Discovering Faith and Gratitude

In this enlightening sermon, Daniel McInnes delves into the story of the ten lepers from the Gospel, exploring themes of faith, gratitude, and spiritual well-being. Through insightful reflections, he challenges us to consider the depth of our relationship with Christ and the importance of giving thanks.

Transcript

In the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. The gospel reading today was about the ten lepers that call out to Jesus as he's walking along. Now, I'll just read the story again because it was quite a while back now, just to remind you of the details. At that time, as Jesus entered the village, he was met by ten lepers who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices and said, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us." When Jesus saw them, he said to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice, and fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus said, "Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" And Jesus said to him, "Rise and go your way. Your faith has made you well."

So, we see some very interesting things in this story. There are ten lepers. We know that in that day back in the first-century Palestine, if you were a leper, according to the Jewish law, you had to be basically exiled. You couldn't come near people. You had to stay away from everybody. You were kind of left to your own devices. You were left to the charity of anybody who could possibly just leave you some food or whatever, but you were basically fending for yourself. It was a very, very difficult life. Now, leprosy could have been not what we think of today as leprosy necessarily. It could have just been any infectious skin disease. So, it's quite broad. We don't know what these people suffered from, but they were just cut off from the rest of society. So, a very, very difficult life. But when they see Jesus, they must know who he is because they say, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us." They call out to him. So, they know who he is.

And Jesus responds. Jesus often, as we read all through the gospels when people call out to him, even when other people are saying, "No, no, no. They're just being noisy, just, you know, whatever." He responds to people. He responds to that cry, the cry for help.

And what he immediately says to them is, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." Why does he say that? Because that's what the Jewish law says to do. If you believe that you've been healed of your skin disease, you go to the priest, you show the priest, and the priest declares you to be clean of that skin disease, and then you can rejoin society. Now, at that moment, they hadn't been healed, but he says, "Go and show the priests." So he's saying, in faith, faithfully do what I'm saying, go show the priests, and you'll be healed, right? So that's what they do. Now, a very interesting thing here is that one of them is a Samaritan. I don't mean, it doesn't say, but I assume that Jesus kind of knew that he was a Samaritan. Now, if you're a Samaritan and then someone tells you to go and show yourself to a priest in the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, I don't think we kind of understand how scandalous that would be to a Samaritan. That would be like someone saying to us, "Go and show yourself to an imam in a mosque or something." It'd just be like complete dissonance. It's like, what? What are you telling me to do? I'm a Samaritan. Why would I go and show myself to a priest in the temple?

But he does. Why? Because the person who's telling him to do it is Jesus. The person who's telling him to do it is the person who they all know is healing people and casting demons out all over the place. So he says, "Okay, I'll do it." All right. And along the way, he realizes that he's been cleansed. Now, actually, he doesn't go to the temple. He goes back to Jesus, and he gives thanks to him, and he's very thankful for the healing that he's had. And then Jesus says to him, "Your faith has made you well, go in peace." Your faithfulness essentially, right? Your faithfulness in doing what I told you to do has made you well. Go in peace. He had every reason not to go as a Samaritan. He had every reason not to go, but he went because it was Jesus who was telling him to go. All right? Because it was that person who he knows has got that power to heal, is clearly someone who's got the power of God because that person told him to go. He faithfully went and on the way he was healed, coming back and giving thanks.

But the story also concentrates on the other nine who didn't come back. Well, they're all Jews, right? So according to the Jewish law, if you're healed of skin disease that you were previously cut off from the community for, you go and you show the priest. So they're just doing what they're supposed to do. They had every reason to go and do that. There would have been no hesitation necessarily on their part and they received the healing. So they received the blessing of the healing.

But what they did not receive was that word from Jesus which says, "Your faith has made you well. Go in peace." They got the temporary blessing. We're all going to die. It's great to have good health. It's fantastic when we're healed, but we're all going to die. So that's temporary. The temporariness of life is just a fact that we can't avoid.

But we are made for eternity. We're made for eternal life. And Christ came to provide a way for us to live in eternity with him in the kind of health that is not only physical but is spiritual. It's everything. That kind of health. The kind of wholeness that God wants us to have, which is like the wholeness of Christ's life actually.

So because of that, when we only take the blessings, but we don't give thanks, we're missing out on the most important part. We're missing out on all of the really important part. The temporary things will go away. They're great, but they will disappear. But those things which remain, that's God's life, God's health that he gives us, spiritual healing, those kinds of things that last for eternity.

So when those people go back, yeah, they join the community, right? They have the benefits of being in a community, having health, being in a community with all of the things that that entails. But the most important thing they neglected, which was giving thanks to God and being healed spiritually and then being with him in eternity. Now for us, what does that mean? We can think of this story as a question to us. Why are we here? Why did we come here today?

Did we come just to meet our friends? There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that at all. Coming to meet your friends. Do we come because we love the beauty of icons or the beauty of hymns or we like singing? All of those things. We like the ritual. We like the liturgy. Nothing wrong with any of those things. All of them are good.

One of the great attractions of the Orthodox Church is that it has all those things. So there's nothing wrong with those things. But the most important thing, why do we come? We come here to meet Christ. We come here to give thanks to Christ by partaking of his body and his blood.

In doing so, we are doing as we are commanded. We're doing faithfully what he has asked us to do. It's like we heard the parable a few weeks back of the rich man who throws a feast and he invites lots and lots of people and they all make excuses, they just don't want to come. So he says, "Well, go and get anybody, just go and get anybody and they'll bring them in." All right, those people had no reason to come, it's like they weren't invited, but they were asked to come. So if someone was throwing a great feast, right, and you weren't invited, but then suddenly someone says, "Hey, hey, there's this great feast. Quick, come to the feast." You'd be kind of happy, right? I'd be happy, you know? And then when there's still room, he says, "Go out to the highways and the byways. Bring in anybody you can find who will come." Right? That's Jesus. That's what he's doing continuously in this world, calling people continuously. Anybody who will come, anybody who's willing to come can come and partake of his body and his blood and receive life. Right? So we thankfully every single time that we come, come in thanks and receive his life. That's the most important thing. Everything else is great but it's secondary. Everything else is great but secondary. We come to receive the life of Christ. And as we receive that life, we then take it with us when we leave and we bring that life into the world, to other people, even to the creation, to the objects, the things that we use of everyday world that we live in. We should be bringing that sanctifying life of Christ everywhere that we go.

So, we're soon going to be coming into Lent. And I think probably it's a good sort of warm-up. Why do we come? Why are we here? So we can start thinking about what we are going to do. How are we going to try and deepen that relationship that we have with Christ? That most important thing. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.