Made Well

A sermon for Proper 22
October 9, 2022

“Go and show yourselves to the priest.” Jesus encounters ten lepers today in the borderlands, the no-man’s land between Galilee and Samaria. While Jews and Samaritans do not mix, the lepers live by a different code. When you are completely cast out from society, trodden down, robbed of all dignity, you make friends with whomever is around. These lepers are a mixed group: nine Jews, one Samaritan. 

To be a leper in the time of Jesus was to experience marginalization at a deep level. Lepers were not only those with Hansen’s Disease. In fact, most of them probably didn’t have that. Instead, Leprosy was a catch-all term for skin conditions that the community feared were contagious. These folks were cast out of town, told to stay away from family and friends, put to the margins, until their health condition could be cleared by the priests. Only then would they be welcome back. 

These lepers, in a sense, become exiles in their own homeland. And as exiles, they experience a host of spiritual and emotional challenges, rooted in the agony that stemmed from their complete rejection. Some people still know what that is like. The person living with HIV/AIDS, kept at arms’ length from family. The veteran, homeless because of PTSD, who is never looked at square in the face. The refugee fleeing persecution in Afghanistan, only to be called a terrorist here because of what she wears on her head. The child who wants to play with others so badly, but who can’t because chemicals in their brains make quote-on-quote “normal” socializing impossible to understand. The teenager with involuntary tics. That elder in the wheelchair who can’t get through doors, onto porches, into concert venues. These are the exiles in their homeland, the lepers among us now, those kept at the edge, whether intentionally or not. Their agony is so much greater than just a physical agony. Like those lepers of Jesus’s time, theirs is also a spiritual agony of rejection, of not being seen as bearing the very image of God. 

If you’ve ever been in that kind of spiritual valley, you know that sometimes all you can do is cry. It’s lonely in your struggle. You feel powerless. At times you pray that prayer that Jesus cried from the cross, that ancient prayer from the psalms: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? 

All of that is churning in the background for these lepers, out in the borderlands. But it so happens that Jesus walks through the borderlands. Jesus walks into no-man’s land. He goes where others don’t. He sees those whom others ignore. He knows the ones pinned against the wall, stomped on, without hope. He hears them when they cry. He hears us, when we are lost, wandering, unsure of our next step, out of options and out of hope. 

“Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” That’s the cry of the lepers, echoing all of those psalms they once heard in the Synagogues before they were kicked out of good society. Jesus hears them. “Go and show yourselves to the priests,” he says. They head out, perhaps confused at first. The condition is still there. But then it’s not. They are healed. And they run to the Temple, and then to their cities, and then to their families, back into their lives. Full of joy. 

But one among them takes a different tack. He’s the only Samaritan. He doesn’t know what the others are doing. After all, when Jesus tells them to go show themselves to the priests, they go in different directions. The Jews head to Jerusalem. The Samaritan heads to Mt. Gerizim, to his own, different, Samaritan priests. He doesn’t know about the other nine, but when he sees what happens, he turns back. He worships Jesus. He sees Jesus for who he is: His savior, his Messiah, God in the flesh. 

Jesus responds to him. “Your faith has made you well,” Literally, Jesus says, your faith has saved you. Jesus is no longer speaking about his medical condition. He’s no longer talking about his cure. He’s talking about something deeper. He’s talking about his soul, his very spirit. You’ve been made well; saved. And then like the nine, he goes on: to his temple, to his city, to his family, to his life. But his life is now radically altered, different. His joy is complete. His soul is healed as well as his body, for he knows the Savior. 

Jesus is telling us through this encounter that there is a deeper healing available to us. We, like those lepers, often pray for cures, physical, mental, and emotional. But Jesus has on offer a deeper, spiritual healing, a salvation for our souls. It makes us complete, for it reconnects us to God. You see, only when we live in God can we be complete, made whole, saved. It all happens through Christ, through our life in him, through our faith in what he has done. And no matter what happens in this life–even when we are on our deathbed–nothing can steal that completeness from our soul. For nothing can separate us from God and God’s love in Christ Jesus. We are healed, made well, complete, saved, for we know the Savior. 

This deeper, spiritual healing happens as we come to a font. We are baptized into the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, made a child of God by grace and grace alone, not because of anything we can do, but only because of what Christ has done. But it doesn’t stop there. If it does, we are a little like those nine who were cured and went on their way. No, it can’t stop there. We must return, over and over again, faithfully, to the One who healed us, who saved us in those waters. Occasionally is not enough. We must go to him daily, in daily prayer, in weekly worship, where we receive grace upon grace and our baptismal healing is renewed and strengthened. Thereby we are saved, just like that Samaritan leper. Our souls are transformed. Healed forever. Made well, whole, complete. Nothing can ever take that away from you. 

Since October is stewardship month, here’s the stewardship pitch. It has nothing to do with your money. Stewardship is much more important than that. Our stewardship question is, are we returning to worship God, to thank our Savior, for all he has done, and especially for this greatest gift of salvation? Are we like the nine who go on their merry way, who accept healing but aren’t yet whole, who don’t fully realize the stakes of what is going on? Or are we like the one, who returns with thanksgiving, recognizing the One who has done it, and is thereby made whole, complete, well? 

You don’t have to wait until 2023. Start now. But go ahead and make that pledge for 2023. In the year to come, I’m going to make going to Jesus daily in prayer and weekly in worship a priority. Occasionally is not enough. I’m not only going to go to him when I need something, or when it’s convenient, or when it doesn’t conflict with anything else in my life. I’m going to make going to Jesus, daily in prayer, weekly in worship at a church, my number one priority. 

Because, my friends, when we realize just what Jesus has done for us–when we realize that he has made us well, made our souls complete in God–when we realize that, what else can our reaction be if not worship, if not adoration, if not continual praise? 

God in Christ has arrived in the borderlands of our lives. He has heard our cry. He has seen our pain, our separation, our human condition of sin. And he has made us well through our baptismal participation in his life, death, and resurrection. Our question is: Are we going back to him to worship?