'The Grateful Leper'
Bible
Robert Tulip
1. Our Gospel story today tells of the miraculous
healing by Jesus Christ of ten lepers in a village near
2. This story has lessons for how we should help
people at the margins of our society today. It is also interesting for the
light it sheds on the person of Jesus Christ and the meaning of faith. In this
sermon I will first make some comments about Christology and faith, then draw
out some contemporary social implications.
3. As the Son of God, Jesus Christ had a wholeness and
integrity of personality, which gave him miraculous powers. By focusing the
energy of the spirit of God through his complete purity of soul, Jesus was able
to perform deeds, which are inconceivable for ordinary people. The source of
Jesus' power was his unwavering focus on divine truth and love, always putting
the eternal values of God before any selfish desires. He accomplished the holy
path more fully than any other person before or since, which is why we
celebrate and glorify his name as Lord, Saviour and Messiah.
4. Since observing the wonderful works of Jesus, the
church has grappled to understand him and the miraculous intervention of the
eternal creator God he represents in our fallen world. The early Christian
community came up with the formula of the holy trinity to explain the immensity
of what they had seen in Christ. The theology of the trinity explains how God
the Father, the eternal and infinite creator and source of all that is, became
incarnate on our planet in God the Son, Jesus Christ, our redeemer, the pioneer
and perfecter of our faith, the divine man who brought together God and
humanity in his person. The energy of the Father is revealed in the Son,
providing ultimate meaning and purpose for our lives. This divine energy
continues to reverberate in our world through the Holy Spirit.
5. As you may know, I am a strong believer in science,
and I reject literal interpretations of Biblical stories, which have been
disproved by science. However, my assessment is that the logical scheme of the
trinity is entirely valid as a way of understanding reality, and that many
miracles of Christ remain credible and cannot be disproved. Jesus was such a
unique character that he was able to harness cosmic forces that are beyond our
knowledge. The healing miracles, such as our story today, and other miracles
such as walking on water, rising from the dead and changing water to wine at
the wedding at
6. God is truth, so when science discovers truth, such
as in the story of evolution, we should look there for an understanding of God,
rather than dogmatically holding to old interpretations from pre-scientific
days. Similarly, science tells us a decomposed body cannot recompose, so the
story of the resurrection of the saints at the last trumpet cannot mean dead
bodies emerging from their graves. If anything, it must refer to a spiritual
return, as Jesus told the Sadducees in Luke 20:38. Along these scientific lines
I would argue the meaning of the virgin birth of Christ must be metaphor rather
than literal fact, as a man cannot be fully human without a Y chromosome from
his father.
7. A problem with scientific readings of the bible is
that the skeptics tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater by rejecting
the divinity of Christ. Their argument is that the Bible stories of creation,
the flood and the virgin birth are wrong, so everything should be subject to
radical doubt. However, you cannot use the fact that the geological record has
disproved the six day creation story of Genesis to disprove the miracles and
the resurrection of Christ. The skeptics often follow an empirical dogmatism of
their own, invalidly using science to suggest that Jesus is not the Son of God.
What could it mean, they ask, where the Letter to the Hebrews says God has
spoken to us by a Son whom he appointed the heir of all things, upholding the
universe by his word of power? What could Paul mean in his letter to the
Colossians where he says Christ is the image of the invisible God through whom
God is reconciling all things?
8. I believe the challenge for the churches is to
develop a coherent theology, firmly grounded in Trinitarian understanding of
the cosmic place of Christ and fully compatible with modern scientific
knowledge. The problem with science, as I see it, is not in science itself, but
in the link to a shallow and amoral secular humanism that lacks a spiritual
dimension and is unable to explain how our lives can find a meaning in the
immensity of our universe. Against secularity, I suggest we should be actively
looking for ways to glorify God, to see how our lives can find a connection to
God. The question should be how we as human beings can relate to the immense
unknown. Christianity tells us the answer to this question is found in the
message of the person who best confronted the human situation with impeccable
intent, Jesus Christ. Modern atheists, in dogmatically rejecting the story of
Christ, remind me of the nine ungrateful lepers who lacked the sensitivity to
see what a stupendous work had been done for them by the grace of God.
9. My purpose in the discussion so far has been to
explore the Christological foundations that enabled Jesus to perform his
miracles such as healing the lepers. I would now like to illustrate these
theological ideas by drawing an analogy between life on earth and a huge river.
In this river, we can imagine Christ at the centre of the stream where the
current is strongest. As we draw closer to Christ we start to see the big
picture of the whole river. Travelling with Christ, we see the immensity and
direction of God, with Christ the way the truth and the life, just as the
centre of the current is the heart of the river. The vitality and purpose of
human life become apparent when we live with Christ, buoyed along on the
current of the river of God. As we draw away from Christ we lose the whole
perspective of God and become prey to temptation and falsehood. A river has
eddies, where the current flows backwards, billabongs where the living water
stands still, great chasms where tumbling water crashes on hard rocks, and a
mouth where it dissolves in the ocean. With Christ our pilot, our challenge is
to navigate the shoals, keeping to the centre of the current and avoiding drift
onto the rocks. With due respect to other religions, all can benefit from an
honest dialogue with Christianity, because the story of Jesus is the central
story of our world, its problems and their solution.
10. Continuing the analogy of the river of life, we
could say the crucifixion of Christ is like a big dam across the river, an
effort to kill the natural flow by imagining that human ways are superior to
the way of God. The crucifixion is a symbol of the pathology of sin in our
world. Looking at the river of life, we can see the lack of flow in the
problems of sin. Like a big dam, sin reduces the mighty natural power of the
river of life to a trickle, diverting the true spirit by ignorant human schemes
that serve the immediate pleasure of the creature rather than the long-term
purpose of the creator. Meanwhile, the lake is rising behind the dam wall. One
day the living water will overwhelm the dam of sin and return our world to
harmony with God through the return of Christ.
11. In Romans 1, Saint Paul described the broad pagan
mentality of the Empire which allowed Jesus to be killed, saying 'they did not
honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their
thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise they
became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images.' The
Romans 'exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the
creature rather than the Creator.' This worldly mentality is similar to the
behaviour of the nine ungrateful lepers who were too self-absorbed to
acknowledge Christ as the source of their healing.
12. The healing of the lepers illustrates the
messianic energy of love and peace that Jesus brought into the world. The
lepers gained access to his curing power through their faith, which opened up
their connection to God, even though they seem to have forgotten about Jesus as
soon as they got what they wanted. In a similar way we today can use faith to
allow healing energy to flow, unblocking the barriers we hide behind. We see
the power of faith in the role of willpower in recovery from illness, where
those who have faith and confidence and vision tend to do better than those who
lack these qualities, other things being equal.
13. Jesus cured the lepers through the holy power of
God. I find this idea of holiness as a healing energy quite intriguing. The old
pictures of the saints with their halos illustrate how a luminous aura is
developed by a life of holiness, an aura that is preserved and strengthened by
purity of soul, and weakened by impurity. We can see luminosity of soul in the
charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit. These gifts of the soul are central to
overcoming the mental and spiritual dimensions of illness and sin, and also the
physical and social dimensions.
14. In thinking about the ungrateful lepers, and why
they behaved as they did, I couldn't help linking their story to the issues of
development and poverty facing our world. Firstly of course, the big message is
the unconditional compassionate love that Jesus has for the afflicted. The
church has a natural solidarity with the oppressed of the world, springing from
its mission of love and the instructions Christ gave for sacrifice and service.
The ultimate goal is complete liberation from all suffering. However, the
question of how we can actually help overcome poverty and oppression is
immensely complex. The indifferent reaction of the nine lepers is worth
exploring to help understand these complexities and the problems of change
today.
15. The challenge of development through overseas aid
is to increase wealth and reduce poverty in a way that people can sustain
without further external help. To illustrate the complexity of aid, I would
like to talk about the well-known saying, 'give people fish and feed them for a
day, teach people to fish and feed them for a lifetime.' If we give food as
charity, we are certainly helping, but we often create dependency, like rural
Aboriginal people on the welfare payments they call sit-down money. The problem
with dependency is that it can destroy motivation and skill and can even create
an abusive spiral towards death. We have to be very careful in devising
policies that will not undermine people's incentives to fix their own problems.
The challenge is to care in a way that liberates rather than suffocates.
16. To illustrate the complexity of development,
consider the impact of teaching people how to fish, as the saying goes. The
trouble is this can still create dependency by ignoring people's own methods
and knowledge, and by failing to address all the systemic issues affecting
their livelihood. In a fishing community the constraints can include finance,
trade, marketing, culture, management, storage, crime, tax, health, literacy,
etc. Teaching people to fish is only a very small part of the story of
achieving sustainable economic development.
17. Results only last when people control their own
lives. This is why Paul told the Romans (5:4) that he rejoices in suffering
because it produces patience, experience and hope. Paul saw that the
development of the church required a clear-eyed understanding of its situation,
honest internal dialogue, and a focus on transforming the world through love
rather than denying problems in some escapist way.
18. The ten lepers would not have expected their
appeal to Jesus to result in a cure. The healing miracle would have been a big
surprise to all of them, and we can well imagine how it must have changed their
lives. All of a sudden they would have to work for a living rather than beg.
They would still face the distrust of those who knew them as lepers. Even after
this help they would still be left in a difficult situation. Like people who
prefer to be in prison or begging on the street because that is the life they
know despite its problems, the lepers could have a real fear of change.
19. Some people we help here at Kippax Uniting Church
face multiple problems and are at risk of falling through the gaps between
government and community programs. It is not just a matter of treating one
problem and expecting all the others to go away. Our Community Care Worker
Bernice Quinn has said the philosophy is to build community by valuing everyone
and caring for the whole person, recognising that people need someone to listen
to them and provide information, advice and advocacy in a non-judgmental and
safe environment. Listening and helping is just a start to enable people to
become self-reliant. Without caring for the whole person we run the risk of
wasting resources on fixing one problem, only to see people fail for another
reason.
20. When Jesus visited that village near
21. A little thank you from the lepers might not have
made much difference to Jesus' morale as he continued his journey to the cross.
But seriously, congratulations are important, in little things as much as in
life-changing circumstances. I have a feeling that the Samaritan leper who came
back to see Jesus again may have been the one of the ten with the most
initiative and drive to really make something of his life. His grateful return
was an act of courage, grace, humility, decency, respect and courtesy. These
are all qualities that can make a big difference in all areas of our lives. The
way we behave in little things is often a pointer to our values, and to our
behaviour when it really matters. The lesson of the thankful leper provides a
model for how we should express our thanks when somebody does something we
appreciate.