s, you name it! – and they will all be gone. And, in that day of resurrection, we’ll join the former leper - whom we only know now as the Samaritan – in falling at the feet of Jesus, offering eternal thanks and praise.

Amen.

LWML Sunday: Beautiful Feet Sharing the Good News of Jesus - Romans 10:5-17

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The text for this LWML Sunday is the Epistle lesson read a few moments ago, Romans 10: 5-17.

Ask yourself this question: do we need people to join our church, and if so, why? I’m going to give you a couple moments to ponder that – do it in your head, not out loud. Be honest. Your answers might include that we need them to meet our budgetary needs, volunteers (aka "voluntolds"), church officers, Sunday school teachers, sew-ers, handy-men and women, cooks, and other special skills. We need people to join our church so we can grow and survive. How did I do?

Now, here is question two: Do the people around us – the people of the Enid area – especially over here on the East side - do they need St. Paul’s, and if so, why? Again…a couple moments. Your answers here might have included things like we’re an old, established part of the community, the school, we provide a place of sanctuary, we offer some community programs like VBS.  

Now, I want to draw your attention to the questions themselves. To repeat them, the questions were: do we need people to join our church and do people need St. Paul’s? At first glance, they seem to be similar questions but, really, they are two very different questions.

Take the first one: do we need people to join our church? Who is the focus on? It’s us. In other words, what do we get from their coming here – what can they give us. What we get are bodies in the building, wallets at the welcome mat, and purses in the pew. Now, we can try to sanctify that by saying “they’ll help us do the work of the church,” and that is true…but, we have to add “because we’re getting tired and so I don’t have to do so much anymore.” The statement is about us and what we need. It’s a question of law that gives an answer of law. It points right back at us, and what it says to people who visit us for worship is we value you for what you can give us.

Now, consider the second question: do the people around us need St. Paul’s? Here, the focus is on those around us. It’s a servant-based question: how can we help them? What can we give them? Instead of what do we get out of their relationship with us, the question is what can we give them in this relationship? What will they gain? The value isn’t in what they give, but what can they receive.

Enid is approximately ten miles wide and ten miles long. We are in a community that, depending on your data source, has about 50,000 people within 5-6 miles of where you are sitting right now.  Pew research says that approximately 70% of Oklahoma identifies as Christian, so that means 30% are not Christian. Note – Christian is the broad category of all who confess Christ as Lord and Savior, so it is not denominational. So, do the math…if we use that same 30% for this area, that means 15,000 people do not know Jesus as their Savior. To make that a little more personal, that’s three out of every ten. So, out of every ten people you know, statistically three of them do not know Jesus. Think outside church friends, here – think about your exterminator, your favorite nurse at the doctor’s office, the kid that recognizes you at the drive thru with your #1, extra onions, no pickles, and a large Dr. Pepper. Three of the people you know from this community would not be with you in the resurrection at the last day. Three people are looking for answers to eternal questions outside of Jesus.

Three people you know – not just three generic citizens of Enid - those three-out-of-ten who literally live next to you, who live four houses down on the other side of your street, or who live in that schwanky subdivision, or who live in the trailer park…those fifteen thousand souls from our area can go to lots of places to try to find answers. And they do. They go to bars, and they go to their barber or hair stylist, they go to their online video game, they go to the casino, they stay longer and longer at work, they go to the open arms of an illicit lover, all looking for something that might save them. They go…and they search…and they leave, temporarily – and only temporarily - soothed but still empty.

If they can go to all of these different places to find answers, what do each of these people need that they cannot get from their barber, or the bartender, or the Lodge, or the casino, or a co-worker, or another lonely lover leaving the lights on at the No-Tell-Motel? The answer is: they need to hear of the kingdom of God that has arrived in Jesus Christ. And, they need to hear that from us, the people of God called St. Paul’s Lutheran Church.

Our community needs St. Paul’s as a place where they can hear about the mercy of God in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. But it’s about more than being a building, an address. A building needs people to come to it. This community needs need St. Paul’s congregation to be the body of believers where Christ is enfleshed so that they can see the love of Jesus demonstrated to them. They St. Paul’s to be people who speak God’s Word in truth and purity. That means they need the people of St. Paul’s to be a gentle, but firm, voice that calls sin, sin instead of the conventional cultural wisdom that says “anything goes…do what feels good.” They need the people of St. Paul’s to be watchful to see a sinner who is trapped in a sin, perhaps even in unrepentance, and who needs Christ’s Spirit to break a hardened heart, but they do not need to be seen as a “bad person.” They need the people of St. Paul’s to demonstrate mercy and compassion and grace and peace and forgiveness in the words of Jesus Himself. They need to St. Paul’s to proclaim that they, too, are beloved by God and He desires them, too, to be eternally rescued in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Could they hear that elsewhere – maybe. They could hear about Jesus from the radio, or the internet, or the TV, or the randomly left Portals of Prayer. Could they hear it from other people? Maybe. They could hear about it from a friend or family member or co-worker. But that’s taking the chance on three-out-of-ten “maybe,” because maybe they will turn to those other places, instead, for answers that lie, answers that mislead, answers that the devil will use to lead them into eternity, alright – the eternity of damnation and separation from Jesus.

Or they could hear about Jesus from you.

This isn’t something that we want to leave to chance. We want to be – our neighbors need us to be – deliberate in speaking of Jesus and His death and resurrection. We need to speak of Jesus to them. But not just TO them, but Jesus died FOR them.

Jesus died for people like this:

• ·        The young family with two kids who run around in bare feet and hand-me-downs that were worn our two kids ago.
• ·        The crusty old codger who drinks his dinner from a 16 ounce tall boy and practices his Clint Eastwood impression, “Get off my lawn…”
• ·        The woman with a record that all started one night when she was young, running with the wrong crowd.
• ·        The single parent who works two jobs, just to make ends meet – and even that is “barely.”
• ·        The elderly, lonely shut-in who wonders, “Why am I still here?”
• ·        The all-American family who seems to have it all – two parents, two children, two cars, two pets, all in a three bed, two bath, two car garage home – but none, not mom, dad, or the kids, know who Jesus is other than someone people talk about around Christmastime.

Jesus died for these people. Do they know that? We dare not assume so. So, how will we help them have the opportunity to hear it and know it and believe it?

LWML is traditionally about speaking, sharing, confessing the Gospel. LWML has a wonderful history, and we thank God for the service of the women of St. Paul’s and the LCMS.  This LWML Sunday, I am talking about your feet - not just your mouth. Yes, with your feet. Let me explain.

We talk a lot in our world. And, unfortunately, the spoken word seems to have less and less value. How many times have you heard – or even said – “Well, yeah, I said it but I didn’t mean it…” After all, talk is cheap. But with your feet, you will live out the Gospel. You can walk – literally or figuratively – alongside those who are hurting, or struggling, or grieving, or trapped in sin-filled lives and demonstrate Christ’s mercy to them. This actually is what our church body’s name implies: the word synod, synhodos in Greek, means “to walk together.” We walk together with those who are around us and who need to know Jesus. You speak God’s Word to them – yes, for it is in the Word where Christ certainly works both repentance and faith – but you also show what mercy looks like to someone who only has seen grudges; you show what it is to forgive and be forgiven to those who have only seen evil repaid with evil; you show what true love looks like to those who have only known what it is to be used and abused; you show what hope in the resurrection means to those who think there is no such thing as hope; you show what peace in Christ means in a world of chaos.

“Well, Pastor – that’s easy for you to say. After all, it’s your job. And besides, Paul says ‘those who PREACH good news…you’re the preacher, not me’.” That’s true: this is my vocation. You are not called to preach in the office of the holy ministry. But you are called to be disciples of Jesus, and as disciples of Jesus, you are called to be prepared to answer to those who ask of you in Jesus’ name.

I’ll be honest – for many of us, it’s a bit of a scary thing to broach the subject of Jesus, and faith, and salvation, and damnation outside of Jesus. I still get butterflies in my stomach and more than a few doubts when I am doing an evangelism visit. The Gospel is not popular; the Gospel is not PC – we talked about that in Bible Book Club last week. But the Gospel is life-saving; the Gospel is life- changing; the Gospel is life-giving in Christ Jesus. So, in faith, trusting God’s Spirit will indeed work in you and through you, you step out, walking alongside those who are around us. And, boy, it feels like feet of clay – doesn’t it? You’re not sure what to say, and you can’t remember the Bible verses, and you aren’t sure if you should offer to pray or not, and you’re confused about what the question was that was asked, and you’re doing your level-best to answer faithfully but you feel so woefully inadequate and you wonder, “How can God bless this mess?”

And, as you walk together, something remarkable happens. Your feet – your stumbling, stammering, clay feet are declared by God to be absolutely beautiful. Not because of your efforts, but because of the message they are carrying and demonstrating. To you, oh beautifully-footed carriers of the Gospel, God shows His mercy and His grace and His compassion and His love for you in the very words that you yourself are carrying.

It’s not about you at all. It’s about the human feet that Jesus took upon himself to be a human. It’s about the feet of the one who sat at the feet of His Mother Mary and step-father Joseph as an obedient Son. It’s about the feet of the One who stood in the temple, His Father’s house, surrounded by those who would want to kill him one day. It’s about the feet of the one who walked on water as God of creation. It’s about the feet of the one who stood upon the hillside to feed 5000 families with bread and fish. It’s about the feet of the one who walked in the wilderness for 40 days, not with his friends but with his enemy, satan, and defeating him there in the desert. It’s about nail-punctured feet of the One who went to the cross to die so that death would no longer be our eternal reward.  

I think most people know the Great Commission: Go therefore and make disciples… What is forgotten is Jesus’ prelude to the Commission: “All power and authority in heaven and on earth is given to Me, therefore, go.”

You go with the power and authority of Jesus own words. Your feet follow in the footsteps of Him who walked on earth carrying those Words. And, made holy in the Baptismal washing and in the triune name of God, your beautiful feet carry those Words of Jesus into this community.

In Jesus' name. Amen.