Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
The sermon text is from Mark chapter 1:
A man with leprosy came to Jesus and begged Him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out His hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” He said, “Be clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cured. So far the text.
Child development experts tell us that touch – nurturing, physical touch – helps kids grow up feeling secure and loved. Hugs and holding or affectionate pats all send important non-verbal cues about a child’s place, value, and his or her future self-esteem.
Marital therapists have long understood the importance of touch to the long-term health of a marriage. Loving, affectionate words are important, but also touch, not limited to sexual touch, gives the receiving spouse an important sense of being a meaningful part of the other’s life. On Valentine’s Day flowers and love notes are nice, but for the long-term we show people how closely they fit into our lives by touch.
In our Gospel Jesus encounters a man with leprosy, a hideously disfiguring skin disease that required lepers to stay away from healthy people. Part of the horror of leprosy, which can ultimately render someone unrecognizable, was the emotional pain of being isolated from community and family. Yet, Jesus refuses to stand at a distance. He reaches out to touch the sick man and make him whole.
The leper knew Jesus’ miracles and power, and now faith emboldens him to fall on his knees before Jesus begging: “If you are willing you can make me clean.” Listen to that voice of faith, “I know you can do this!” Notice the humility! The leprous man falls in the presence of God in the flesh. Luke tells us he had his face to the ground.
Nowadays, formality is a lost virtue. We’re so casual about everything we lose the sense of who God is. But we lose something when we forget that God dwells, as Hebrews says, in unapproachable light. We lose something when worship of God becomes nothing more than a veiled excuse to talk about ourselves and how we’re feeling – less an encounter with the living God and more an encounter with a therapist. The Bible says we worship God with reverence and awe, but often we aren’t reverent, falling to our knees before the God of creation. It wouldn’t be a surprise in our time to hear prayers addressed to God begin with, “Um, Dude…”
In an informal age, where all are equal, it’s surprising to see the man hit the dirt in the presence of the God-man Jesus Christ. We have a dis-taste for the idea of falling before God. It’s demeaning. It doesn’t affirm our self-esteem. We hear the words of our weekly confession that we’re “poor, miserable sinners”, and something inside of us recoils thinking these words are old, worn-out tradition, a quaint, old-fashioned way of looking at life, but they don’t really apply to us.
Do you believe that? Were you thinking about those words – we are poor, miserable sinners? We’re not miserable sinners deserving God’s punishment now and forever, are we? I can think of a whole list of people who are worse than I am. Pride is the devil’s tool. Foolish pride causes us to think we don’t need a Savior – we’re OK on our own.
In the early morning hours of February 18, 462 years from this Wednesday, Dr. Martin Luther drew his last breath this side of heaven. The night before, the hand that had filled many thousands of pages re-calling the Church to the miracle of salvation by grace alone through faith alone, wrote his last words: “We are beggars it is true.” Through his early morning deathbed hours, he recited John 3:16 and Psalm 68. He received private confession and absolution and the Sacrament of Christ’s body and blood. And his dying words reflected his hope in Jesus – not himself, “We are beggars. It is true.”
The posture of faith that moved the leper to fall on his face before Christ is the same posture with which for many centuries the Church has been united in this confession of the awful reality of sin “we are poor, miserable sinners.” This same faith resounds in when we sing the Kyrie, crying out to God: “Lord have mercy.” Our true condition as beggars echoes in the words of the Gloria in Excelsis, “Merciful Lamb of God, you are seated at the right hand of the Father, receive our prayer.” This cry of faith prepares us to receive Christ in His very body and blood in the Agnus Dei: “Lamb of God you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us, grant us peace.” Like Luther -and the man in our Gospel – we are beggars it is true. It’s not a terrible misunderstanding or a quaint old tradition, it’s appropriate for us who have nothing but our sins – to fall on our faces. St. Paul wrote: “We are by nature objects of God’s wrath.”
All the more remarkable then that, looking up from the ground, the leper could find Jesus, not raising hands to strike, but reaching out to touch him and make him well. We are beggars it is true. And yet, from the depths of our unworthiness we lift our eyes to a merciful God, a God unwilling to stand at a distance, a God unwilling to strike in judgment. Isaiah wrote: “The punishment that brought us peace was on Christ; and by His wounds we are healed.”
For poor, miserable beggars God sent His Son to bear real flesh and blood. In His unfathomable mercy God would not stand at a distance to destroy and condemn fallen humanity. Instead the Christmas miracle, assures us that in the womb of Mary by the Spirit’s power God became man. The One through Whom John tells us “all things were made” willingly laid aside His glory and descended in the flesh to be born in Bethlehem’s stable.
As Christ the Lord lived a holy and sinless life in this world in our place, but didn’t fully use His power as true God. He came to suffer the terrible weight of God’s judgment against sin. At the cross, “God laid upon Him the iniquity of us all.” At the cross, the sinless One became the embodiment of sin, suffering in Himself the punishment we well deserved. We are beggars it is true.
What marvelous joy it brings to the Christian heart to submit in faith to Luther’s verdict. We are beggars. Christ only saves sinners. He descended into this world to be found among sinners. He taught: “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.” The great hymn reminds us: “No merit of my own I claim, but wholly lean on Jesus’ Name. On Christ the solid Rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.” For us poor beggars- poor miserable sinners- there is joy in the Name of Jesus. Christ has exchanged our shabby, filthy sin-smeared rags, with the royal robes of His perfect righteousness.
We are beggars it is true. And just as the leper looked up from the ground to receive the healing touch of the Savior, so we lift our eyes to the Savior’s healing touch. In our OT lesson Naaman was miraculously cleansed as God chose to use the lowly Jordan waters to bring healing. Today, God uses the water and Word of Holy Baptism to touch our lives and bring healing. Ephesians says, “God makes a holy Church for Himself by the washing with water through the Word.”
Around the table of our Lord, the senses perceive only bread and wine, but God’s Word promises us that Jesus descends into our lives to touch us with His forgiving healing love. Though hidden to our senses faith lays hold of the words of Jesus and believes that in this meal the same flesh that reached down to restore the leper is received with our lips. The same blood that once was shed on Calvary’s cross, which flowed through the veins of the Savior, is given into our lips to touch our lives and bring healing, bring forgiveness and true life which will never end.
We are beggars it is true, and as we lift our eyes from the depths of sin and death, we hear the words of Christ, “I am willing. Be clean!” “This is my true body, this is my true blood shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” Amen.
And now may the peace of God which surpasses human understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.