"Faith in Christ Is Thanksgiving to God" Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity September 6, 2015 Luke 17:11-19
In our country we dedicate a holiday to the achievements of all the workers who add value to our society. As Christians we recognize that it is a blessing of God that people get out of bed each morning to go to work. Your life has been enriched from dedicated teachers. Your life is a lot better because every week the trash man comes to your house to take away your trash. Scientists, doctors, customer service representatives, and thousands upon thousands of people carry out jobs that make your life better. Christianity doesn’t just look at these as jobs. It sees them as vocations. A vocation is a calling. You don’t just have an occupation, you have a job. You don’t just go to work, you serve others. God calls you to serve Him in many ways. He does this by giving you various vocations in your life in which you serve others. Today’s Gospel reading gets behind all of that and teaches you your foremost vocation and the one from which all the others spring: it is the vocation of faith. Just as you need to understand your various vocations in order to carry them out, you need to get a handle on faith. You believe in God. However, there are many religions and therefore many different gods. This week you will be living out your life and you will be doing so in light of your belief in God. However, there are many people who believe in God and their god is not always the same one. Belief in God is not enough. In teaching you faith, the Gospel reading puts before you today this question, “Who is Jesus?” The answer to having faith is not God but Jesus. Otherwise you come away from the story of the ten lepers with some lesson such as, “You have to have faith.” The fact is, there were nine lepers who believed in God. They had plenty of faith. When they asked Jesus for mercy and He told them to go show themselves to the priests, they went. They didn’t pause and wait for healing to come. They took it on faith that it would come. And as they headed for the priests, the healing did come. But it’s in the actions of other leper, the Samaritan, that we see that faith and thanksgiving are only true if they are located in the person of Christ. God did not just tell us He’s God. He gave us His Son. God did not just tell us that He loves us. He sent His Son. And He didn’t just say, “I am your Savior.” He saved us in His Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This is the true point of Luke telling us of Jesus’ action in cleansing the lepers. If you miss this point you miss everything. It’s not about ten men being cleansed of an awful medical condition. It’s not about having enough faith. It’s about Jesus. It is always and ultimately about Jesus. Because Jesus is how you know who God is. Jesus is how you know what God thinks of you and what He does for you. I haven’t met anyone with leprosy but I have known enough people whose lives are in large part subject to severe illnesses or injuries. You want release from that. You want mercy extended to you for reprieve from your pain. It’s nice to know that Jesus relieved ten men of their suffering from a debilitating skin disease, but wouldn’t it be even nicer to know if He were to deliver you from whatever suffering or trials you are enduring? It would indeed. Sometimes God does grant physical healing to us. Sometimes He relieves us of serious illness or injury. Sometimes, though, it’s all too real that as time goes by your life will be one of enduring the pain and the debilitation of illness. Jesus healing ten men of leprosy may not be the most comforting thing for you. He did for them, why not you? The answer lies not, though, in the cleansing of leprosy but in the person and the work of Jesus. Just as believing in God is not enough, so looking for physical relief from suffering is not enough. Looking to Christ is how you know who God is and believe in Him. And it is also the answer to any suffering you endure. This is borne out by the difference between the nine men who went their way from Jesus and the one who returned. The nine believed in God but they didn’t see that God reveals Himself in the person who had just cleansed them of leprosy. They may very well have had faith, but their faith wasn’t directed toward the God who came to them in the person of Jesus. The Samaritan, however, his faith in God was in the form of worship of Christ. His faith was in Christ because of far more than just relief from leprosy. We see this because Jesus tells him that his faith has saved him. Many English translations state it, “Your faith has made you well.” But weren’t the other nine made well also? There is something distinct about the Samaritan’s faith, and it is that his faith was in the specific person of Jesus. Jesus has come not simply to relieve people of pain and suffering. He has come to cleanse sinners from their sin. This is why Luke points out once again in his Gospel account that Jesus was on His way to Jerusalem. He knew where He was going. He knew why He was going. He was going to the cross. His work along the way of delivering people from various illness was a witness to His ultimate work of restoring creation. If all He came to do was heal people, He quite frankly didn’t do all that great of a job since there were far more people He didn’t heal than He did. What He came to do was save sinners. That’s why He went to the cross. This was His vocation. And if the skin of the lepers who came to Him was scaly and lesioned then the flesh of Christ would be torn and shredded from scourging and blows. If the leprous men suffered pain and ostracism then our Lord would suffer the grief and guilt of the sin of every person and be forsaken by His eternal Father. There is no god who saves sinners but the one who has given His Son. That’s why faith in God is not saving faith unless it is centered in the person and the work of Jesus. What flows from this faith is thanksgiving. Thanksgiving to God is not true thanksgiving unless it is thanksgiving that flows from this faith that looks to Christ alone for salvation from sin. Even in the midst of suffering, this faith clings to Christ, because Christ alone brings cleansing from sin. It’s true that the condition of those lepers cried out for reprieve. But if what was on the outside was debilitating and their flesh was wasting away, it is what was on the inside that cried out for even greater mercy. Paul spells it out in the Epistle reading: “now the works of the flesh [that is, our sinful nature] are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” Reprieve from physical suffering or not, nothing can save you from your sinful nature but Christ who went to the cross and died in your place. As He cleansed the lepers, so He gives you new life, producing in you the fruit of the Spirit, which is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” Having crucified the flesh is what happened to you in your Baptism. The Holy Spirit gave you faith in Christ and produced in you thanksgiving to Him. This is your vocation. It is what God has called you to in His Son. You don’t just have faith, you have faith in Christ who saved you from your sins. You are not just grateful to God, you are grateful to the One who sent His Son to give you life. You don’t just carry out your occupation or various roles in life, you serve God who served you by giving you His Son. Amen. SDG -- Pastor Paul L. Willweber Prince of Peace Lutheran Church [LCMS] 6801 Easton Ct., San Diego, California 92120 619.583.1436 princeofpeacesd.net three-taverns.net It is the spirit and genius of Lutheranism to be liberal in everything except where the marks of the Church are concerned. [Henry Hamann, On Being a Christian] _______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list [email protected] http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
