When you receive a gift, how do you react? I imagine the magnitude of the gift you receive determines your reaction. Sometimes when we receive gifts, we have to grin and bear it. Here are some examples of bad gift giving. A friend of mine gave his wife a vacuum sealer to help her store leftovers; she insisted that he return it. Another example: a woman received a book from her mother in law entitled “How to get slim and stay slim.” A third example, a daughter received a book from her mother, when she opened it she realized it was the exact same book she had given to her mom a year ago. Amazingly it still had the note she had written to her mom inside the front cover. Finally, a recently married couple, who were about to make a move from the east coast to the west coast, was given a kitten by the woman’s parents. The husband was allergic to cats!
The opposite of those terrible gifts is that we sometimes receive life-changing gifts; direction altering miracles that turn us into better people. It is this kind of gift the ten lepers receive from Jesus in our Gospel today. Saint Luke tells us that as Jesus was traveling to Jerusalem and passing between Galilee and Samaria, he encountered ten lepers who cried out to him, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” Jesus then told the ten to show themselves to the priests. Jesus told them to do that because the only way to re-enter society once being marked as a leper, was to present yourself to the priest who would inspect you and approve your cleanliness. Once that was done, you were in the clear and able to be among the people once again.
As the ten are traveling to see the priests, one of them realized that as he went, he was healed, so he turned back, praised God, and fell at the feet of Jesus giving thanks. Jesus responded with shock that of the ten, only one returned to give him thanks, and tells the one, a Samaritan, a foreigner, in Jesus’s words, that his faith has made him well. Today we read about two very different reactions to receiving a gift; one is to take the gift and make it about self. The other is to receive a gift and to offer oneself back to the giver of the gift. That is what the Samaritan in the Gospel does. The Samaritan recognizes that Jesus is the source of his physical healing and returns to him. Through that action, he is not only healed physically, but by his faith, and through the power of Jesus, he receives spiritual healing as well.
Jesus healed the ten lepers out of his compassion and through his endless grace. But he also healed them, to be instruments of that grace. To be evangelists singing a song of thanksgiving for all to hear. Jesus healed the ten with the intention of them receiving His grace, and in return, becoming ministers of His grace to spread the power and word of The Kingdom of God to the world. What Jesus wanted for the ten lepers was to receive the fullness of life, to live in communion with God through Jesus.
Everyone here has either received the gift of grace from Jesus or is eligible to receive it. What are you doing with it? We receive God’s grace through the sacraments of the church. Through our baptism, we are made new, born again, being made more real in the regeneration of the baptismal water. We receive grace through confession and knowing that Jesus has wiped clean the darkness in our hearts. Reconciliation with Jesus renews us to become more like he intends us to be. We receive grace in the Eucharist, which sustains us with the very body and blood of our Lord, equipping us to be lights in the world that cannot be hidden and cannot contain the love for God and the love of God that that dwells within each of us.
Jesus says several times in the Gospels that to enter the kingdom; we are to have faith like children. I defined faith for our confirmation class this year like this: faith = belief + trust. There are so many of you in the congregation today who have reached out to friends and invited them to come to Redeemer. To come and see what we do at Redeemer, to come and see how we worship at Redeemer, to come and see how our Lord is at work at Redeemer. Why? If you are someone who has taken the step to be totally vulnerable to step out in faith and invite someone to church, why did you do it? I recently asked someone who invited some friends to church why she did it, and this was her answer: “I love Redeemer, it’s such an amazing church, I just want my friends to be able to come to a church that special too.” Belief in Jesus, trusting Jesus, and knowing that inviting someone to meet Jesus here at Redeemer means they will be loved no matter what, is the reason so many of us are so confident inviting our friends to come and see.
Our call is to recognize the grace that we all receive week after week at Redeemer, and to fall at Jesus’s feet, to give him thanks, and then to be His instruments of grace to all those we encounter day after day. We’ve all received a gift, so undeserved, so immense, and so important. The gift is communion with God, through Jesus, and in the power of the Holy Spirit. So, today fall at the feet of Our Lord, thank him, and receive his body and blood, and come back next week, knowing you have done all you can to bring the kingdom of God into the world by, introducing all you meet to the undeserved, unbridled, and all-encompassing love of Jesus, so that they too will come and see. Come and see what Jesus has to offer at the Church of the Redeemer.
Sermon preached by the Rev. Christian M. Wood
Church of the Redeemer
18th Sunday after Pentecost
13 October 2019