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 returns to Christ, prostrating himself before Him who gives life to all people, and thanking Him for the healing he’s received.
You and I have been given healing as well. 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 returns us to our first beauty and calling. He 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 of the world to the extent that we’re willing to cooperate with His work in our lives by the Holy Spirit. He receives us as we are but always with the objective of transfiguring us into the men and women of God He’s fashioned us to be.
So, brothers and sisters, you and I are like one of those lepers. 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 one’s 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 one is set on going his or her own way, in making our communion with God through Christ, only a tangential part of one’s busy life, in taking Christ and His Church on “our terms,” or filling one’s days with other priorities beside our life in Him? In all these ways, one can be like those other nine lepers.
In this Mission, we’ve seen many people healed and being healed. 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 the opportunity to take steps forward in faith. Sixteen 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 the 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 you see yourself as unworthy of His bounty, healing, and salvation and, therefore, recipients of grace and mercy? Do you see His reception of us as a right-or-as a gift of love? Do you appreciate what you have, or are you focused on what you don’t have, both personally and as a church family? Do you love your brothers and sisters in this Mission and give yourself sacrificially to the building up of the Body as a whole and make time for it? These are some of the questions 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 binds 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 remembering 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 the strength to live more faithful lives to God’s glory. Embrace His love and healing as it comes to you this Nativity. Take the Fast, praying, worshiping more seriously. Prioritize your life in Christ above all. Learn from the amazing Saints commemorated daily. Surrender yourself more fully to Christ and His Holy Church, the work He’s doing in you and through you. Join me in striving to cultivate a spirit of gratitude 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 selfishness. In this way, we’ll find ourselves more open to Christ’s gracious calling on our lives to conform us more into His likeness and greater participation in the life that He alone is. In this way, we prepare ourselves further to become inheritors of eternal life with Christ God and stand before Him at the dread Judgment Seat at His awesome Second Coming.
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Mission
Sunday, 10 December 2017
Epistle: Eph. 6:10-17
Gospel: Luke 17:12-19
