Sermon: Trinity 14 - 2018

2 September 2018

Text: Luke 17:11-19

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

At his inauguration in 1961, President John F. Kennedy famously said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”  In a sense, he was calling on Americans to seek to serve rather than to seek to be served.  Implied in this quote is a sense of gratitude.  We ought to be grateful for what has been handed down to us, and out of gratitude, we ought to be willing to serve rather than demand that others serve us.

It seems that fewer and fewer people think in this way, as so many seem to want to take, and so few wish to give.  We have sadly become a nation of ungrateful people.

This is a manifestation of our fallen nature.  We are self-centered and thus lacking in gratitude.  We want others to bend to our will.  We get angry if we don’t get what we want when we want it, and exactly how we want it.  We have become a spoiled people that can break out into a fistfight with a fast food worker if our burger isn’t exactly as we want it.

We are a culture that sees service as beneath our dignity.  And indeed, the word “service” is based on the Latin word for “slave.”  And slavery is something we detest – especially we Americans whose country was founded on liberty.  In our culture, serving others, even if voluntarily as a free person, is seen as demeaning.

Our Lord Jesus Christ says of Himself that He came not to be served, but to serve.  St. Paul teaches us that Jesus came in the form of a slave in order to save us.  He did this out of love.  Jesus was not above scrubbing the dirty feet of His beloved students.  Jesus serves us His flesh and blood at the cross, serving up His life as a ransom.  And He continues to serve us in the Lord’s Supper, feeding us with His own body and blood in the holy meal of the Eucharist, which is Greek for “thanksgiving.”  

And for all of this, perhaps we ought not ask what Christ’s church can do for us, but rather, what can we do for Christ’s church.  And the greatest patron saint of this kind of gratitude is our unnamed healed leper in the Gospel reading.

Our Lord healed ten men of the dreaded disease called “leprosy” – known today as Hansen’s Disease.  In our day, it is rare, and curable.  But in the first century, it was a slow death sentence that was contagious.  If you caught it, you were forced out of the community, from your home, away from loved ones.  You became an outcast for fear of spreading the infection.  The disease was painful and disfiguring and fatal. 

Jesus was traveling in a village between Samaria and Galilee.  Ten lepers “stood at a distance” and cried out to Him, praying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”  They were desperate and sought a cure.  Jesus promptly sent them on their way to be declared clean by the priests, according to the Law of Moses.  While on their way, “they were cleansed.”  This means that they were cured of this horrific disease that normally left people without hope.  

After this great miracle, this new lease on life, nine of the men went their way and never came back.  But, “one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving Him thanks.”  And to top it all off, this man was not of the chosen people, for he was a Samaritan.

While the other nine had gone on their way, not bothering to come back out of gratitude, this Tenth Leper (who was not a leper any longer) returned to give thanks and praise and to worship Jesus.  

There were many other things he could have been doing with his new life.  He could now walk into a restaurant or a public festival.  He could visit his family or share a meal at home with friends.  He could travel without being ostracized.  He could sleep in his own bed without pain.  But before doing anything else, this Samaritan came back to give thanks and praise to God, to publicly thank him for giving him the priceless gift of life.

And Jesus contrasts this man’s gratitude with the others’ attitude of taking Jesus for granted: “Were not ten cleansed?  Where are the nine?  Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”

Our Lord looks upon this man’s actions as a confirmation of this man’s faith.  For we receive the gifts of life and salvation by grace, through faith.  Jesus saw the evidence of this man’s faith in his deeds of gratitude.  His actions don’t make him well, but the faith that led to his grateful actions certainly do, even as our blessed Lord tells him: “Rise and go your way.  Your faith has made you well.”

But what do the nine say instead?  We don’t know, as Scripture is silent.  But what people whom Jesus has healed often say is that they don’t see the need to come to where Jesus is.  They already know this stuff.  They’re already baptized.  The church is filled with hypocrites.  The pastor is a jerk.  Well, sometimes they might be right about that.  

But more often than not, dear friends, our problem is that we lack gratitude.  For when we are sick or in trouble or in danger, we pray, we plead with God, we may even bargain and think of a list of things we’ll do if God will just help us out of this jam.

But when we have been healed, we, like the nine, go about our merry way and think about other things, rather than coming to Jesus and praising Him.

The good news is this, dear friends, Jesus cures us not only of things like leprosy, but also of ingratitude, of misplaced priorities, of asking what others will do for us rather than acknowledging gratefully what others have done for us – especially Jesus, who has done more for us that anyone else, including our parents, our spouses, our children, our best friends, our teachers, and those who have defended our liberties in times of peril.  For Jesus has cured us of the leprosy of death and hell.  He has given us a new lease on life.  He has redeemed us.  He has saved us.  He has sent us forth healed.

The Christian life is not about trying to be holy, dear friends.  The Christian life is a response of gratefulness to our Lord for making us holy by His blood, through His passion and death, and in the certainty of the resurrection: His, and ours.  And in gratitude, we come to Jesus, we fall on our faces at His feet.  We continue in the prayer, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”  We praise Him with a loud voice.  And we ask Him in prayer as well what we can do for Him and for our neighbors.  We thank Him in service, whatever that service looks like for us.  We thank Him in the Divine Service, for indeed “it is our duty to thank, praise, serve, and obey Him.  This is most certainly true.”

In our gratitude, we ask what we can do for our Lord and His church.  Our Lord looks upon His grateful little flock, those who have been delivered from the leprosy of sin, and He says yet again: “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.  Amen.

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