We Are Cleansed and Healed
Rev. Richard A. Bolland

Luke 17:11-19
(October 24, 2004 Sermon Transcript)

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        Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Please be seated.

        The gospel lesson today serves as the text for our sermon lesson, which we read just a few moments ago.

        Dear friends in Christ, how easy it is to take our blessings for granted. If you have ever had a potential health problem, immediately our minds, being what we are, run to the worst possible scenario. We just know we have cancer. We just know we have fatal heart disease. And then we go to the doctors, full of apprehension and fear, only to find out that everything is just fine. And we go on eating our Twinkies and HoHos like there’s no tomorrow!

        Or perhaps we might find ourselves in a tight financial situation, either in our businesses or in our own personal lives. And so we find out that that terrible, awful thing that we knew was going to happen didn’t happen, after all. And so, we continue to run up our credit card balances with great joy!

        Everything continues and everything that is a blessing is sometimes taken for granted.

        In our text this morning, in this gospel lesson, perhaps we discover this very same attitude being played out in the lives of nine out of ten lepers who are healed miraculously from the terrible and disfiguring disease called leprosy.

        We don’t know a lot of lepers in our own lives. We tend to think of that disease as something that, in fact, that belongs in the ancient world, the world of the scriptures, but not so much in ourselves. But as I was preparing this lesson, I did a quick search on the websites that deal with leprosy, only to discover that in 2003, 515,000 new cases of leprosy were detected. In Bible times, unlike now, there was no cure for leprosy. And its effects not only destroy the body, a piece at a time, but also isolated its victims from all of society, mostly for life.

        It was a death sentence that took a long time, sometimes ten to twenty years, to finally and inexorably claim the lives of its victims. It was a terminal disease. Much like the terminal disease we all bear, which is called sin.

        The lepers who approached our Lord Jesus did so honestly. They came totally unable to help themselves. Indeed, we might point out that deformed and repulsive lepers were not allowed to approach other Jews, and they themselves were considered unclean. And the laws required them to stand at a distance, which the text indicates they did, and declare themselves to be unclean, as they did.

        And so, the ten lepers were obeying the laws concerning their disease by standing off and shouting out. At the time, no one knew what caused leprosy, so the permanent quarantine of infected persons were always enforced strictly. At that time, they were considered to be nothing other than outcasts of all of society.

        And they had no hope. They had no hope.

        It was precisely this situation which Jesus faced, when these ten lepers approached them in today’s gospel lesson. Men with no hope of a cure. Men desperate for the only possible answer remaining - Divine intervention. They had undoubtably heard of this new teacher. For His word had spread, and His fame had spread, throughout the land of Israel, that many people had been healed by His touch or word. Indeed, there were times when the Lord was virtually mobbed with people who were seeking His healing touch. We are told in the scriptures that if all the things He did were written down, not all the books in the world would be able to contain all that He did, and all He accomplished.

        I would suggest to you that all of us, as fallen sinners, are people who are very much like the lepers in this story. Indeed, it might be pointed out that leprosy is a perfect analogy for sin, especially as it was understood at that time. We have no cure available, that can be obtained from human sources for our incurable disease. Like leprosy, sin is corrosive in our lives. It deforms life as it was intended to be, and instead we end up having this grossly misshapen image of life, that, in the eyes of God, is nothing but repulsive and unclean.

        This terminal disease, in which we are conceived and born, has no human cure. And it isolates us from God, now and forever, if it is allowed to run its course. No amount of human effort can overcome it. We were all, then, terminally condemned to die and to suffer hell if there was not Divine intervention.

        But today, I say to you, "Thanks be to God!" Thanks be to God that our Lord has cleansed us and He has healed us, very, very much as He healed those lepers on that day. And He has healed us from our date from sin, and death, and hell. And He has removed the punishment that we deserved.

        Like the lepers in this account, in this scripture, we come without anything that would assist God with our healing. You notice what they didn’t do. They didn’t come asking God that He would bless whatever folk cures were possibly available during that time. Undoubtably many things had been tried. They did not come to ask God in human flesh to make those human cures work better. They had no faith in them. Instead, we, like them, come with nothing.

        Normally, not today, but normally the first thing we do following the invocation in our worship, is that we confess our sins. We will do it a little later in our worship service today. In a very real sense, as we enter into the presence of God in this sanctuary, which is why we come, we are calling out to God, "Father! Master! We are unclean! We are in need of healing!" In doing this, we are approaching, in the same manner, in which the lepers came to our Lord.

        We do not, and we cannot, come into the presence of God with anything that can remotely assist God with the forgiveness of our sins, any more than the lepers could come with something they could offer to bring about their own healing. These lepers did not come providing evidence that they really did not deserve this disease that had infected their lives, citing their good works in order to induce the Lord to heal them.

        In the same way, neither have we any cause or merit in offering to God our meager good works, for they are always intermingled and misshapen because of our sin.

        St. Paul writes, in his letter to the Galatians, these words. Is the law, therefore, opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. But the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe.

        Did you notice, in the text, that it is the words of Christ which bring about the healing? He issued a promise to them, of sorts, simply in saying, "Go show yourselves to the priests!", which was the standard procedure if a leper thought he was healed, that he might be declared part, again, of the people of God.

        Did you notice that the lepers understood that they were totally at the mercy of God? And likewise, so are we. We are not deserving of what we receive, and yet, God graciously gives it.

        God answered the needs of the lepers that day, and of sinners everywhere, by speaking His word of cleansing. By speaking His word of healing. Simply sending them off to the priests. They are healed! All ten of them, healed!

        Please note, He did not heal them and send them off to the priests. He sent them off to the priests, still leprous. And the text says, and on their way they were healed!

        I believe we call that faith. Indeed, I believe that is why God does things the way that He does. He wants us to trust Him. And so, with the leprous, tumorous growths all over their bodies, perhaps even missing parts of digits or toes, off they went! And surely, someone among them must have thought, "I’m not healed! What will the priest say when he sees me, but declare me yet unclean?" But in faith, rather, they went. And the healing was given.

        When God makes a promise, He keeps it.

        God has promised fallen, sinful men and women everywhere that He has come to take away the sin of the world. He has come to clean us and to heal us, and so it is. And like the lepers, we too have our moment of cleansing. When we are gathered into the family of God at the fount of Holy Baptism, God speaks His promise that this is done for the remission of sins. Indeed, it is.

        When we come to the Lord’s Table, He gives us His promise. Take, eat, this very body and blood of Christ. For it is the payment He has made for you.. And it gives you the forgiveness of sins, and you are cleansed, and you are healed. The nature of faith is that we believe the promises. Our sin is gone! The great high priest has looked at us and declared us to be clean! To be without guilt. To be without sin, even though we live in this fallen, human flesh. And we are given what we do not deserve.

        Was this accomplished with the justice of God against sin being satisfied? Yes, I tell you, and fully. This is not some cheap healing and cleansing, but rather we understand that the leprosy of our sin was taken upon Christ Himself. The words of the psalmist ring true. Praise the LORD, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name.   Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits--who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion,

        He takes our sins. He takes our diseases, including the diseases of these ten lepers, on Himself. As our Lord hangs on Calvary’s cross, He becomes the bearer of disease. He becomes the bearer of sin. Indeed, He becomes the world’s greatest sinner in all of history. He becomes the blasphemer! He becomes, the righteous innocent One, the adulterer, and the liar, and the thief! For it is those sins for which He dies. And it is those sins for which He renders payment.

        There is no sin He does not bear, including yours, and mine. There is no evil that He does not become, for He bears the punishment for evil, yours and mine.

        He bears our sins completely.

        And now, and only now, can we realize what it truly means to rightly give thanks to God, as did the Samaritan. Our sins were as grotesque as the leprosy, and just as incurable. To know fully the mercy and grace of God is to know fully the gratitude of our sin. To know fully what it means to be truly thankful is to know the reality of that from which we have been cured! That to which God has brought His healing touch.

        Therefore, as the thankful Samaritan, we stand before God, praising Him in a loud voice every single day, each and every day, with the thankfulness of our praise, and with the graciousness of the good works that He works in us to do.

        Do not take your salvation for granted, dear friends. Each and every day, I would suggest you remember three things. And I will too. First, that we have been lost and condemned sinners without hope of redemption. Second, that God has chosen to extend His amazing grace to us, and He does so without any other reason, except His compassion for us and His grace toward us. And He does so at great cost, the life of the suffering and death of His only son on your behalf. And third, that every day, every day, is a day of thanksgiving, as each has an opportunity, by His grace, to use every moment that God has given us, His cleansed and redeemed and forgiven people, to thank Him through the grace-given gift of godliness, servanthood, and faithfulness.

        Thank Him. Thank Him with the understanding that our days are sacred, and precious. And they are so because we have been cleansed in the blood of Jesus Christ.

        In Jesus name we pray. Father in heaven, grant us thankful hearts. Help us each day to kneel at your feet, and to issue to you our praise and thanksgiving, for having redeemed us lost and condemned creatures. Move us by the power of your Spirit, to bring ourselves in every respect, with all that we are and all that we have, to be your servants. In your name, Father, we pray. Amen.