Lepers on Lockdown

 

Jesu Juva

St. Luke 17:11-19                                                         

November 26, 2020

Thanksgiving Day                                                

 Dear saint of our Savior~

          Just look at those lepers.  They make an appearance here every year on Thanksgiving Day.  But there’s something different about them this year. These

aren’t your grandfather’s lepers.  These lepers are the latest model—lepers for the year 2020:  quarantining, social-distancing, self-isolating, wearing ragged clothing while working from home, limiting themselves to groups of ten or fewer.  These are the “lockdown lepers,” and they’ve showed up just in time for Thanksgiving.

          Leprosy was a debilitating disease of the skin—a dermatologist’s dilemma.  But leprosy was also much more than that.  The physical pain and disfigurement it caused was nothing compared to the spiritual and emotional pain it caused.  Leprosy made you spiritually unclean—there are two entire chapters devoted to it in Leviticus.  Leprosy locked you down hard.  You were cut off from family and friends, cut off from worship and the temple, cut off from God.  Leprosy meant that at special family feasts and holy days, there would be no place at the table for you.

          Leprosy and every other disease, including COVID, is a result of sin.  Once sin entered the world through our first parents, disease and death were also made manifest.  We tend to view COVID through the lenses of politics and epidemiology.  But these lockdown lepers invite us to view the virus through the lens of God’s Law.  Whenever our forefathers in the faith faced pandemic, plague, or pestilence, they almost unanimously saw it as the judgment of God on a sinful world. 

          Is COVID the judgment of God on a sinful world?  I liken COVID to how God led the Israelites in the desert for forty years.  Why did God devise a forty-year detour for His chosen people?  Moses told us this morning that it was to humble them and to test them—to know what was in their hearts.  It’s hard to deny that COVID has humbled us and tested us—and revealed the thoughts of our hearts.  At the very least COVID has served as a divine discipline to remind us that man does not live on bread alone, or on science alone, or on government alone.  But man lives on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.  If you haven’t learned that lesson this year, then maybe you need to spend a little more time locked-down with the lepers.

          Everything changed for that sad and sorry cohort on the day when Jesus drew near.  Jesus’ reputation as a healer apparently preceded Him.  The lepers recognized that this might just be their one shot at a miracle.  What could they say or pray to Jesus as He approached?  What would you be saying and praying?  Jesus, heal me?  Jesus, give me the vaccine?  Jesus, make me clean?  All perfectly suitable and appropriate requests to make.  Yet, that wasn’t the prayer of the lepers.  Their prayer wasn’t specifically for healing, but for mercy: Kyrie eleison; Lord, have mercy.  That’s what you pray when you’re sick and helpless and hopeless.  It’s what we pray in the divine service every week.  To pray, “Lord, have mercy,” is to ask for God’s help, but to leave the details in His hands.  It’s trusting Him to provide the help you need in the way He knows is best.

          The miracle which then transpired is very unusual.  Typically, Jesus would touch the afflicted person, even if—especially if—that person was unclean.  But here, with these ten lepers, Jesus doesn’t even cross the street.  There’s no shaft of divine light from heaven—no awesome special effects.  Jesus just shouts out His prescription:  Go, show yourselves to the priests.  That was it!  Leviticus explains how the priests served as the equivalent of our modern “contact tracers” who would verify the healing and give the green light for a return to family and community and church.

          Jesus’ directive would have made perfectly good sense for someone who had been healed of leprosy.  The problem was that these ten lepers were still lepers.  As Jesus spoke, their skin was still festering!  They were still isolated outcasts!  The only difference was that now they had words from Jesus ringing in their ears; and by those words from the mouth of the Lord those lepers would live.

          But then comes the gospel surprise—the thing that makes this miracle so magnificent.  Jesus told them to go and show themselves to the priests.  But then we learn this:  As they went, they were cleansed.  Now, if you blinked, you might have missed that.  If you were daydreaming about pumpkin pie, you’re still in the dark here.  So let me say it again:  As they went, they were cleansed.  I’d like to know whether they started out slow and skeptical, OR whether they were excited and expectant from the get-go.  How many steps did their fitbits record before the first signs of healing began to appear?  Saint Luke doesn’t tell us any of that.  He only tells us what we need to know:  As they went, they were healed.

          Those six words are a great illustration of the Christian life.  Like those lepers we are helpless and hopeless, quarantined and isolated, sick to death with sin and its wages.  But every so often Jesus passes our way (right here), and we—we pray the leper’s prayer:  Lord, have mercy.  And Jesus puts His words into our ears:  Go, and trust me above all other things.  Go and serve your neighbor.  Go and love your spouse.  Go and forgive those who sin against you.  Go and take up your cross and follow me.  And as we go, trusting the promises of Jesus, we are healed.  We are forgiven.  We are cleansed.  We find help and hope.  We live—we live by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

          Will you go and do what Jesus asks?  Will you take His Words to heart?  If those lepers had decided not to go—if they had doubted Jesus—if they had stayed stuck in their disease and despair—if they had decided to do the “safe” thing and shelter in place—this account would have ended far differently.  The promises were from Jesus.  The healing was from Jesus.  The miracle was all Jesus’ doing.  But it was the faith of the lepers that enabled them to receive this tremendous gift from Jesus.

          Now, we can’t leave these lepers without mentioning that one of the ten was different and distinct.  One of them ran back to Jesus, praising God in a loud voice, and threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked Him.  He worshipped.  And, it turns out, this guy was a double loser in the eyes of any self-respecting Israelite.  Not only was he a leper, he was a Samaritan.  But this loser returned to Jesus and gave thanks. 

          And it’s to this one that Jesus says, “Rise and go; your faith has saved you.”  Not only had the Samaritan been healed, but something bigger and better was now going on.  Now the Samaritan knew who to trust—not just with his health, but with his life, with his death, with everything.  Ten out of ten had faith to be healed; but only one out of ten had faith to be saved.  That one knew at whose feet his salvation rested.  Faith always returns to Jesus.  Faith always gives thanks to Jesus.

          And that’s why you are here today.  Jesus didn’t linger long with the lepers because He was on His way to Jerusalem where there was waiting for Him a cross with His name on it.  There He took our place as one who was sinful and unclean.  There Jesus suffered the terrible isolation of being forsaken by God and man.  He endured the horrors of hell, quarantined to the cross.  But Jesus now lives and reigns to welcome you into the full fellowship and the blessed communion of angels, archangels and all the company of heaven.

          Today the risen Lord passes this way—here where His body and blood are served up as a sacred vaccination and a holy antidote against sin and death.  It was our sin that infected Jesus and killed Him on Good Friday.  But here and now He brings you the blessings of Easter—offering you His immunity and His immortality in the bread that is His body and the wine that is His blood.

          On this Thanksgiving Day in the year of our Lord 2020, you have aligned yourself with lepers.  You pray the leper’s prayer:  Lord, have mercy.  You bend your knees as you pray, praise, and give thanks.  Like those lepers, your life is probably messy and complicated; and the weeks ahead are riddled with a strange mix of hope and fear.  But as you leave here this morning, you are cleansed.  You are healed.  You are saved.  You know who to trust. Your faith has saved you.

          In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.