“THE ONE FOR THE TEN”
Saint Luke 17. 11-19
The Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity: 24 August Anno Domini 2008
Fr Watson SSP
The ten men were very sick. Their skin was covered with oozing sores from head to foot. Their flesh didn't look like human flesh but like grey rotting fish. They were lepers. They had no families that they could go home to. They were banished from society. They could not go into town for refreshments and entertainment. They had no jobs. They could not go to the synagogue for Church services. They had to stay out in the country. The disease of leprosy could be highly contagious so the ten men had to stay away from healthy people. Being a leper was painful. Being a leper was lonely.
It's good that in this story there were ten of them. There are Ten Commandments which contain God's rules and requirements. If a person obeyed these laws perfectly that individual would never get sick, never die, and be in total harmony with the Trinity. If a person kept the Commandments that person would never have leprosy. The fact that there were ten lepers and not nine, or eleven, is a nice reminder that no one can do the law the way the Lord demands. The Ten Commandments can save no one. Your efforts don't matter. Your works, diligent self-control, will-power, and resolution, don't keep you any cleaner and pure than those poor lepers.
There was a time when every one of you was a leper. You were an outcast and a misfit. You had no home that would accept you, no table where you could dine with loved ones, no Holy House that could bathe you, clothe you, feed you, strengthen you and forgive you.
Jesus came and found those ten sad men. They didn't leave the area where they were to find God, but rather, God found them. You didn't leave darkness and nothingness to be a person, a living thing, but rather God delivered you into a world of being by giving you a mother and father. You didn't clean yourself of unbelief and hatred for God. The Christ came to you in your Baptism even as He came to the ten lepers. He took away their sores and putrefying flesh and gave them new skin. He took away your sins and black hearts and gave you new flesh as well-His God flesh. He placed you into His own Kingly robes and Sonly status as co-heirs of Heaven. The ten went to show the Jewish priests what Messiah had done. You too come to the Lord's New Testament temple to give thanks and show the world what the Lord has done.
Jesus healed ten men that day. But Jesus did not come in the flesh to be a temporary first-aid provider or a free clinic. Jesus came to be the eternal Good Physician of body and soul and to be free life-giver, a free eternity maker. There were many other lepers in Israel that Jesus did not heal. But He died for them all anyway. He died for you and your sins as well. The healing of the lepers was a brief glimpse of His power over decay, devil, and disruption. It showed Him to be God. Shortly after this temporary cleansing Jesus went to the Cross at Mt. Calvary to do it all perfectly for the last and final time. On the Cross Jesus paid for the sins of every leper, every blind man, every mean man, every lusting man, every lazy man, every thieving man, every cheap, angry, mouthy, sacrilegious, bullying, cowardly, you man! His Body given in place of your sinfully-leprous body; His blood shed for your sinfully-infected poisonous toxic blood; His Word of healing for your words of un-belief, mis-belief, and weak belief.
Jesus kept the Ten Commandments perfectly and gives you faith to believe it, to believe in Him. Your faith in Him means that you have been given full credit for keeping the Ten Laws. Jesus is the One healer Who has given you back your life, your health, your family, your future.
Your flesh, your skin, your body remains free from dark, devilish leprosy by hearing and believing in His Words of cleansing and in taking His own Immortal, Eternal, and Omnipotent Body and Blood into your own body and blood.
You fall at His feet in joyous devotion and thanks. He raises you to your feet to embrace you and sit with you as more than Lord, as brother, and as God.
In the Name of The Father and of The + Son and of The Holy Ghost