This time of the year we’re usually very much on the lookout for signs that might suggest that we have contracted the flu, especially the H1N1 flu. Flu symptoms usually include things like fever, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, body aches, headache, chills, fatigue, and sometimes diarrhea and vomiting. In order to try to avoid catching the flu, some people turn to vaccinations, which may or may not help. But once you do catch the flu, there’s really no cure for it; you simply have to ride it out.
In Jesus’ day people were not only on the lookout for signs that they might have the flu, but for signs that they might have leprosy. Leprosy is characterized by disfiguring skin sores, nerve damage, and progressive debilitation. Signs that a person has leprosy include skin ulcers and sores that are lighter than one’s normal skin color and which have decreased sensation to touch, heat, or pain. After several weeks or months they still won’t have healed, leading to numbness or absent sensation in the hands, arms, feet, and legs, as well as muscle weakness. Unfortunately, there was no vaccination for such a disease and no cure either. Not only that, but if you had contracted leprosy, you were considered unclean and could not live among God’s people or enter into His temple. Everything you came into contact with would become infected with your uncleanness, and so you would have been a social outcast.
Now, you and I might be able to avoid the flu occasionally, and it’s almost certain that we’ll never contract leprosy (unless, of course, we go to a country where outbreaks of that disease still occur). But the one disease that we can’t avoid, and which we all have, is the leprosy of sin. And yet, by nature we are ignorant that we have this disease. One of the signs that you’re infected with sin include breaking every one of God’s commandments on a daily basis, whether by commission or omission, in our thoughts, words, and deeds, both by doing what we shouldn’t do and by not doing what we should do. Part of the disease of sin, however, is the failure to see these signs in yourself. On the one hand, it’s understandable that we wouldn’t recognize these signs, as we have had this disease since our conception. Having contracted it from Adam and Eve, who passed it on to us from generation after generation, you and I do not love God with our whole heart, soul, strength, and mind, nor do we love our neighbors as ourselves. And this seems natural to us; it’s the way we live. On the other hand, this is not the way God created us in the first place. He made us in His image and likeness, perfectly holy and righteous, knowing both good and evil, able to fear, love, and trust in Him above all things as well as love our neighbors as ourselves.
But now, just as a sick tree puts forth bad fruit, so we, who are sick to our core with this disease called sin, can only put forth rotten, sin-infected fruit. And though God still uses us in spite of our condition to serve one another through our various vocations, before Him even all our righteous deeds are as filthy rags, according to the prophet Isaiah.
So, the ten lepers in today’s Gospel text represent you and me in our sinful state as we stand before the pure, holy, and sinless Son of God, who would be justified if He let our disease just run its course. He’s not obligated to heal us. And the ten lepers recognized this, too, as all they could do was plead for Him to have mercy on them. But the Lord did have mercy on them and healed them, as He sent them to the priests at the temple, so that they might offer the appropriate sacrifices and receive the rite of cleansing that those who had been healed of leprosy were to undergo according to the Law. Like a doctor, Jesus had faithfully diagnosed and administered the remedy for their disease, a disease that no earthly medicine could cure, but one that He could with the medicine of His Word. The sign that this medicine had done its job was that all the symptoms of their disease had vanished. There were no more skin ulcers or sores, no more numbness, skin discoloration, or muscle weakness. Their leprosy was gone. And now they would be restored to fellowship with God and His people at His temple.
Now, in our case, as we stand before God infected with sin, we can do nothing but plead that He have mercy on us and heal us of this disease which ends in both physical and spiritual death. And just as He was able to heal these lepers of their physical leprosy, so He’s able to heal us of our spiritual leprosy using the same medicine of His Word. In His compassion for you He applies His words of Gospel to you through the washing of your Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and the proclamation of the forgiveness of your sins, and you receive the cure.
But what are the signs that the leprosy of sin has been healed? If we look at our lives, we’re still going to see the signs of this disease manifesting themselves daily in what we think, say, and do. How can we know we’ve been cured? Jesus has given you certain signs, which assure you that you have received the cure for sin, even though the symptoms of sin still linger for a while in this life. He gives you the signs of His miracles, especially His ability to bring people back from the dead. If suffering and death are the signs that a person suffers from sin, then by healing people of their diseases and raising them from the dead, Jesus gives us a sure sign that He is the cure for sin. The ultimate sign by which He proves this is His own resurrection from the dead, as attested to by the eye-witness accounts. Jesus’ resurrection is God the Father’s sign to you that Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross completely atoned for your sins. The sting of sin is now gone. Its fangs have been removed. The virus can no longer harm you. By overcoming death and the grave Jesus proves that He has overcome sin. You who have been baptized into Christ can now know for certain that the cure has been administered to you, because the Word says that in Baptism you have both died with Christ and been raised with Him to newness of life. Even though the symptoms of the disease are still seen in this life, you have eternal life right now along with the promise of the life of the world to come to look forward to at the resurrection of the dead, when all the signs of sin and the damage it’s caused will have vanished for good. The temporal healing of the lepers is a foretaste of the permanent healing that all Christians can look forward to in glory. Cleansed of sin, we have been restored to fellowship with God now, and we will live with Him face to face in His presence forever.
But there are also other signs to look for in Christians, which show that they have already received the cure for sin, and one of those signs is the sign of thanksgiving. While complete healing will not be seen until the next life, that healing has begun to manifest itself in the lives of the baptized even now, as the faith that they have in Christ shows itself in various ways. Some of those ways include confessing sin, confessing Jesus as Savior and Lord, receiving His gifts through Word and Sacrament, and responding to those gifts with thanksgiving. Like the fruits of a tree, so faith in Christ produces fruit in our lives, and one of those fruits is the fruit of thanksgiving. If a tree produces good fruit, you know that the tree is a healthy tree. But if it produces bad fruit (or no fruit at all), you know that the tree is diseased. A diseased tree can’t produce good fruit. So, a person who has not yet received the cure for sin in Jesus or fights against it cannot produce the fruit of faith. Where there’s no giving of thanks to God for what He has done for you in Christ, then there’s no faith. Thanksgiving is a sign that faith has been created in your heart by the medicinal power of the Word of God. The more you are on the receiving end of that remedy, the more you will give God thanks.
Yet, we see a failure on our part to thank God as we ought to. We neither thank Him as much nor as often as we should with our mouths, nor do we show Him our thanks by our works of love towards others as well as we should. We’d all like to model our lives after the healed Samaritan, who, having seen the signs that he had been healed, went back to give thanks to the Lord who had cured him. More often than not, however, we receive the gift of our Lord’s healing but then take it for granted and go on our way, forgetting to give Him the thanks and praise that we owe Him. We forget just what it cost our Lord to provide the cure for our sins, failing to remember that the healing we’ve received has been given to us at the cost of Christ’s life.
And so, failure to give thanks to God is sin. It’s what marks unbelievers, but it shouldn’t mark believers. Yet, even this sin was paid for with the blood of Jesus, so that we might live under His forgiveness for this too. The key to producing the fruit of thanksgiving is to look often to the signs of God’s mercy, the signs that deliver your Lord’s healing to you, so that you might again be sure that you have been cured of your disease. The more you look to the signs of God’s Word, the sign of Christ’s cross and resurrection, the sign of your Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the more it will open your eyes to both your healing and your Healer. And that will show itself in the fruit of thanksgiving.
So today, on this national day of Thanksgiving, when the world receives all kinds of gifts from God but forgets and refuses to give Him thanks, let us Christians remember again the gift of forgiveness, life, and salvation that He grants us in Jesus, so that we might have fellowship with Him and His people now and forever. Let us look to the signs - the Word, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper - which deliver the healing Jesus worked for us, and let us again give thanks to God for this magnificent gift. Then we will show to the world that we live under a gracious and merciful Lord, our Great Physician, Jesus Christ, the cure for sin and death, giving Him our thanks and praise, service and obedience for all He’s done for us. Amen.