The Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity – Sunday 10 September A✠D 2023
✠ Psalmody: Psalm 84:9-10a;84:1-2a, 4, 10-11b;92:1-2;65:1
✠ Lection: Proverbs 4:10-23;Galatians 5:16-24;St. Luke 17:11-19
In the Name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
None of us enjoys mundane or lackluster worship, hymns, or sermons. Neither do or should any of us desire a hum-drum, boring God. Who among us is actually okay or content with the feeling of not being excited to go to church or content with valuing it so little to think that it doesn’t really matter whether we gather regularly or not? Who actually wants such thoughts or feelings for themselves or that it would be good to be that way? So, if none of us enjoys, desires, or is content with such feelings, why do they exist among us more than we want to admit or face up to? Is it God? Is He the problem? Is He not holding up His end of the bargain? Is He not keeping the covenant and promises that He has made to us about life and salvation? We all know the answer. So then, what needs to change? What needs to happen so that we experience the joy of our salvation of which we hear the Scriptures speak? What does it take to actually be happily thankful, to come to where God is, with a loud voice glorifying Him, falling down on our faces at the feet of Jesus, and giving Him thanks, and even better, wanting to? How do we have today what seems to be missing for us or at least is constantly sought to be taken away from us by our enemies? How do we return to our first Love, He Who first loved us, with full, joyful, thankful hearts?
Beloved, there is no quick fix. There is nothing that neither God nor I will say to you this morning that will instantly make all things right where you see that they may be wrong in this area for you. Life doesn’t happen like that. Our pampered, indulgent, instant gratification way of life has misled us from the reality that this life is one of labor, struggle, and battle. But it is also one of rest, growth, and victory through such things, because it is Christ Who guides; it is Christ Who strengthens; it is Christ Who provides; it is Christ Who cleanses us from sin and replaces it with joy and delight in Him. Your justification before God, your very salvation is secure in Him; in this, stand firm always. What still remains are the days of this life in which the Holy Spirit does His constant work of sanctification upon you. He desires and is able to continuously make you holier and holier and holier, until that Last Day when the work will be complete. But the work is not solely His as if He merely puts you to sleep for holy operation so that you wake up cured of things like not being all that excited about the Sacrament, about eternal life, about God dying for your sins and your life being extended to beyond the grave. There is no quick fix because you are involved in the process of your sanctification. The Holy Spirit doesn’t make you more like Christ without you. He doesn’t make you desire the things of God without you. He doesn’t make you thankful for being healed eternally by Jesus without you.
The one thankful and joyful leper in today’s gospel who was healed, he was a Samaritan, he had an active part in the joy that he found. First, he called out to Jesus for mercy. To at least some extent, he knew Jesus to be One to possess something good of which the Master had repeatedly bestowed upon others as word about Him spread. This should likewise give you hope even if you have never experienced the stupefying miraculous, meaning that if you desire something from God, such as a true joy and zeal for Him in this life, then you most certainly should ask Him for it. You should pray for it; humbly and patiently pray. Daily prayer itself and time in God’s word are fundamental contributors to Christian joy because those efforts sow to the Spirit so that you may reap of the Spirit. The one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And from that same Holy Spirit are the truly good and desirous fruit of love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. So, if prayer and time in God’s Word are missing from your daily routine, then the likelihood that joy in the Lord is, too. There is indeed a direct correlation.
There are many tools, even small adjustments that you can make to begin to make a difference in your outlook long-term. If you take just minutes out of your day and use something like one of the orders of daily prayer, you will see that it doesn’t take all day like in the way of the monk or nun to yield daily spiritual fruit in your life. That wholesale abandonment of the life God gives you is not required of you in order to gain joy that you may seek. Incorporate this (Daily Prayer for Individuals and Families) whether you live alone or with others and in due time you will notice a difference, you will see the hunger that your own spirit has for that of the living God, because this (Daily Prayer) is about Him and it is time well spent with Him.
But so as to remind you that this effort and outcome is not merely done by your works, we return to the village on the border between Samaria and Galilee with Jesus and the joy-filled, healed, saved man. The true joy for the healed leper came not simply because he had received a sign that would do him no good on the day of his eventual death, for the healing of his leprosy alone would not keep him from the grave or the consequences awaiting thereafter. The true act upon which lasting joy came was not in the miracle but in what began and ended our reading.
As Jesus went to Jerusalem He passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. St. Luke gives us not only geographical and chronological tidbits about our Lord’s activity, but he here reminds us of what was first mentioned in chapter nine that when the time had come for [Jesus] to be received up, … He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem. Remember that this is no trifle note. Remember that this is no trifle journey. Remember that this is no trifle God going about task and victory, for in setting His face toward Jerusalem, this Jesus was set to win your salvation and for it to matter much to you. He was set to show you the fulness that He gives not only in the power of how He creates, but that He also redeems and sanctifies those who are lost; those who are plagued by encroaching death of body and soul, but it is to win you in both body and soul that He dies. Because of Christ you will stand in your flesh on the Last Day and live on in fully-renewed and entirely glorious body and soul in righteousness, innocence, and blessedness forever. This is what your Mighty Healer possesses for you and what you possess now baptized into Him. His grace rescues, it saves because He is your Savior, and so that you can embrace and hear for yourself Your faith has saved you. Not simply because you have faith are you saved, but because you have faith in the Faithful One Who is Mighty to save, and heal, and raise you again from the dead. This is why the healed leper is so joyous, because his effort in obeying the Master’s voice was shown to be wise because of Who it was Who said it.
The same is the foundation for your joy, your happiness, your delight in the Lord. Indeed, put in the hard work and effort to fight for godliness, but do not forget, you cannot forget the why and the Who that it is all built upon. Your effort to gain godly joy and desire in your life will succeed not because the effort is yours, but because of the most certain will of God. Your contrite heart is what He desires and He promises to tend to it. Your prayers are what He desires and He promises to hear and answer them. His word is what He desires to in your heart and on your tongue and there He will bring about fruit by it, because of Who He is. Your joy in Him is what He desires, so believe that He will give it by the daily means to which He calls you. That’s the difference. Christ, being God, being Man, dying and rising again for you, is the difference and He Himself is the cause for all joy, even as you go about laboring to lay ahold of Him more; to love Him more; to enjoy Him more. Good, rich, enjoyable thanksgiving grows out of understanding more and more Who Jesus is, because everything done in faith on that Truth brings reward whether we have yet to feel it or not.
In ✠ Jesus’ Name. Amen.
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