Leprosy was a terrible disease not just because of what it
did to the body, but also what it did to a person socially. If anyone had
leprosy they were considered unclean. They were shunted off to a colony by
themselves. Therefore, there wasn’t hardly a single aspect of their life that
was left untouched.
In our Gospel reading Jesus comes upon practically a crowd
of lepers. Ten men were desperately calling out to Jesus for help. Jesus tells
them to go show themselves to the priest. The reason why Jesus says this is
because this was part of the Law God gave to Moses. Leprosy made the person
ceremonially unclean. They couldn’t be readmitted to society until a priest had
looked them over and sacrifice was made. When Jesus tells them to go to the priest
it is so that they could be checked over and return to their former lives.
All ten lepers believed what Jesus said. They began to make
their way to the priest. Accordingly they were healed by Jesus’s almighty
power. Their situation had previously looked quite hopeless. Now they could
return to the lives that they had known and loved. How happy they must have
been as they looked forward to reunions and celebrations! In a sense they had
been lost to their families, but now they were found. They had been essentially
dead to all who loved them, now they were alive.
But one of these men was not like the others. He did not go
home to celebrate with family and friends. He turned back to Jesus. St. Luke
says that he glorified God with a loud voice. When he came to Jesus, he fell on
his face at Jesus’s feet, thanking him. And he was a Samaritan. Samaritans were
not from the right church. They combined some biblical truths with a whole
bunch of pagan notions. The Jews looked down on them, and at least partly, for
good reason, because they were in error about many things. In spite of this,
however, there the man was at Jesus’s feet on his face.
Have you ever been on your face at Jesus’s feet? To some
this might seem like groveling. You wouldn’t find Frank Sinatra in such a pose.
He lived life his own way, and that meant that he didn’t kneel, much less fall
on his face. To others who aren’t so godless this might just seem weird.
“That’s not the way we thank and praise God in church. We sit and stand and
fold our hands.” Still others will say, “Well, this is what’s in the Bible, so
that’s how we should give thanks.” Henceforth they will lie down in church with
their faces in the carpet during the Divine Service.
All of these ways of looking at it, however, are only external.
The attention is on the appearance. The appearance is not so important as what
is going on internally. The Samaritan is filled with thankfulness. It’s
bursting within him. What he does outwardly is just how the thankfulness
happened to be expressed. He was not putting on a show. He didn’t do it to gain
Jesus’s approval or to be seen as more thankful than others. His motives were
genuine. Therefore, all his actions were natural and a joy for him and for
everybody who was saw it.
Jesus asks about the other nine. Where were they? Weren’t
they happy? Weren’t they thankful? There’s no reason to think that they weren’t
happy and thankful in a sense. But their hearts were not lifted up to the Lord.
Their hearts remained firmly planted on the earth. They were glad to see their
families and have their lives get back to normal. They were glad to be sleeping
in their own beds and to take up those projects that they had to abandon when
they got leprosy. Jesus says in another place, “Where you treasure is, there
your heart will be also.” Everybody treasures something, or even many
things. Whatever those things might be, that is where the happiness and
thankfulness is focused. The Samaritan’s treasure was in the God of Israel and
his Son, our dear Lord Jesus Christ. Since that is where his treasure is, that
is where his heart is also.
Where our heart is, where our happiness and thankfulness are
located, is a sure indication of who our God is. There is a very close
association between the first and second commandments. The first commandment
requires our fear, love, and trust in the true God. The second commandment is
about the use of God’s name. We are not to use it for evil. Instead we are to
call upon our God in every trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks. Whatever it is
that is god in a person’s life, whatever it is that a person looks to for
happiness and comfort—that is where the heart will be. That is also, then,
where the thanks and praise will be too.
And so with the failure of the nine to return and give glory
to God we are not just dealing with a thanksgiving problem. It’s not just like,
“Whoops, I forgot.” The problem is much deeper. They have an idolatry problem.
They have false gods from whom they expect joy and comfort. There’s no reason
to think that their false gods are anything but wholesome and honorable. Their
gods could have very well have been their families, their children, their
grandchildren, their wives, or it could have been their jobs—all wholesome and
honorable. False gods by no means have to be dark and nasty. In fact, the
better the idol looks, the more effective it is for the devil. These men gladly
worshipped their families, their nation, their way of life. That is why they
don’t come back. Their hearts were far from God, who created them, and who so
very recently healed them.
The Samaritan, in a very real way, was unusual with his
actions. It’s not that surprising that only one out of ten gave glory to God.
His choice was against the grain, and not everybody would approve of it. Think
realistically about what the man did. He didn’t go to his home first. He went
back to this stranger, Jesus, first. He didn’t pour out his heart to his wife,
he poured out his heart to his God. For him it was better to spend one day in
the courts of the Lord than to spend a thousand with his wife and children or
with whatever else is good in this world. There is a massive crowd of
people—probably about nine out of ten—who will say that it is fanatical and inhumane
that this man chose his church and his God over his family.
Now let’s bring this close to home. I might touch a nerve
here. Nine out of ten funerals today are geared towards the family, toward the
job, towards the hobbies, towards the earthly life of the person who has died,
rather than being a service that is devoted to giving glory to God. A funeral
service that is dedicated to the person’s life, is vastly more socially
acceptable than a funeral service that thanks and praises God. This is very
divisive. There are some people who will not look at me to this day because
they think that I slighted their loved one by talking more about God than I did
about them. I don’t claim to conduct perfect funeral services or preach perfect
funeral sermons. But one thing that I think I can safely say, is that the whole
service is directed towards God and his glory. God created this person. God
redeemed this person with the blood of Christ. God sanctified and claimed this
person as his own in Holy Baptism. Now God has brought the person to himself.
A lot of people don’t like that—maybe nine out of ten. And
why should they? If they do not treasure God, then that is not where their
hearts are. The message of a Christian funeral service, insofar as it is
actually Christian, must always be that the relationship that the person who
has died had with their God and with his Word, that is, his Church, is more
important than the relationship that the person had with the spouse, the
children, the grandchildren. The only people who are going to appreciate that
kind of message are the ones who likewise treasure God above all things and are
eager to worship him. The rest, if they do not repent and believe, are going to
find it offensive. That’s understandable, because what they treasure is not given
top billing. To choose to worship and glorify God is not free. There’s a cost
involved. It’s going to rub some people the wrong way. Idolatry is always going
to be more popular in this old world. Where your treasure is, there your heart
will be also.
But let’s not let people’s glaring eyes damper the joy that
there is in glorifying God. What we see with the Samaritan is an outstanding
thing—a precious jewel, a gift given by the Holy Spirit. Anybody who has tasted
and seen that the Lord is good, knows that it is very pleasurable to give
thanks unto the Lord. To be sure, these experiences do not come along every
day—at least not in their fullness. The devil, the world, and our sinful flesh
see to that. With our Divine Service, where our hearts should be lifted up unto
the Lord, we find that we struggle. Our “glory be to God on high” is not as
enthusiastic as we would like it to be.
And so, may we grow in our sanctification. True growth as a
Christian is not that we get sadder and sadder. Growth and strength are evident
when we call upon God in every trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks. Now to
an outsider it might seem as though Christians are gloomy. That’s because
unbelievers put their trust in man. The Bible doesn’t have very nice things to
say about man. He is full of idolatry and ingratitude. It is a part of our
training as Christians that we renounce our Old Adam more and more. But at the
same time our confidence in our God is to increase more and more—and that
confidence is our strength.
Having confidence in God is very good in this life that is
so full of troubles and disappointments. He is the God of all comfort who
comforts us in all our afflictions. When we are confident in him and thankful,
we have peace. We know that God is for us—who, then can be against us? God, who
did not spare his only begotten Son, but gave him up unto death for us all—how
cannot this God also give us all good things?
So when this Samaritan is on his face, it is not so much the
fact that he is on his face that is wonderful—it is the inward moving of his
heart that is truly great. He has been given the gift of faith in the one true
God. That gift pays dividends. But we should realize that no matter how much
pleasure we have ever gotten from thanking and praising God, it is only the
down payment that has been given by the Holy Spirit. The fullness is yet to
come.
The book of Revelation shows us that heaven is full of
thanksgiving and praise. In Revelation chapter 7 St. John is given a vision of
heaven. He sees a great multitude that no one could number from every nation,
tribe, people and language, gathered before God and before the Lamb with palm
branches in their hands. They cry out with a loud voice: “Salvation belongs
to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.” All the angels stood
around the throne with the elders and the four living creatures. They fell on
their faces, just like the Samaritan, and worshipped God saying, “Amen,
blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be
to our God forever and ever. Amen.”
Realize that this is not just for somebody else in a far off
place. Those Christians who have died with faith in Jesus are already there.
You will be there too, according to Jesus’s own word. We saw in our Gospel
reading how wonderfully Jesus’s word worked. Jesus said the word; the men were
healed. Jesus speaks also to you. He says, “Whoever believes and is baptized
shall be saved.” He says, “Whoever believes in me will live, even though
he dies. Whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” Here we have the
promise of not just the curing of leprosy, but the defeat of death and hell.
Therefore, lift up your hearts. We lift them up unto the
Lord. Let us give thanks unto the Lord, our God. It is meet and right so to do.
No comments:
Post a Comment