On the Way

​We hear so many stories of Jesus working miracles that we can almost lose sight of how amazing they are. Yeah, yeah, another blind man given sight. Another lame woman healed. Whatever.
 
But in every miracle story, the life of a real person is transformed. It helps me to try to imagine what that looks like. So, here is my generic picture.
 
Someone stands before Jesus, fearful, but desperate for help. Jesus looks at the hurting person with compassion. They talk briefly. And then it happens. Jesus miraculously heals the person.
 
It takes a minute for the miracle to sink in. Then the person realizes that he has been healed, that her ailment is gone. Onlookers gasp. The healed person gets an ecstatic smile, gives Jesus a big hug, and then dashes off to share the good news with anyone who will listen.
 
Most of the miracles, including the one in our Gospel reading, must go something like that.
 
But in one important way, this morning’s miracle is unusual. This miracle doesn’t happen right away. The blessing takes time to manifest.
 
We just heard the story. Ten lepers beg Jesus to have mercy on them. Jesus replies, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” But the lepers aren’t healed, not yet, not while they are still with Jesus. Luke tells us that it is only “as they went” that “they were made clean.” That means they had to start their journey to Jerusalem before they were cleansed.
 
It’s interesting to speculate on what the lepers said to each other as they first turned away, before the miracle took visible effect. My guess is, some of them were disappointed. But at least one of them must have said to the others, “Let’s do what he says. We have nothing to lose.” And they started on their way to the priests, wondering what would happen next.
 
It’s worth pausing in that interval before the lepers were cleansed.
 
Most of us live most of our lives in that interval, between receiving the command, with its implied promise, and receiving the full blessing. We live most of our lives in hope, but without knowing what’s going to happen to us or even what steps we should take beyond the ones immediately in front of us.
 
No doubt many people are good with that. They are comfortable with uncertainty and enjoy surprises.
 
That is not me. I like to know what to expect at all times.
 
If I had been one of the lepers meeting Jesus in our reading, I would have had questions before I walked anywhere. “What, if anything, are you, Jesus, doing for us? Can we at least see some healing before we get started on the road to Jerusalem? How will the priests respond to us when we get there? What should we do after we see them?”
 
But all the lepers get is the command, “go, show yourselves to the priests, and see what happens along the way.”
 
I suspect that we have all been in loosely similar situations, situations when we have had to take the next step unsure where we were heading and just hoping that God would bless us along the way.
 
The first one from my own life that comes to mind is marriage.
 
When Carrie and I married back in 1992, we made promises to each other, and a priest pronounced God’s blessing over us. It was a great day. But we had no idea what we were getting into.
 
We were a lot like the ten lepers. Carrie and I set out on our life together with great hope, and no sense of where we were heading. We took it one step at a time, doing our best to trust each other and to trust that God was with us on the way. And though we have certainly had our challenges, we have in fact been blessed.
 
Whether or not we are married, all of us have surely experienced analogous situations.
 
The big one is still to come, for me, for all of us gathered this morning. It’s the one every human being goes through. Death.
 
It’s the lepers all over again. We approach the grave with amazing promises of eternal life with God. We get glimpses of that eternal life even now. But dying remains a step into the great unknown. And all we can do, when our time comes, is take that step, trusting in Christ’s promises, trusting that as we go, we will be made clean, trusting that God will forgive and heal and transform us, trusting that God will welcome us into a blessed eternity.
 
What is true for us as individuals is also true for us as Church. The Church as a whole is like our lepers.
 
I think of my experience of ordination. When I first spoke to a priest about entering the discernment process, I had a hard time imagining how I could possibly fulfill the requirements. But doors opened, and one thing led to another, and I got ordained in 2009.
 
When I got ordained, I assumed I would never actually take a Church. My plan was just to help out on occasional Sundays. But almost immediately I found myself in charge of a small parish in Cedartown, Georgia. My first day on the job, I remember walking around the empty sanctuary, feeling woefully unprepared and wondering what I had gotten myself into. I couldn’t imagine leading the parish.
 
But we plugged along, and I took plenty of wrong turns, but at Saint James back then, and now here at Saint David’s, we were also blessed along the way.
 
American Christianity as a whole is in the same boat.
 
Not long ago, Bishop Scruton gave me a book called Being Church in a Liminal Time.[1] The authors argue that we are living through a major transition in how Churches operate, driven largely by the growing secularization and pluralism of the culture in which we live. Things that have worked for us in the past may not work as well in the near future.
 
The authors make three important points about this transition. First, in the next few decades, Churches will operate differently than we do now in some significant ways. Second, nobody has any clear idea of what changes are coming, just that change of some sort is coming. And third, darkness will never overcome the light of Christ (John 1:5); the gates of Hades will never prevail against the Church (Matthew 16:18).
 
That brings us back to the ten lepers yet again. We, the Church, have Christ’s promise to be with us, to guide us, to bless us. But we, as individuals, we here at Saint David’s, we American Christians more generally, are also on a journey to a destination that we can’t yet see. And so we travel along the way, in hope, trusting Christ’s promises, and hopefully receiving Christ’s blessings as they come.
 
One final point. All ten lepers were blessed with miraculous healing. But only one came back to thank Christ, and so only one heard this extra blessing: “Go on your way; your faith has made you well.” That is a blessing we all want to hear!
 
So, we are blessed. As we move forward, we will continue to be blessed in ways we cannot yet anticipate. And always we give thanks to Christ, both for blessings received and for blessings still to come. In Christ’s name. Amen.
 
 


[1] Jeffrey Jones and David Fredrickson, Being Church in a Liminal Time: Remembering, Letting Go, Resurrecting, 2023