17 September 2017
Text: Luke 17:11-19
In the name of +
Jesus. Amen.
I
have heard two people this week bring up a verse that isn’t in our text, but it
is an important point that touches upon our text. That verse is Luke 18:25: “It is easier for a
camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the
kingdom of God.”
Most
of us instinctively like this text, because we aren’t rich. It enables us to wag
the finger at people we are envious of. What’s
there not to like about that?
But
in fact, dear friends, we are rich. All
of us. First of all, we live in the 21st
century and in the First World. We have luxuries
that even kings did not enjoy a hundred years ago: air conditioning, refrigerators
and freezers, televisions, cell phones, automobiles, the internet, and all sorts
of social safety nets – so that even people who are considered poor in America
are rich when compared to the rest of the world.
But
we are also rich in a different way: spiritually. For whether we believe it or not, whether we
are Christians or not, we have the love of our Creator and the sacrificial
death of the Son on the cross for us to pay for our sins. Jesus died for all – including His enemies,
including those who reject Him, including those who don’t believe their sins
are sins at all. And being recipients of
this free offer of eternal life, we are rich beyond measure.
So
instead of looking down our noses at those who have more money than we do, what
we should be doing is thanking God for His superabundant mercy, for lavishing
upon us the most valuable substances on the planet – more precious than all the
diamonds of the world: the priceless handful of water used in our baptism,
which when combined with the Word, makes us heirs with Jesus of our Heavenly
Father. And let us thank God for the
richness of the precious body and blood of Christ, given and shed for us for
the forgiveness of sins, a Eucharistic feast that brings us into eternal communion
with Almighty God. What price can be put
on the Sacrament of the Altar?
What
greater treasures could we have, dear brothers and sisters?
And
in this context, the ten lepers who met our Lord between Samaria and Galilee, were
likewise wealthy beyond measure. For
though they were afflicted beggars, they were crossing paths with Jesus. They could have had the equivalent of billions
of dollars, but still would have been poor because of the cursed leprosy that
was rotting their skin away and drawing them down into the grave day by day. But in Christ, they were rich! For they were lavished with the mercy of the
Creator in the flesh, who came to restore their flesh in their time of great
need. And He did just that!
For
they were cleansed. They were healed. Or as it literally says in the Greek, they
were saved. They were purchased and
redeemed by Christ Himself! And so they
are indeed made rich beyond measure.
But
there is a biblical warning about riches, is there not? For let us not forget the camel and the eye of
the needle. Being rich can be a
spiritual stumblingblock. What do we profit,
dear friends, if we gain the world, but lose our souls?
In
the richness of being healed by Jesus, nine of the ten fell into the trap of
having great possessions interfering with the kingdom: in this case, the riches
of a restored health. Their focus was on
the health, and not the Healer. Their
focus was on themselves and not the one who gave them their very selves back. They had already forgotten the grace and mercy
of God in order to go back to being self-centered and ungrateful.
Except
for the Samaritan, the “foreigner,” as Jesus puts it.
For
he too is “rich” insofar as he has been saved and given the gift of life. But unlike the nine, this Samaritan “turned
back, praising God in a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet,
giving Him thanks.” He returned to Jesus
to worship, to praise, to acknowledge the source of his riches: the Lord Jesus
and His grace.
This
gratitude, dear friends, is what makes camels capable of passing through the
eye of the needle. It is the humility to
understand that health and wealth and all good things come to us from above, from
Him by whom all things are possible – even camels squeezing through the eye of
a needle. That kind of humility
acknowledges that we do not deserve our riches or our vigor, but that our very
life itself, and all that we need to support this body and life, come from the
Lord above, according to His mercy – not because we are worthy, but because He
is merciful.
We
return to Jesus, dear friends, not only because He gives us health and life and
forgiveness and communion with God, but also to give Him thanks and praise. For we know where our health and wealth come
from. And in many ways, we Christians
are “foreigners” like the Samaritan that came back to praise God.
Like
the children of Israel as they left Egypt, we are “strangers in a strange land,”
and like the Samaritans, we are looked down upon and marginalized by a culture
that revels in its ingratitude, a world in which we are encouraged to brag and
take credit that that which we did not earn. Let us not fall into the trap of the nine
ingrates, dear friends, but rather let us follow the example of the Tenth
Leper, returning frequently to the Lord in prayer, in praise, and in
thanksgiving, coming to where He is, and in our gratitude, once more rising
from our knees after being fed with the riches of His very self, just as He
invites us: “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.
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