The Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity '26
Note: No video is available for this sermon. We apologize for Sunday's technical difficulties during our YouTube livestream.
In the gospel miracle of healing, ten lepers were cleansed. Nine did what Jesus said to do. They went to show themselves to the priests. According to the Torah, the priests served as health inspectors. They would certify the healings and restore the exiled, contagious lepers to life in the community. Jesus had another purpose in mind. The priests would see the healed men and ask, “Who did this?” The healed lepers would be witnesses to the priests of the power of God at work in Jesus, the Messiah of Israel.
As they began to go to the priests, the tenth leper, the only Samaritan in the group, realized something. He could not go and show himself to the priests. He was exiled from Jewish community life before he contracted leprosy. He was viewed as unclean by his very ethnicity. If he went to the priests, they would not touch or examine him.
Consequently, in that moment of realization, he returned to Jesus, the source of his healing, and gave thanks. Then he went back to his Samaritan community where he would also be a witness. The New Testament tells us that the Samaritans were receptive to testimony about Jesus in a way that the Jewish authorities were not.
The gospel describes the break-up of one community and the creation of a new community. The ten lepers had solidarity in their affliction. We experience this bond in the way that our unique afflictions and trials unite us with others who have experienced a similar thing. Only one who has experienced that particular thing can fully understand and participate in the fellowship. Healing dissolved their former bond, but created a new—or potential—bond. Now, they were united by their common faith in Jesus, the healer. Our experience of God’s power in Christ unites us with all others who have experienced the same power. Even though we do not experience God’s power in exactly the same way, we experience a common connection with the source of God’s power in Jesus. Our different stories all point to him.
The cleansed lepers were united in this new fellowship if they maintained their faith in Jesus. However, God’s grace and healing have a way of fostering forgetfulness. In our affliction, we cry out to God. We bargain and make deals. We promise to do new and better things if God will only answer our prayer. Then God does answer our prayer. We are restored to health and peace. But in our renewed state of ease, we tend to forget the pain we experienced and the promises we made as we eagerly reengage life and, perhaps, even resume some of our former bad habits.
There are two interesting questions to consider: How many of the nine lepers, after visiting the priests, also returned to Jesus to give thanks and follow him? And, how many, after being certified as clean and rejoining community life, gradually forgot about the One who healed them?
Forgetfulness is a perpetual temptation. This helps us understand why God’s grace is experienced through our ongoing afflictions. Affliction helps us to remember our dependency upon God. It keeps us in our prayers and does not allow us to drift into the illusion of self-sufficiency. This is a paradox of the kingdom. Health and prosperity present temptations to forget and become presumptuous, to mistake the temporal and outward appearance of things for the true eternal condition and value of things.
This is why God did not answer St. Paul’s prayer for healing in the way that Paul wanted an answer. As Paul reports in 2 Corinthians 12:7-9,
Lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations [I received], a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor. 12:7-9).
St. Paul summed up his lesson by saying, “When I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:10). Or, “When I am feeling weak in my human condition, then I depend on God more and am strong in faith.”
The truth that God works through our pain leads some to suggest that God likes to make people suffer. This is completely false. Suffering is caused by human and angelic sin. God’s redemptive plan is to remove all suffering. As Revelation 21:5 promises, “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away."
However, in this world, God saves us through suffering not from suffering. This pattern, established in the cross of Jesus, makes salvation real. As we wrestle through our afflictions in faith, our motives are purified and our faith is strengthened. This interior work of the Holy Spirit heals us and changes us into new people who are being prepared to live God’s new creation. False, pseudo-Christianity promises healing without pain. It gives us a good momentary feeling that doesn’t change or save anything.
A practical conclusion can be drawn from the epistle, which says, “Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh (Gal. 5:16). The term “lust of the flesh” means “disordered desire.” The desires of the flesh tempt us to believe we can have things the easy way, the way we want them to be, apart from God’s will and word, and without any pain or struggle. The flesh is the source of forgetfulness. It gets caught up in the lure of the moment and tempts us to forget God and “the things that remain” (Rev. 3:2).
To walk in the Spirit means to stay connected to God through Jesus in the Spirit; to remain prayerfully dependent; to be weak in our human condition but strong in faith and trust; to constantly remember God and not forget. This is why we return to Jesus, the source of our healing, on the Lord’s Day. We return to give thanks, to be healed again, and to receive a taste of our future, complete healing. We return to remember, as 2 Corinthians says, that “Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (4:16-17). Then Jesus sends us back into the world as witnesses; to “continue in that holy fellowship and do all such good works as [God] has prepared for us to walk in” (BCP 83).