Brothers and sisters, you and I are like those lepers: we’ve received the greatest of gifts—something even greater than physical healing: that is, new life in Jesus Christ, citizenship in heaven, participation even now in His eternal Kingdom through the Sacraments of His Church and prayer, converse with God. He blesses us, ministers healing to us through His Church, calls us to a greater, eternal purpose, brings purpose and identity to our otherwise temporal lives. He gives us communion with Him. He invites us to receive Him inside ourselves, to feed on Him with our eternal souls so that we may be with Him for eternity. He heals us from the passions and destructive vices of the world around us in so far as we are 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 made us and called us to be.
So yes, we’re 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 through growth in holiness and increased participation in His eternal life. But, the question is: are we like the one 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’s 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, full of other priorities besides our life in Him?
You and I are being healed. For a small Mission, we’ve seen many people healed and healing in this church. For many, this church, young as she is, has been a place of growth and healing in the knowledge and love of God, an opportunity to take some serious steps forward in faith. Eight people beloved by God have been baptized and chrismated in 3 years, several of God’s beloved children have returned to Church after being away for some time, others have taken several steps forward in growth in their identity and calling in Christ.
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? Or, do we presume on God that He ‘owes it to us’? Do we see His reception of us as a right rather than a gift of grace and 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? Are we thankful for all God’s bounties to us?
You and I have much to be thankful for in our church, relatively small as it is. And here’s the truth: we’re not saved on our own; we’re saved through the Church. This is what we believe as Orthodox. The brother or sister next to you 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. We’re all members of the same Body, as we hear in today’s Epistle. 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.” If you and I cannot love our brother whom we see, how can we love God whom we cannot see, St. John asks (I Jn. 4:20). 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 since we’re called into a communion and so, in this way, we supply what is lacking in the other and visa versa, and build up the whole.
“Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”
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, comes from a lack of a spirit of thankfulness, of remembrance of God’s grace and mercy, His ongoing work in our lives, deifying us, forgiving us, feeding us, healing us, saving us.
As fasting is a reminder to pray, so prayer begets more prayer: so too with thankfulness. The more you and I take time to thank God, the more we can give thanks, focus on what we have, rather than what we lack.
So, which leper are you? This holy Advent season, we’re given an opportunity to remember God’s beneficence to us as we prepare again for Christ’s coming: to heal us, to strengthen us, to empower us to live more faithful lives to God’s glory. Embrace God’s love and healing as it comes to you this Nativity Fast and join me in striving to cultivate a spirit of thankfulness to God and remembrance of Him. If we give thanks to God for the small victories, you and I will have fewer occasions to focus on the failures and the negative, except as is helpful for repentance. In this way, we’ll respond to Christ’s calling on our lives, so that you and I may truly meet Christ at the Feast of the Nativity, to grow, to heal, and to prepare ourselves further to become inheritors of eternal life with Him. But it all starts just as it did for the one leper who returned: we recognize our lowliness, we worship and thank God for His gracious work in our lives; we humble ourselves before Him in thanksgiving, acknowledging that He is the source of our life, our healing, our salvation. Let’s build each other up in this truth this holy season and be ever thankful to God for His work in our lives, in our Mission, in each other. Glory to Jesus Christ!
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Mission
Sunday, 8 December 2013—Healing of the Ten Lepers
Epistle: Eph. 2:14-22
Gospel: Luke 17:12-19
