As we just heard in today’s Gospel, ten lepers appeal to Christ God for healing that He alone can give. While all ten are healed, only one comes back to Christ, prostrating himself before Him who gives life to all people, and thanking Him for the healing he has received.
Brothers and sisters, you and I are like one of those lepers. We’ve received the greatest of gifts—something even greater than physical healing: new life in Jesus Christ, participation even now in His eternal Kingdom through the Sacraments of His Church, forgiveness of our sins and prayer, the possibility to converse and enjoy blessed communion with the Living God. He ministers healing to us through His Church, calls us to a greater, eternal purpose to our otherwise temporal lives. He invites us to receive Him inside ourselves, to feed on Him with our eternal souls. He heals us from the passions and destructive vices to the extent we’re willing to cooperate with the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives. He receives us as we are, but always with the objective of transfiguring us into the men and women of God He’s made us and called us to be.
So yes, you and I are like one of the ten lepers who have been healed and given new life: We’ve all been offered deification; we’ve all been set upon the journey of healing that is life with God. But, the question is: are we like the leper who returns to God, prostrates himself before Him and thanks Him, or, are we like the other nine, who receive from God but take His work, healing, and salvation for granted? Do we avail ourselves of His life, of His healing, of this deification? Or, are we focused on ourselves to the extent that we forget those around us and their needs?
Whatever our sin struggle, there’s healing: no one is beyond God’s healing power. With God, all things are possible. But how can we find healing if we’re set on going our own way, in making our communion with God through Christ, only a tangential part of our busy lives, in taking Christ and His Church on “our terms,” or filling our days with other priorities beside our life in Him? In all these ways, we can be like those other nine lepers.
In this Mission, we’ve seen many people healed and healing. For many, this church, young as she is, has been a place of return to the Faith, growth in the life in Christ, and, a place to discover the fullness of the life in Christ. We’ve all been offered opportunity to take steps forward in faith. Fourteen souls beloved by God have been baptized and/or chrismated since our founding in 2011, several of God’s beloved children have come back to Church, others have grown in their identity and calling in Christ, and, yes, have found a measure of healing.
So ask yourself: Are you like the leper that returned and gave thanks to God, falling on your face before Him in thanksgiving or have you been like the other nine who were healed but took God’s work in their lives for granted? Is there anything you are taking for granted with God and His Church now? Do we see ourselves as unworthy of His bounty, healing, and salvation and, therefore, recipients of grace and mercy? Do we see His reception of us as a right-or-as a gift of love? Do we appreciate what we have, or are we focused on what we don’t have, both personally and as a church family? Do we love our brothers and sisters in this Mission and give ourselves sacrificially to the building up of the Body as a whole? These are some of the questions that are worth asking ourselves as this Gospel confronts us today with its truth.
The reality is that you and I have so much to be thankful for in our church, including and especially the brother or sister sitting next to you, who is important for your salvation; he or she is someone to pray for, someone to learn to come outside yourself to love, to build up, to encourage, to give to, and, to receive from. We’re all members of the same Body. We’re reconciled together to God, knit together, built up together, saved together—just like those ten lepers were. This mission is a place of “working out your salvation”—together. We build up our church not just for ourselves, but for each other, because your brother or sister’s growth also affects your growth in faith. The love which bonds us together in Christ means that I also care about my brother and sister’s healing and growth as I do my own.
The difference between the one leper who came back to Christ, and the other nine who received healing but forgot about Christ, is thankfulness. Many times, our forgetfulness of God, our taking Him and our church for granted or on ‘our terms’, comes from a lack of a spirit of thankfulness, of remembrance of God’s grace and mercy or recognition of His ongoing work in our lives, deifying us, forgiving us, feeding us, healing us, saving us.
As fasting is a reminder to pray and prayer begets more prayer: so too we see this same dynamic at work with thankfulness. The more you and I take time to thank God daily, the more we can give thanks, focus on what we have, rather than what we lack, step forward in faith, and make ourselves more open towards God to receive more of His grace and love into our souls.
Now, as we begin in earnest to look toward Christ’s coming (in His Incarnation and glorious Second Coming), it’s time to make a change, to renew a right spirit, to thank God for this church and our brethren here with whom we’re being saved and with whom we work out our salvation.
So, ask yourself, which leper am I, which leper do I want to be? This holy Advent season is the time to act: beseech God for healing and strength to live more faithful lives to God’s glory. Embrace God’s love and healing as it comes to you this Nativity Fast, take the Fast, your praying, your worshiping more seriously, learn from the amazing Saints commemorated daily, beseech God for more faith, surrender yourself more to Christ and His holy Church, and the work He’s doing in you and through you to make you into the man or woman of God He’s called you to be. Join me in striving to cultivate a spirit of thankfulness to God this holy season.
If we give thanks to God for the small victories, every time we struggle against sin and vice, every time we return to God in repentance (practice metanoia), every day we enter into God’s holy presence to pray, every offering we give, you and I will have fewer occasions to focus on the negative, all faithlessness. In this way, we’ll find ourselves more open to Christ’s gracious calling on our lives to conform us more into His likeness. In this way, we prepare ourselves further to become inheritors of eternal life with Him and stand before Him at the dread Judgment Seat at His awesome Second Coming.
Our healing and growth starts just as it did for the one leper who returned: we recognize our lowliness, our utter inability to save ourselves, our need for healing. We abandon ourselves to Christ God, we worship and thank God for His gracious work in our lives; we humble ourselves before Him in thanksgiving, acknowledging that He’s the source of our life, our healing, our salvation. So let’s choose this Nativity Fast to build each other up in this truth this holy season and be ever thankful to God for His work us, in our Mission, in each other.
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Mission
Sunday, 4 December 2016
Epistle: Eph. 2:14-22
Gospel: Luke 17:12-19
