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INJ
St Matthew 8:1-13
'Healed'
Matins
The Third Sunday in Epiphany | January 25th, 2009
Dear Saints,
I.
There are two miracles in the text today, the healing of the leper and the healing of the Centurion's servant who was paralyzed. These are very different situations, one a Jewish leper, the other a slave of a Roman military commander; one has leprosy, the other is paralyzed; one Jesus heals by speaking, the other by touch.
While we will consider each individually, both of these men have something in common, and we will use them for an analogy for our own sinful condition. When you have leprosy you loose your sensation, your feeling. A leprous man can put his hand in the fire or cut his finger with a knife and not feel a thing.
The same is true of the paralyzed man. If you are paralyzed you can neither move nor feel those parts of your body that are paralyzed. When I was at the seminary I remember standing in a parking lot, talking with a seminary friend when we heard a bang. We ran up the road and found a man lying under a motorcycle that had crashed into a tree. He was moaning, and as we got up to him, we could see how badly injured he was. We asked, “Are you okay?” and he simply said to us, “I don't know. I can't move. I can't feel anything.” He had broken his neck and was paralyzed.
We called the police, asked if he was baptized (he was), and was prayed and tried to comfort him with the Lord's love while we waited for the ambulance. The man lived, but months later he was getting ready to go home in a wheel chair.
But this is the point, he wasn't in pain, he didn't know how bad he was hurt because he had broken that part in his body that tells you how bad things are. And this is the same way it is with you and your sin. You and I have no idea how bad we are, how offensive our sin is to our holy God.
If a man falls off the roof and breaks his leg, he knows that he is a bad spot and needs help, but if the same man breaks his back with his leg, he has no idea how bad it is. He might say to the next guy passing by, “Give me a hand up, would you?” And so it is with us and our sin, we think we just need a little hand up, a nudge along the way, a push start, and then we'll be well on our way to righteousness.
We've got no idea how deep our sin runs, we lost the capacity to judge the depth of our sin. Our sinfulness “is so deep and horrible a corruption of nature that no reason can understand it, but it must [and can only] be learned from the revelation of Scriptures.” [Luther, Smalcald] This is the point, we are so bad that we don't know how bad we are.
Like the leper or the paralyzed man, we can't sense the depth of our sickness, much less can we begin to heal ourselves. But Jesus knows, He knows how bad we are, what a terrible mess we're in, and still He comes to rescue and deliver us.
II.
To the text. First, for dramatic effect, we consider the paralyzed man. The Centurion, who is a Roman military man, a man with one-hundred soldiers in his command. This man came to Jesus to intercede for his soldier, to beg for his healing. To this prayer Jesus says, “I'll come, let's go.” But this Centurion says, “No,” and the text unfolds this way:
"Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. 9For I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. And I say to one, 'Go,' and he goes, and to another, 'Come,' and he comes, and to my servant, 'Do this,' and he does it." 10When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, "Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith. 11I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, 12while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." 13And to the centurion Jesus said, "Go; let it be done for you as you have believed." And the servant was healed at that very moment.
Jesus heals Him with His promise, with His word. Jesus doesn't even need to go to the house to fix this man's paralysis. This is the authority that Jesus has. He, after all, is the one who spoke and the universe jumped into existence.
This centurion says, “Go” and his soldiers go. Jesus says, “Healed” and the paralyzed man is healed. Jesus says, “Forgiven” and we are forgiven. Jesus will come again and say, “Rise” and all the dead will come forth from the grave.
But I would like this miracle, this sign of the healing of the centurion's servant to set the table for us to consider the healing of the man with leprosy.
III.
If you have leprosy your in trouble, at least with the Jewish Rabbis. You have to stay away from everyone, away from the temple, from Jerusalem, from any city with walls. You've got to be six feet away from any clean person, if the wind is blowing, 100 feet. You have your mouth covered with a cloth. If anyone comes close you have to yell “Unclean! Unclean!”
Perhaps the laws from Moses about leprosy are there to keep the people safe, so that the leprosy would not spread, but the Rabbis had gone further, leprosy is the punishment for your sin. They even listed the eleven sins that can result in leprosy.
The Rabbis would go to great efforts to stay clear from any leper. One Rabbi said that he would not eat an egg that was sold from the street where a leper had been. Another boasted that he would throw rocks at lepers to keep them at a distance.
Can you imagine it? Being outcast, outside. Targets for the rocks and scorn of the Rabbis and the people. You can't touch anyone, and even if you could, you couldn't feel it. Leprosy takes all your feeling, your sense of touch.
There is this great and tragic distance between the lepers and the people. But not Jesus. Jesus reaches out and touches this leper. The text highlights this point, it is not to be missed.
“And behold, a leper came to Him and knelt before Him saying, 'Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.' And Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him, saying, 'I will; be clean.'”
Jesus touched him. He didn't have to. Jesus was just about to heal the centurion's servant with His word, from a long distance. Jesus doesn't have to touch the leper to heal him, He didn't have to reach out and make Himself ritually unclean, He didn't have to, but He did. Jesus reaches out and touches this leper and says, “Be clean.”
Do you see what that means? Jesus is not concerned with His own holiness, His purity, His staying safe, but rather with this leper, and with you and me. Jesus is not ashamed of you, of your shame and sin and sickness and weakness. He doesn't stay away. He doesn't keep His distance. He comes to speak to you and to touch you.
A couple of weeks ago I was in the backyard with the boys, and Andrew was hanging from the swing set. Daniel wanted to be like his brother, so I lifted him up and hung him there. After a while his grip was starting to weaken, and he started squirming: “Daddy, Daddy.” I was right there behind him, and I told him, “I've got you. You can fall. Go ahead and let go.” But he hung on for dear life, fussing, not letting go. He wouldn't let go until I touched him, until I put my hands on him, and then he knew I was there. Then, woosh, he dropped into my arms.
From this altar the Lord Jesus reaches out to us. Jesus touches us, that we would know that He is there, that His word is true, that He won't let us fall, that His death is for us so that we might have life.
When we hear, dear saints, that Jesus reached out and touched the leper and bespoke Him clean, we see ourselves there, on the blessed end of Jesus' gifts, and we rejoice in His great love for us. May this be your comfort and peace. Amen.
And the peace of God which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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Pastor Bryan Wolfmueller
Hope Lutheran Church | Aurora, CO