As we look forward toward Advent next week and the arrival of Christ, perhaps it is time to review our thoughts about worship...and why we worship Christ.
It is said by our stereotypes that the English are cultured, that Russians all drink vodka to excess, and the French make the best food. It is said that Japanese are hard workers, Chinese all know martial arts, and Tibetans have wisdom. And our stereotypical views of people apply to people of other times, also.
For example, we think of the ancient Romans as cruel and loving pleasure. We think of the people of the Middle Ages as superstitious. And we think of ourselves, modern Americans as scientific and rational.
Deuteronomy 8:7-18; Psalm 65;2 Corinthians 9:6-15;Luke 17:11-19
But stereotypes from movies are often wrong. After all, those cultured English seem to love to use the f-word in their current movies, the supposedly drunk Russians appear to have a very effective military, And when I was in France, they ruined a perfectly good pizza by cracking an egg over it as it came from the oven. My hard-working Japanese co-workers at one company spent the evenings at work... simply chatting among themselves, many of our Chinese friends were indeed great at martial arts – as long as they were playing video games, and a Tibetan girl that we once knew was one of the most foolish persons we’d ever met. Stereotypes are just that: stereotypes.
And so it is with the stereotypes of people from different times. People don’t always fit the stereotype of their time. Rome produced some of the greatest Christian philosophers. The eleventh century, smack in the Middle Ages, produced Thomas Aquinas, who wrote a four volume work which answered rationally 4000 questions of theology. And today, in modern America, we have plenty of people who believe that crystals and pyramids contain special powers. Not exactly the rational scientific engineers we like to think we are.
Yes, we seem to have divided ourselves into rational people and mystical people, and we do not believe that these should ever exist together.
Have you noticed that some people are rational and scientific, are stable and in control, do not let go unless they’re drunk or high or angry? They calculate carefully before they buy anything, and if left to themselves, would have nothing but useful things in their lives? I have friends like this, who research their next car or pickup for a year before they buy, who have nothing on their walls except a calendar and a mirror, and a pegboard of tools, who keep a calculator open on their computers, and who think long and hard before committing to anything new. They don’t have pets – they have guard dogs or hunting dogs or barn cats. Everything is useful or a waste of time or money.
And other people, their emotions and mystical ideas appear to guide them through their lives. They couldn’t and wouldn’t solve an equation if their life depended upon it. They buy things because “they’re pretty”. They are always listening to music, Their homes are filled with pretty things. They hug! These people took an hour to buy their last car – spending fifty of those sixty minutes deciding on the color – and if left to themselves, they would dance. Simply dance. And they own pets that are fluffy and have ribbons in their fur.
And we like to stay in our group. Rationalists over here, mystical emotionalists over there. Think or feel – you can’t do both. Listen to the lecture – or dance. Mind or body. Logic or emotion. One or the other. Stay in control or let go!
In ancient Rome, there were two philosophies that reflected this. There were the Stoics, who clamped down on emotion and stuck to logic – think Mr. Spock from Star Trek or the early Jethro Gibbs from NCIS. They were logical, rational. There were also the Epicureans, who focused upon living life for the pleasure it gave you. We still have those groups today, only the names have been changed. Studious or partiers. That’s the way we name these groups today. But keep them apart. Don’t blend them together. If you are rational, you can't be emotional. If you are emotional, you can't be logical.
Have you noticed that some people are rational and scientific, are stable and in control, do not let go unless they’re drunk or high or angry? They calculate carefully before they buy anything, and if left to themselves, would have nothing but useful things in their lives? I have friends like this, who research their next car or pickup for a year before they buy, who have nothing on their walls except a calendar and a mirror, and a pegboard of tools, who keep a calculator open on their computers, and who think long and hard before committing to anything new. They don’t have pets – they have guard dogs or hunting dogs or barn cats. Everything is useful or a waste of time or money.
And other people, their emotions and mystical ideas appear to guide them through their lives. They couldn’t and wouldn’t solve an equation if their life depended upon it. They buy things because “they’re pretty”. They are always listening to music, Their homes are filled with pretty things. They hug! These people took an hour to buy their last car – spending fifty of those sixty minutes deciding on the color – and if left to themselves, they would dance. Simply dance. And they own pets that are fluffy and have ribbons in their fur.
And we like to stay in our group. Rationalists over here, mystical emotionalists over there. Think or feel – you can’t do both. Listen to the lecture – or dance. Mind or body. Logic or emotion. One or the other. Stay in control or let go!
In ancient Rome, there were two philosophies that reflected this. There were the Stoics, who clamped down on emotion and stuck to logic – think Mr. Spock from Star Trek or the early Jethro Gibbs from NCIS. They were logical, rational. There were also the Epicureans, who focused upon living life for the pleasure it gave you. We still have those groups today, only the names have been changed. Studious or partiers. That’s the way we name these groups today. But keep them apart. Don’t blend them together. If you are rational, you can't be emotional. If you are emotional, you can't be logical.
And so, in modern America, we are rather weak in our understanding of worship, for true worship begins with the rational understanding of what is important in life, and then moves to "letting go" in an absolute devotion and commitment to the One who is worshiped!
The rationalists among us are cynical, always believing that "letting go" is somehow giving in to evil.
And those who are mystical among us, those who can be swayed by beauty and emotion and "let go" often let go without much thought, being caught up by the emotional appeal of religious fads, of supernatural interest in zombies, vampires, and witchcraft.
And so the rationalists reject mysticism of all sorts, for in it they see the potential for the devil. And the mystics reject too much rationalism, for it limits their ability to follow their emotions. Two types of people. Keep them apart, we think - and feel.
But the true worship of God means combining the mind, the body, and the spirit, for we were created with those three parts just as God is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
And so we need to have our rational mind which understands something about God. We need to have our emotional body, which reacts with joy to the actions of God and lets go. And we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit, which gives us the life to react to God because the Spirit is God.
And so, at this time of the year, it is wise to rationally look at what Christianity is all about before we move into the more emotional time of Advent and Christmas.
There are many people in this world who claim that Christianity is a system of morals and ethics, a listing of do’s and don’ts which each person must choose to accept or reject. It is said that our system of morals is outdated, that it doesn’t account for modern inventions such as birth control, self-supporting women, and the ability to help people die without pain. It is said that Christianity is all about securing the power of older white men, the Europeans, those who dominate others.
To this I have two responses:
First, if Christianity is about supporting Europeans, why then is this religion most vibrant in America in the black church, and strongest in the world in the wildly growing non-European churches of Africa, Brazil, India, and China? If Christianity is all about keeping women under control and men in power, then why does almost every church have more women than men? If Christianity is outdated, then why is this outdated religion growing around the world at the same time that modern ideas on almost everything are spreading?
But the second response I have is more fundamental. You see...at its heart, Christianity is not a system of morals and ethics like most people claim. Christianity’s morals and ethics are important…but unlike most moral and ethical systems, the moral and ethical teachings of Christianity are secondary.
At its heart, Christianity is much more important than being a system of morals and ethics. Christianity is nothing less than a worldview, an explanation of the way the world and the Universe and absolutely everything operates. It is the explanation of Truth with a capital T, how you and I came to be created, why we are alive, how the Universe functions around us, and what happens when we die. Instead of dealing with petty questions of whether or not it is right or wrong to drink a beer on a Friday night, whether it is right or wrong to kiss someone before marriage, whether it is right or wrong to test new medicines on bunny rabbits – Christianity deals with the most important questions we each have to answer: Where did I come from? Why am I alive? What is my purpose? What happens when I die?
It is only after answering these questions that Christianity gets down the question of answering “What is right and what is wrong?”, the question of morals and ethics.
And here are those basic, important questions answered:
Where did I come from?
God, whose personal name, YAHWEH means “I am that I am” is the ability to create, creation itself, the personality that creates all things. It is meaningless to ask the question “what created God” because YAHWEH’s name tells us “I am that I am”, self-creation, the beginning of everything. In a very real sense, the beginning created the beginning.
God created all things, the Universe, the stars, the planets, the things on the planets, and life. God may have taken just six literal days to create all things or those days may have been periods of millions of years, we don’t truly know, but God began the creation. Sometimes God creates in a blink of an eye and sometimes God creates by simply starting something in motion and letting it grow, like the Church which God started with Jesus Christ and twelve students, but 2000 years later is now composed of over a billion people.
God is all powerful and all knowing, but sometimes God limits His own power, as when He gave us the free will to choose obedience to God’s will or not, for God knows that while God’s will is best for us, making us robots forced to do as God wills is evil – and so we are left to choose good or evil, to choose to praise God or to forget God, to worship God or curse God or even ignore God.
But God made this Universe and then began the human race. It is God’s ballpark, God’s rules, God owns the teams, God owns the equipment, God controls the lighting and God controls the weather. And so, in this game, you can choose to pretend that God doesn’t exist – but the game is still played by God’s rules. It is better to understand those rules.
Why am I alive?
Simply put, God wants other creatures to enjoy life, both in this limited life and in the life to come. Ask yourself, in a world which allows you to choose to have children or not, what are the good reasons to have children? Perhaps almost all of those good reasons apply to why God has put you alive in this world.
What is my purpose?
God tells us that our purpose in this life is to praise Him and bring others back to know God’s love. How you do that is personal, between you and the Holy Spirit of God, found out through two-way prayer, through searching Scripture, and by groping toward God yourself, learning more and more about God’s will for you, personally. Your purpose is found when you turn from the distractions of this world to face God directly, turning your focus away from your job, your bills, your home and other stuff to look directly at God and spend time, quality time, considerable time asking God what God wants you to do and listening to God without making excuses. It is then that you will find your purpose.
What happens when I die?
It is here that our faith meets the road, for despite the best work of scientists, science has little to say about what happens to the soul after death. God has put a one-way door there, giving us no hard scientific evidence of what happens after death to the soul. The only evidence we have of what happens after death comes in his black hood with his sickle and cuts us down is the testimony of Scripture and what the Holy Spirit whispers to us in the night. Science has nothing to say.
For it is as though God says, “Beam that one up, Scotty”, and we are gone, vanished from this life forever. The door is opened and slammed shut before anyone can peek in to see the other room.
Sometimes, this happens suddenly, without warning. One moment we are driving along in our car, a deer jumps out in front of us, we hit a patch of ice, or a water truck slams into our car and we are gone. Perhaps our heart stops and we fall unconscious, or a blood clot moves to the brain, or a vessel bursts and we fall unconscious, and the door opens and slams closed again.
Other times, we are given days or weeks, or months of warning. The doctor tells us that our body is malfunctioning, and, like a car with an engine damaged by running it with too little oil, it is only a matter of time until it gives up and the door opens and closes, perhaps gently one night as the morphine drip provided by the hospice nurse overcomes the struggle of breathing, and the soul is carefully walked through the door which closes behind it.
But one thing is certain. Christians believe that unless Jesus returns sooner, we will all travel through that door into the next life, and the door will close behind us. And so, for many people, this is the true core of Christian teaching. This is the core of Christianity that makes it more than just a teaching about morals and ethics. This is the center of our faith. When all is said and done, I would gladly not know anything about Christianity except this core, central teaching. And that core teaching is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Good News.
And what is that Good News?
That two thousand years ago, God decided that we had become more focused upon morals and ethics than upon God and so God sent part of Himself to become human, the man Jesus, who was the Messiah of Israel, the Christ who was the savior of all humans, to teach us what God wanted for three years of glorious ministry.
During this time, Jesus the Christ taught us through words and deeds what it means to be a good person, what it means to love God, and also claimed that He was God himself walking upon the earth. Eventually, Jesus was executed for this claim of being God on a Friday afternoon as Passover approached in the springtime around the year 32 or 33 AD. And many people witnessed his execution on the cross that afternoon.
The Good News is that on that Sunday morning, Jesus walked out of the sealed tomb, with a 2000 pound stone being rolled away, defeating death, opening the door and coming back through it from the other side, announcing to his followers and directly to over five hundred people that He holds the key to the locked door of death, of life and death itself!
And He told us that those who choose to follow Jesus, to bow down before Him as their rightful king, their ruler, their God, will also be granted eternal life, restored one day from death into life again. This is the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ, the King over all Kings! Will you bow before Him as the One worthy to lead us?
And yet, we humans are rude, skeptical, and proud. Even those who met Jesus and were blessed by Him were rude to Him.
One day, while Jesus was teaching His students, before his execution, they came upon a group of ten lepers, both Jewish and Samaritan men who suffered from terrible, incurable skin diseases. Their rejection by society had brought them together, men who would normally not have associated with each other. But the rules of the time said that these men were never to be touched by anyone, that they could never enter the city, that they could never come to the Temple to get right with God, that they were doomed, lost people who would soon die and have lost souls because they could not get right with God. Until a priest pronounced them clean, they were rejected from society.
Today, don’t we have lepers around, people we are afraid to touch, to talk to, people we would discourage from coming to church? Oh, none of us probably know anyone with Hansen’s Disease, the single disease we call leprosy today, a disease that destroys the flesh and gives the survivors tremendous scars, a disease that can be treated only through months and months of antibiotic treatments and sometimes surgery.
But as we walked through the malls and department stores and the parking lots this week, we saw people we didn’t want to be around, people we mentally labeled as “dangerous”, “a bit crazy”, “a drug user”, or “dirty”. Our food pantry gave away many meals this week to people – few are here with us today. We still toss our alms to the beggars, but we don’t bring them home, we don’t touch them, we don’t hug them, we don’t bring them here to get right with God.
I have a friend whom we knew in another state. She let her child play with some friends, the Riccio’s. One day, her three- or four-year-old son began a new behavior of which she didn’t approve and she complained, “It’s the Riccio kids!” Don’t we all complain about our Riccio kids, the folks that lead us and our families astray? But do we ever reach out and bring the Riccio kids home with us, teach them, bring them to church? Don’t we treat the Riccio kids like lepers?
That day, Jesus healed the ten lepers with a word. Notice that Jesus didn’t pick and choose. He healed each one, every single one. He didn’t leave any behind, not one, not one soul. He simply spoke to them and told them to go and show themselves to the priest at the Temple, who could legally announce they were healed and no longer banned from human touch, from the city, from contact with the Holy God they needed for their souls.
And we can do the same. Sometimes, a simple word is all that is needed for the healing to begin. “How can I help you?” is a good start. “Can I give you a ride?” “What cute children!” “We have a dinner at 5:30 on Wednesdays, come as my guest.” “You’d be soooo welcome at our church on Sunday morning. Can I give you a ride?” or simply, “Tell me what’s wrong.” And we can learn to talk to everyone, not leaving anyone behind, not one, not one soul.
Notice that Jesus didn’t do everything for the men. Jesus did what was needed. He healed them with a word…we can start the healing with our words.
Then, Jesus referred them to where they could get help for the next stage. It’s important to remember that they needed a priest to pronounce them clean.
Perhaps you’ll remember that Peter wrote that we are all priests of God. "Members of a holy priesthood", Peter called baptized Christians.
And so, each of us has the power to pronounce our modern day lepers as clean. When you bring someone to church and introduce them as your friend, you are pronouncing them as clean. You are bringing them into the community again. You hold that tremendous power – and when someone brings someone strange into our community, remember that your friend is a priest, has looked at this stranger and pronounced them clean.
It is an awesome power, the power to pronounce someone clean. It is ultimately the power over their eternal soul, the ability to bring them in front of Christ and the Holy God and allow them to choose to follow Christ into eternity.
And don’t think of this power as being limited just to bringing people into church. For when you make friends with someone, when you pronounce they are clean enough to associate with, you are pronouncing the words that heal this new friend. For the most terrible injuries that people endure are the injuries inflicted by other people’s words and deeds, those words and deeds of exclusion. Your words and deeds can heal those wounds. “I care.” “Jesus helped me.” “You are important.” Can you imagine the good you can do just by talking to people?
One of the lepers, a Samaritan man, saw that he was healed and came back to bow down at Jesus’ feet, praising Jesus, who was clearly Jewish. This was remarkable in itself, that a Samaritan praised a Jew, but Jesus focused upon the missing men. Only that one man, that Samaritan, had come back to thank Jesus. Where were the others who rudely did not show their gratitude?
And where are we?
For we were all once lepers, frightening to be around. Ask the older men and women you know – what were you like as a young child? What bad paths did you once walk? Where you one of the Riccio kids?
Someone healed us. Someone spoke a word and we became clean. Someone told us that we would be welcome, and our process of healing began.
But have you bowed down in front of Jesus?
Have you accepted the Good News, the Gospel of Jesus Christ?
When you look at Jesus, do you see a kindly man, a friendly face, a smiling thirty-something bearded man in a robe?
Or do you see Him as He is today and shall be when He returns - as our King?
In Revelation 19, Jesus is described as a rider on a white horse. Hear what the Apostle John saw:
I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. “He will rule them with an iron scepter.” He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written:
KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS
This is your King, oh Christian! This is the One who will return at the end of time to conquer. This is the one we are to follow and praise and worship. He is God, He created all things and He will end all things. Our eternal destiny is forever bound up in Him.
And so, when you look around at the malls, the department stores, the Walmart parking lots this year, when you see a Christmas tree, when you walk into work and people are gossiping and playing office politics, when someone you love is dying, when someone is rejecting Christ because of Christian ethics and morals, when you yourself are dying….Remember this:
In the end, all that matters is that God is faithful and true, that God never lies, and that God has promised that all who trust and follow Jesus will live eternally with Him in New Jerusalem, a place of joy and peace.
For Christ the King shall reign for ever and ever!
The rationalists among us are cynical, always believing that "letting go" is somehow giving in to evil.
And those who are mystical among us, those who can be swayed by beauty and emotion and "let go" often let go without much thought, being caught up by the emotional appeal of religious fads, of supernatural interest in zombies, vampires, and witchcraft.
And so the rationalists reject mysticism of all sorts, for in it they see the potential for the devil. And the mystics reject too much rationalism, for it limits their ability to follow their emotions. Two types of people. Keep them apart, we think - and feel.
But the true worship of God means combining the mind, the body, and the spirit, for we were created with those three parts just as God is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
And so we need to have our rational mind which understands something about God. We need to have our emotional body, which reacts with joy to the actions of God and lets go. And we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit, which gives us the life to react to God because the Spirit is God.
And so, at this time of the year, it is wise to rationally look at what Christianity is all about before we move into the more emotional time of Advent and Christmas.
There are many people in this world who claim that Christianity is a system of morals and ethics, a listing of do’s and don’ts which each person must choose to accept or reject. It is said that our system of morals is outdated, that it doesn’t account for modern inventions such as birth control, self-supporting women, and the ability to help people die without pain. It is said that Christianity is all about securing the power of older white men, the Europeans, those who dominate others.
To this I have two responses:
First, if Christianity is about supporting Europeans, why then is this religion most vibrant in America in the black church, and strongest in the world in the wildly growing non-European churches of Africa, Brazil, India, and China? If Christianity is all about keeping women under control and men in power, then why does almost every church have more women than men? If Christianity is outdated, then why is this outdated religion growing around the world at the same time that modern ideas on almost everything are spreading?
But the second response I have is more fundamental. You see...at its heart, Christianity is not a system of morals and ethics like most people claim. Christianity’s morals and ethics are important…but unlike most moral and ethical systems, the moral and ethical teachings of Christianity are secondary.
At its heart, Christianity is much more important than being a system of morals and ethics. Christianity is nothing less than a worldview, an explanation of the way the world and the Universe and absolutely everything operates. It is the explanation of Truth with a capital T, how you and I came to be created, why we are alive, how the Universe functions around us, and what happens when we die. Instead of dealing with petty questions of whether or not it is right or wrong to drink a beer on a Friday night, whether it is right or wrong to kiss someone before marriage, whether it is right or wrong to test new medicines on bunny rabbits – Christianity deals with the most important questions we each have to answer: Where did I come from? Why am I alive? What is my purpose? What happens when I die?
It is only after answering these questions that Christianity gets down the question of answering “What is right and what is wrong?”, the question of morals and ethics.
And here are those basic, important questions answered:
Where did I come from?
God, whose personal name, YAHWEH means “I am that I am” is the ability to create, creation itself, the personality that creates all things. It is meaningless to ask the question “what created God” because YAHWEH’s name tells us “I am that I am”, self-creation, the beginning of everything. In a very real sense, the beginning created the beginning.
God created all things, the Universe, the stars, the planets, the things on the planets, and life. God may have taken just six literal days to create all things or those days may have been periods of millions of years, we don’t truly know, but God began the creation. Sometimes God creates in a blink of an eye and sometimes God creates by simply starting something in motion and letting it grow, like the Church which God started with Jesus Christ and twelve students, but 2000 years later is now composed of over a billion people.
God is all powerful and all knowing, but sometimes God limits His own power, as when He gave us the free will to choose obedience to God’s will or not, for God knows that while God’s will is best for us, making us robots forced to do as God wills is evil – and so we are left to choose good or evil, to choose to praise God or to forget God, to worship God or curse God or even ignore God.
But God made this Universe and then began the human race. It is God’s ballpark, God’s rules, God owns the teams, God owns the equipment, God controls the lighting and God controls the weather. And so, in this game, you can choose to pretend that God doesn’t exist – but the game is still played by God’s rules. It is better to understand those rules.
Why am I alive?
Simply put, God wants other creatures to enjoy life, both in this limited life and in the life to come. Ask yourself, in a world which allows you to choose to have children or not, what are the good reasons to have children? Perhaps almost all of those good reasons apply to why God has put you alive in this world.
What is my purpose?
God tells us that our purpose in this life is to praise Him and bring others back to know God’s love. How you do that is personal, between you and the Holy Spirit of God, found out through two-way prayer, through searching Scripture, and by groping toward God yourself, learning more and more about God’s will for you, personally. Your purpose is found when you turn from the distractions of this world to face God directly, turning your focus away from your job, your bills, your home and other stuff to look directly at God and spend time, quality time, considerable time asking God what God wants you to do and listening to God without making excuses. It is then that you will find your purpose.
What happens when I die?
It is here that our faith meets the road, for despite the best work of scientists, science has little to say about what happens to the soul after death. God has put a one-way door there, giving us no hard scientific evidence of what happens after death to the soul. The only evidence we have of what happens after death comes in his black hood with his sickle and cuts us down is the testimony of Scripture and what the Holy Spirit whispers to us in the night. Science has nothing to say.
For it is as though God says, “Beam that one up, Scotty”, and we are gone, vanished from this life forever. The door is opened and slammed shut before anyone can peek in to see the other room.
Sometimes, this happens suddenly, without warning. One moment we are driving along in our car, a deer jumps out in front of us, we hit a patch of ice, or a water truck slams into our car and we are gone. Perhaps our heart stops and we fall unconscious, or a blood clot moves to the brain, or a vessel bursts and we fall unconscious, and the door opens and slams closed again.
Other times, we are given days or weeks, or months of warning. The doctor tells us that our body is malfunctioning, and, like a car with an engine damaged by running it with too little oil, it is only a matter of time until it gives up and the door opens and closes, perhaps gently one night as the morphine drip provided by the hospice nurse overcomes the struggle of breathing, and the soul is carefully walked through the door which closes behind it.
But one thing is certain. Christians believe that unless Jesus returns sooner, we will all travel through that door into the next life, and the door will close behind us. And so, for many people, this is the true core of Christian teaching. This is the core of Christianity that makes it more than just a teaching about morals and ethics. This is the center of our faith. When all is said and done, I would gladly not know anything about Christianity except this core, central teaching. And that core teaching is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Good News.
And what is that Good News?
That two thousand years ago, God decided that we had become more focused upon morals and ethics than upon God and so God sent part of Himself to become human, the man Jesus, who was the Messiah of Israel, the Christ who was the savior of all humans, to teach us what God wanted for three years of glorious ministry.
During this time, Jesus the Christ taught us through words and deeds what it means to be a good person, what it means to love God, and also claimed that He was God himself walking upon the earth. Eventually, Jesus was executed for this claim of being God on a Friday afternoon as Passover approached in the springtime around the year 32 or 33 AD. And many people witnessed his execution on the cross that afternoon.
The Good News is that on that Sunday morning, Jesus walked out of the sealed tomb, with a 2000 pound stone being rolled away, defeating death, opening the door and coming back through it from the other side, announcing to his followers and directly to over five hundred people that He holds the key to the locked door of death, of life and death itself!
And He told us that those who choose to follow Jesus, to bow down before Him as their rightful king, their ruler, their God, will also be granted eternal life, restored one day from death into life again. This is the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ, the King over all Kings! Will you bow before Him as the One worthy to lead us?
And yet, we humans are rude, skeptical, and proud. Even those who met Jesus and were blessed by Him were rude to Him.
One day, while Jesus was teaching His students, before his execution, they came upon a group of ten lepers, both Jewish and Samaritan men who suffered from terrible, incurable skin diseases. Their rejection by society had brought them together, men who would normally not have associated with each other. But the rules of the time said that these men were never to be touched by anyone, that they could never enter the city, that they could never come to the Temple to get right with God, that they were doomed, lost people who would soon die and have lost souls because they could not get right with God. Until a priest pronounced them clean, they were rejected from society.
Today, don’t we have lepers around, people we are afraid to touch, to talk to, people we would discourage from coming to church? Oh, none of us probably know anyone with Hansen’s Disease, the single disease we call leprosy today, a disease that destroys the flesh and gives the survivors tremendous scars, a disease that can be treated only through months and months of antibiotic treatments and sometimes surgery.
But as we walked through the malls and department stores and the parking lots this week, we saw people we didn’t want to be around, people we mentally labeled as “dangerous”, “a bit crazy”, “a drug user”, or “dirty”. Our food pantry gave away many meals this week to people – few are here with us today. We still toss our alms to the beggars, but we don’t bring them home, we don’t touch them, we don’t hug them, we don’t bring them here to get right with God.
I have a friend whom we knew in another state. She let her child play with some friends, the Riccio’s. One day, her three- or four-year-old son began a new behavior of which she didn’t approve and she complained, “It’s the Riccio kids!” Don’t we all complain about our Riccio kids, the folks that lead us and our families astray? But do we ever reach out and bring the Riccio kids home with us, teach them, bring them to church? Don’t we treat the Riccio kids like lepers?
That day, Jesus healed the ten lepers with a word. Notice that Jesus didn’t pick and choose. He healed each one, every single one. He didn’t leave any behind, not one, not one soul. He simply spoke to them and told them to go and show themselves to the priest at the Temple, who could legally announce they were healed and no longer banned from human touch, from the city, from contact with the Holy God they needed for their souls.
And we can do the same. Sometimes, a simple word is all that is needed for the healing to begin. “How can I help you?” is a good start. “Can I give you a ride?” “What cute children!” “We have a dinner at 5:30 on Wednesdays, come as my guest.” “You’d be soooo welcome at our church on Sunday morning. Can I give you a ride?” or simply, “Tell me what’s wrong.” And we can learn to talk to everyone, not leaving anyone behind, not one, not one soul.
Notice that Jesus didn’t do everything for the men. Jesus did what was needed. He healed them with a word…we can start the healing with our words.
Then, Jesus referred them to where they could get help for the next stage. It’s important to remember that they needed a priest to pronounce them clean.
Perhaps you’ll remember that Peter wrote that we are all priests of God. "Members of a holy priesthood", Peter called baptized Christians.
And so, each of us has the power to pronounce our modern day lepers as clean. When you bring someone to church and introduce them as your friend, you are pronouncing them as clean. You are bringing them into the community again. You hold that tremendous power – and when someone brings someone strange into our community, remember that your friend is a priest, has looked at this stranger and pronounced them clean.
It is an awesome power, the power to pronounce someone clean. It is ultimately the power over their eternal soul, the ability to bring them in front of Christ and the Holy God and allow them to choose to follow Christ into eternity.
And don’t think of this power as being limited just to bringing people into church. For when you make friends with someone, when you pronounce they are clean enough to associate with, you are pronouncing the words that heal this new friend. For the most terrible injuries that people endure are the injuries inflicted by other people’s words and deeds, those words and deeds of exclusion. Your words and deeds can heal those wounds. “I care.” “Jesus helped me.” “You are important.” Can you imagine the good you can do just by talking to people?
One of the lepers, a Samaritan man, saw that he was healed and came back to bow down at Jesus’ feet, praising Jesus, who was clearly Jewish. This was remarkable in itself, that a Samaritan praised a Jew, but Jesus focused upon the missing men. Only that one man, that Samaritan, had come back to thank Jesus. Where were the others who rudely did not show their gratitude?
And where are we?
For we were all once lepers, frightening to be around. Ask the older men and women you know – what were you like as a young child? What bad paths did you once walk? Where you one of the Riccio kids?
Someone healed us. Someone spoke a word and we became clean. Someone told us that we would be welcome, and our process of healing began.
But have you bowed down in front of Jesus?
Have you accepted the Good News, the Gospel of Jesus Christ?
When you look at Jesus, do you see a kindly man, a friendly face, a smiling thirty-something bearded man in a robe?
Or do you see Him as He is today and shall be when He returns - as our King?
In Revelation 19, Jesus is described as a rider on a white horse. Hear what the Apostle John saw:
I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. “He will rule them with an iron scepter.” He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written:
KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS
This is your King, oh Christian! This is the One who will return at the end of time to conquer. This is the one we are to follow and praise and worship. He is God, He created all things and He will end all things. Our eternal destiny is forever bound up in Him.
And so, when you look around at the malls, the department stores, the Walmart parking lots this year, when you see a Christmas tree, when you walk into work and people are gossiping and playing office politics, when someone you love is dying, when someone is rejecting Christ because of Christian ethics and morals, when you yourself are dying….Remember this:
In the end, all that matters is that God is faithful and true, that God never lies, and that God has promised that all who trust and follow Jesus will live eternally with Him in New Jerusalem, a place of joy and peace.
For Christ the King shall reign for ever and ever!
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