St. Paul Hamel Homily for Trinity Fourteen 09/01/2013

St. Luke 17:11-19

The Rev. BT Ball

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

“As he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”

We are not worthy to approach Jesus, as we are all unclean. The lepers were unclean; because of their disease this was their identity. They did not approach Jesus, standing at a distance they called out to him. You wonder if it was one of them who first saw him and had the idea and started calling out “Jesus, master, have mercy on us”, but they all did it together, just like we have already done. Lord, have mercy upon us, Christ, have mercy upon us, Lord have mercy upon us. It is the constant prayer of the Church in her liturgy. Week in week out we pray , The Gloria, - “O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, that takest away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us. Thou that sittest at the right hand of the Father, have mercy up on us.” we are not worthy to ask for it, but in faith in the promises of God and in the name of Christ Himself, we ask for it. Mercy. It is the unmerited favor of God in action. When the lepers and when we unworthy sinners ask for the mercy of God we are asking on the basis of who He is and what He has done, what He has promised to do it now – be merciful, have mercy, help us, see our affliction our uncleanness, do what only you can do. Cleanse us. Heal us. Forgive us. Restore us. Have mercy.

It is a great wonder that God does this in His Son. Always. Look how Jesus deals with the lepers, he tells them to go show themselves to the priests. They head off, trusting in his words, and they are healed. To show themselves to the priests and away they go. They are heading back to the life they had lost. Healed of their disease with the seal of approval of the priest they could get back to their families, their old homes, back to the synagogue and temple, back to work, back to life. And they got it all. Yet you heard the story about how one returned and gave praise to God, worshipping. And that God was Jesus. He had no priest to go to other than Jesus because he was a Samaritan. Unclean from the get go, a foreigner, not worthy to approach a priest, but only worthy as he was cleansed to approach the real high priest and worship God not in a temple, but worship God in the flesh and blood of Jesus and he did just that. And this is the great point of the Gospel, that God hears your cry for mercy, and it is always given through His Son. There is nowhere else to go, there is no need to go anywhere else. All things are given through Him and faith that makes one well grasps hold of this Jesus and His promises and always cries out to him for mercy, and will always get it. Because Jesus didn’t.

God was merciless toward His Son Jesus on the cross. He dealt with him mercilessly because on the cross the Father laid all your unclean filthy sins on His only begotten Son. There are lots of reasons why God should not be merciful toward you, as many sins you have are reasons, and of course even before you were actually committing sins you were a sinner in your mother’s womb. Unclean inside and out. Cleansing though comes through the mercy of God in Jesus Christ. Cleansing comes from outside in. Saving faith is received externally. It was an external outside healing of the Samaritan leper’s skin that sent him to Jesus, And from the outside comes Jesus, the Word that hit you with the water, a cleansing flood of your baptism. The Word and water hit your body, just as the word of Jesus hit the lepers and made them clean. So this is how God works. And to get clean on the inside, he absolves you on the outside. The Word of forgiveness is put on you and faith grasps hold of the forgiveness of sins that is preached and administered.

Mercy is always what you need, again, we will cry out like the lepers to the Lamb of God, “O Christ, Thou Lamb of God that takest away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us.” See how the liturgy teaches you what to say, and how to approach your God? That prayer, sung so many times comes right after you hear the words of Jesus mercy toward you, the words of Institution, the words of our Lord that come from the outside to make you well. And with the words joined to bread and wine, His Body and Blood cleanse you inside and out before your Father, forgiven, cleansed healed. Your cries for mercy are always heard. And you approach your God, unworthy and unclean as you are, invited by Him to be near Him, to partake of Him, and forgiven by Him, worth and clean. And that is what you are for Jesus sake.

Amen.