Trinity 14 The Sunday of the Ten Lepers September 2, 2018

Trinity 14
Luke 17:11-19
September 2, 2018

“No Drive-Thru Jesus”

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

There was an article a number of years ago in the journal of LOGIA that said people were prone to treat the Church like a vending machine. The Church is just the place you go when you need to get a quick something. Like a vending machine. So put your money into the machine and hit the button for a quick baptism. About twelve years later come back and hit the next button for a confirmation. About ten to twenty years later, come back and hit the button for a wedding. And then somewhere down on the bottom buttons, eventually you know you’re going to hit that last one for a funeral.

Besides a vending machine, another really good illustration of the way we treat church is a drive-thru. We want to treat Jesus like we treat our food—fast and cheap and no commitment. “Yeah, I’ll take a number one, a baptism, but hold the church attendance and all that stuff about teaching my child the Christian faith. I don’t want the extras.” “I’ll take a wedding but I don’t really want any of that stuff about Jesus.” Drive-thru Christianity. Today it’s easy. You can watch Church online and never even have to leave the house. Get your sermons by email. You can go to a big megachurch with thousands of people and no one will ever even know you were there.

Out of the ten lepers that begged Jesus for mercy, nine of them only wanted drive-thru Jesus. Jesus healed all ten of them of leprosy. But for the nine, that was all they wanted from Him. They didn’t even need to go back to Him at all. Not to say thanks. Not for anything. Ever. They got what they wanted from Jesus and they drove away.

Now, of course, they were excited. They couldn’t wait to get back to their lives. To get back to their friends and family. Leprosy was a lonely existence. You couldn’t be around others because it was so contagious. So you might sympathize with the 9 lepers because you know how desperate they were to get back to their lives.

But is anything, and I mean anything, more important or more urgent than Jesus? Jesus tells them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” They start running away. They look down at their skin and realize that the leprosy has disappeared at the Word of Jesus. At that point—right there at that point—is anything more important than Jesus? No, it’s not. At that point anything can wait. Even getting back to your family and friends. Anything can wait to go back to this Jesus that just healed you, to give Him thanks and praise, and to discover just who He is that gave you your life back.

Our leprosy is sin. You can’t see its sores and blisters and rashes all over your skin, but you can see it in your hearts. Just like the lepers, we have cried out to Jesus for mercy. “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” We have asked Jesus to help us. We have asked Him to baptize us and wash our sins away. We have asked Him to hear our confession and forgive our sins. We have asked Him to take away our death and give us eternal life. And Jesus has done all of it. He’s healed you. Completely. Every dirty, disgusting, contagious sin of all your past years up to the very disgusting sins of yesterday—Jesus has taken them all away.

Yet what does He get from us? “Thanks a lot, Jesus. See ya later. I’ve got more important things to tend to now. I’ll come through the drive-thru again later when I need something.”

But there’s one leper out of those ten that shows you and me the better way. There’s one leper that gets it—that nothing is more important than Jesus. And there he is, running back to Jesus and falling on His face at Jesus’ feet, thanking Him for His mercy. There He is saying to you and me that this is no drive-thru Jesus. This is a Jesus that you want to be with all the time. This is a Jesus that you invite home to your dinner table saying, “Come Lord Jesus, be our guest.” This is a Jesus that you walk with every single step of every single day.

What this one leper truly shows us is faith. Jesus says to him, “Your faith has made you well.” And that’s what Jesus wants for each one of you here today. Faith. He doesn’t want you to drive-thru church here again today and get a quick bite that you forget about in an hour. He wants you to go with Him.

Here’s where a bit of the confusion comes in this Gospel reading today. At the very end of the story Jesus tells this one leper, “Rise and go your way.” Well, that’s just two words in Greek. The first one is “rise” because the one leper is down on his knees at Jesus’ feet. The second Greek word is “go”. But the problem comes when you put that into English. Every time I read that story in our English Bible, the way I hear it is that Jesus is telling this one leper to leave. To go away. To go back to His home or whatever the case. So it basically sounds like this: “So good of you to come back here and thank Me and believe in Me, but now I’ll see you later. Have a nice life.”

But that’s a total misinterpretation. Jesus doesn’t tell him to leave. Jesus just tells him to move. What if I said it this way? “Rise and let’s go!” You see the difference. Jesus is telling him to go from the place he was to a new place. His faith in Jesus has now made him well and saved him. He can leave behind the life of leprosy and enter into the life of Jesus.

That’s what faith does. It goes with Jesus. Not away from Him. No, not ever away from Him. Always with Him. Right here today you’ve asked Jesus for mercy. We did the confession of our sins. He has healed you once again. He has forgiven your sins. Right here at this altar He will give you His very body and blood for you to eat and drink for the forgiveness of your sins. You’ll kneel here before Jesus like the one Samaritan leper giving Him thanks for all He has done for you. Now this isn’t a drive-thru. You don’t leave at 11:15 and say, “Thanks Jesus, See ya later.” No, He goes with you. He says, “Rise and let’s go. Your faith has made you well.”

Faith in Jesus is our whole life. It’s our entire worldview. It’s how we see and do and live everything. It’s not like we have our real life over here somewhere—and then we come over to drive-thru Jesus once in a while on a Sunday to get a greasy fix. Faith is an every Sunday, every week, every day, every hour life. Everything we do we do in faith in the Son of God who gave His life for ours.

Now what does that mean for your life? Well, I can’t say it any better than Paul does in the Epistle today, Galatians chapter 5. He tells us to walk with Jesus and we will have the fruit of the Spirit, the fruit of faith, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Those are all the things that the one leper walked away with when He came back to Jesus. And those are all the things you walk away with when you walk with Jesus. Jesus says, “Rise and go your way—with Me. With love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and so forth.” They’re all yours.

So often Paul uses the term walk to describe our life with Jesus. And that’s the perfect word. Because it gives you this picture that every single step you take you take with Jesus and with His Holy Spirit. There’s never a step you go anywhere that you don’t go in faith in Jesus Christ.

He says, “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” Those are things like sexual immorality, idolatry, jealousy, fits of anger, divisions, drunkenness, he says. If you treat Jesus like a drive-thru, then those are the things waiting for you whenever you leave Jesus. The devil is just waiting for you to drive-thru and then once you’re vulnerable again he’ll attack you. If you leave Jesus behind, if you’re not praying, if you’re not reading God’s Word, if you’re not going to Church every Sunday, the devil is well aware and he will hit you like a big, easy target.

But if you walk every step with Jesus, in faith, then you will more and more resist the devil with his temptations and will more and more enjoy the fruits of the Spirit. You and I learn to truly love, to truly find joy in each and every step, to find peace in what God gives us each day, to be patient with others and patient with the Lord, to be kind to one another, to be good and see the goodness of God all around us, to be faithful to one another, to our spouse, to our children, to our brothers and sisters in Christ, to be gentle and not rude or quarrelsome, and to have self-control, which is the much better gift than self-esteem.

What a life Jesus gives us! With Jesus you’re not getting a burger at a drive-thru—you’re getting a new life. What Jesus says to that one leper He says to each and every one of you here today, “Rise and let’s go; your faith has made you well.” Go with Jesus today and every day this week. Walk every step by the Spirit of God—in love and joy and patience and gentleness. See your entire world through the eyes of faith in Jesus. Because He is our world.

In Jesus’ name. Amen.