Lectionary: Luke 17:12-19
In this life, one day or another, we will at some point be sick. Whether that be a cold, flu, or something more serious. It’s just a fact of life. If this is news to you, I’m sorry to break it to you here, but there it is.
And in the medical field, to address this fact of life, there are different ways of treating illness. And all these manners of treating illness usually fall into one of two groups, acute care and preventative care. Now, acute care are things that a doctor does to heal me of an infirmity that I already have: they give me medicine, they reset a bone, they order me to rest.
And then there is what’s called preventative care: advice and tools that the Doctor gives that I can use to prevent myself from having that illness again. And with sin truly being an illness of the soul, a sickness of the heart, it is no surprise that there are both acute and preventative ways in order to deal with sin; to cleanse us of sinfulness.
Now, it is pretty easy for me to identify what acute spiritual care looks like: Repentance! Right?
By acknowledging that sin has entered into my life, I cry out to my savior. I cry out to my Lord and I ask him for help. And I do so by repenting of my sins. I ask God to heal me, and then he does.
But now, healed of spiritual affliction, I am left to ask: what does preventative spiritual care look like? What gift has God given me to prevent sin from entering my heart again? How do I keep from falling back into where I was before?
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Today, as Christ sends the ten lepers on their way, he directs them first to the temple, to show themselves to the priests.
This was a normal, historically recognized practice. Leprosy was a terrible and incredibly infectious disease, and so those who had it were ostracized from the community, out of fear of the illness spreading. Lepers were thus living out in the outskirts, surviving on nothing but what they might receive from begging on the road. And so, it was the job of a priest to confirm that one had been healed of leprosy, so that they might then reenter society, so that they might then find acceptance back into their community. And so these lepers go, and by their Faith they are healed on the way.
And yet, having realized that they are all healed, only one returns to give thanks to the one that healed him. This one who returned was a Samaritan. A foreigner. One who was already ostracized from the Jewish community anyways, leprosy or no. What was the meaning in this? What is it about this turning back that is so significant for us today?
By Faith this Samaritan was healed, and by acknowledging his sickness he was made well. In this way, all the lepers were perfect symbols of repentance. Yet those other 9 lepers: we have no idea what happens to them. Do they make it to the Temple? Or do they give up and go their own way? After all, seeing that they have been healed, what really is the incentive for them to go any further? And so then who is to say that they do not then go off in whichever direction that they please, freed from their affliction, immediately forgetting the directions of their Lord. How are we to know that, in their forgetfulness, they even avoid contracting that leprosy again?
Now the one leper, we know where he goes. He returns back to the Lord. He gives thanks to him, and only then is he sent out on his own way, sent forth now with the assurance that he is made well.
And so, this one healed leper, the one who turns back, reveals to us the true power that is preventative spiritual care. For he goes back, he returns to his Lord, and he thanks him. He gives thanks to the one who healed him. And in doing this, in giving thanks for the healing that he has received, this Leper has ensured that he will not forget the one who has delivered him. He will not neglect the healer of his soul and his body. And so, he has set himself up to prevent falling into that very same illness again.
And so too, for us, we have as a tool of preventative spiritual care the act of giving thanks. Repentance cleanses our hearts, and then thanksgiving maintains that cleanliness within us. For by remembering the blessings that the Lord has given us, by giving thanks for those things, we practice the act of keeping the Lord on our minds, and thus in our hearts.
It is no accident that the primary work of the Church is called the Eucharist, a word that literally means thanksgiving. We have Eucharist as a tool for us to maintain the presence of Christ in our bodies, in our hearts, and in our minds. And emboldened by this presence of the Lord, we allow that presence to maintain us, to sustain us, and to defend us from falling back into the illness of sin.
And this process of cleansing, this process of thanksgiving: our God devised it precisely for us, as He Himself implemented it for us on the Cross. For by ascending the cross, Christ lifts us up out of sin. He cleanses us, He heals us. And then, by the breaking His body on that Cross, and by the shedding of His blood, Christ presents for us now the perfect image of Eucharist.
For we look to the Cross, and we give thanks. For our God has faced the ultimate suffering upon that Cross, and He has transformed it into the ultimate joy. And what that means then, is that the very same thing is now possible for our own suffering. Our own struggles. Christ enters into those too, and he transforms them. Christ enters into those sufferings and he suffers them with us, he suffers them for us. And we are then delivered by Him through those sufferings.
And now, having been healed, having been restored and welcomed back into communion with God, we give thanks. We are no longer ostracized by our own sins. We are no longer lepers on the outskirts of society. Christ has gone out into those outskirts and he has brought us back, and he has restored us, and he has made us well. And for that, we give him thanks. For that, we give him glory.
Glory to Jesus Christ!
