Luke 17:11–19

¹¹On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee.

¹²And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance

¹³and lifted up their voices, saying, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us."

¹⁴When he saw them he said to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." And as they went they were cleansed.

¹⁵Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice;

¹⁶and he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan.

¹⁷Then Jesus answered, "Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine?

¹⁸Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?"

¹⁹And he said to him, "Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well."

They kept their distance. They could not go any closer. They were ostracized from society, separated from their family, banned from intercourse with anyone outside their own colony of lepers. They were considered unclean, repulsive, repugnant, smelly, and sinful. Leprosy corrupted, degraded and defiled man's inner nature and rendered him unfit to enter into the presence of a pure and holy God. To have leprosy was considered a punishment from the Lord.

They had heard the stories about Jesus healing the sick and cleansing the lepers. You can imagine their excitement that day when they saw Jesus heading toward their town. Keeping their distance, they called out to him, "Master, have mercy on us."

Here we see ourselves. For we too are corrupt, unclean, rotten from the inside and unworthy to approach God. We are separated from God by our sinful nature and cannot approach him. Original sin is a disease that corrupts us, separates us from God, and eventually leads to death. Like the lepers, we too must stand at a distance and call out, "Lord, have mercy on us." Like the lepers, we begin our worship with confession of our sins and then we cry out, "Lord, have mercy," in the Kryie.

Remarkably, Jesus did not run away from the awful specter of ten lepers; nor was he repulsed by the stench of rotting flesh that literally was falling off of them. He did not try to avoid them in order to not become unclean. He turned to them, faced them and spoke with his all powerful word: "Go and show yourselves to the priests."

This was a word of hope, of healing, of cleansing because it was the priests who had the duty to declare a leper cleansed so that he could return to society. Sending them to the priests meant that Jesus was going to heal them. On their way to the temple in Jerusalem to see the priests, they were cleansed of their leprosy.

His word to the lepers was "go to the priest." His word to us is "Go to the priest." As we call upon Jesus for mercy to cleanse us from the sickness of sin in our unclean hearts, he tells us to go to the priest. Who is our priest? Where is the temple? Our priest is Jesus Christ. The priest is the one who offers the sacrifices at the temple. Jesus is our priest. He offered the sacrifice for our sins. In fact, he himself was the sacrifice. By his death on the cross he shed his blood which paid for our sins.

Jesus is the one whose powerful word proclaims the forgiveness of sins. As he told the lepers to go to the priest, which was a word of cleansing, He tells us to go to the priest, to Jesus himself.

But how do we go to him to be cleansed and healed? Where is Jesus? We find him in worship; in word and sacrament. In his word he declares us forgiven, cleansed. In the Sacrament he Jesus is present in his body. That very body that was sacrificed on the cross; that very body that rose from the dead; that very body which ascended into heaven is in the bread and his blood that cleanses from sin is in the wine. The crucified and risen Jesus is in the bread and wine. The crucified and risen Jesus offers himself to us as the bread of life and the cup of forgiveness. Where does Jesus give himself to us? Where does he bestow that forgiveness on us? Where does he come to us and enter into us to work in us? In the Holy Supper.

Jesus is the one who by his suffering and death on the cross cleanses us from all uncleanness. He does not run from us. He is not repulsed by our ugly, sinful, human nature. He comes to us to make us clean and restore us to wholeness. And this is our worship. Worship is Christ coming to us to give us his gifts. We begin by crying out to him for mercy and forgiveness. In his word he declares us forgiven, and in the sacrament he is present to gives us his forgiveness and all the gifts he earned for us on the cross.

Now there is a point that must be made here. In our popular religion today there is great misunderstanding and confusion. Even many of us Lutherans have fallen prey to popular beliefs and errors. Many of us here have a sort of vague notion that God just magically forgives us and that he is present with his grace and forgiveness everywhere and at all times. We have been taught that God is omnipresent in some vague, non-specific, non-concrete way. But this is a misunderstanding of God's omnipresence. Our Lutheran fathers understood well and our Lutheran confessions have a much clearer understanding of the Bible. God is bodily present with us to give us his gifts, to cover our sins with his forgiveness, to bestow his grace and to work in our lives and hearts in his means of grace. That is, in Word and Sacrament. He does not forgive us or give us his grace outside of Word and Sacrament. The Bible is clear when it says "be baptized for the forgiveness of sins," and "this cup is my blood shed for you for the forgiveness of sins." When we are in need of forgiveness, the Bible directs us to Baptism and Communion. When Jesus says, "behold, I will be with you to the end of the age," he is speaking of the Sacrament of the altar, because there are his body and blood. And where his body is, there is Jesus because he is not a ghost. He does not come to us separated from his body. A true understanding of the Sacraments is to understand that Jesus is present with us and works in our hearts and lives and bestows forgiveness on us in the Sacraments. That is why the sacraments are such precious gifts from God and should be used frequently. Our true worship is to receive Jesus into our midst and seek his grace and mercy in Word and Sacrament. When you have a need, when you need strength to fight temptation, when you need hope and courage to face suffering and sickness, when you need forgiveness, when you need healing, flee to God's word and receive the Sacrament. Worship, the divine service, is where God serves you and comes to be with you and do his work in your life.

For these precious gifts God has given us, that is, Word and the Sacraments, we have much to be thankful for. Of the ten lepers whom Jesus healed, only one returned to worship him and give him thanks. And that one was not even of the household of God. He was a foreigner, an outsider, one considered unworthy.

We see here the fulfillment of the prophecy that many people will come from the east and the west, from the north and the south to sit at table with Abraham and the prophets and dine in the eternal banquet of heaven. We are those people from the east and west and north and south. We are the gentiles; the nations of the world. Those from outside the chosen Jewish nation. That one gentile who returned to worship Jesus is prophetic of our being included in the family of God today. He shows that Jesus came not for the worthy, but the unworthy. Not for the Jew alone, but also for the gentile. And that includes us.

Jesus came for all people, and he sends us to "go and make disciples of all nations by Baptizing in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." Here is the great mission mandate of Jesus. Here is the basis for the fact that we are believers today. Except for some missionary who spread the gospel to other nations, we would not be here today; we would not be believers in Jesus; we would be on the road to eternal death and damnation.

But out of love, God sent his disciples with word and sacrament to all the world and by preaching the word and administering the sacraments the saving grace of Jesus Christ has come to us.

For this, like the single leper, we are grateful and give God thanks. We ourselves are in mission so that still more will be saved. For God's grace is found only in word and sacrament. We have been given that word and sacrament to take to still more people. That is why this month, the month of October, our Synod has designate as mission month. That is why next Sunday, the LWML will be sponsoring the radio broadcast of our service. That is why after our worship service next Sunday we will have a special guest speaker from the mission field to speak about missions. That is why several people at Emmanuel are organizing to get involved in missions and join together to bring the gospel to the nations.

Pray for missions; that God's word and sacraments be taken to all people; that the means of grace to be made available to all nations; that forgiveness, life and salvation from the cross of Christ be made available to all.

Amen.