Sermon preached at St. Andrew’s Anglican Church, Lewis Center, OH.

If you would like to hear the audio version of this sermon (usually slightly different from the text), click here.

Lectionary texts: 2 Kings 5:1-14, Psalm 30, 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, Mark 1:40-45.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

What is the Human Condition?

Good morning, St. Andrew’s! This month our preaching theme has been ministry and you recall that we define ministry as service to Christ’s Body, the Church here at St. Andrew’s. You recall further that the purpose of service is to use our gifts to build up Christ’s Body, not to tear it down (hopefully my preaching this morning will do the former, not the latter). This morning I want to focus on the only real reason for us to do ministry and why it is so essential that we do.

In today’s Gospel lesson we come across one of the most poignant stories in all of Mark’s gospel. Let the scene arise in your mind. Mark tells us that a leper approaches Jesus, kneels before him, and begs Jesus to heal him. He cries out to Jesus, “If you are willing, you can make me clean!” (Mark 1:40). 

Several things are striking about this scene. First, leprosy was an awful disease in Jewish culture. The biblical use of the term, “leprosy,” referred to a host of skin diseases and meant more than what modern-day medicine calls “Hansen’s Disease.” Not only was the disease physically painful, it also left the victim a social outcast. Lepers were forbidden by Mosaic law to come in contact with healthy people and in Leviticus 13:45-46, we read that lepers were required to wear torn clothes, keep their hair disheveled, cover the lower part of their face, and cry out, “Unclean! Unclean!” Sounds perfectly delightful doesn’t it? So when Mark tells us that this leper approached Jesus, he was doing something that was forbidden and risked being punished further. Yet all of us can relate to this poor, desperate fellow, can’t we, because who among us at one point or another has not cried out to God in desperation to help us or one of our loved ones?

Note carefully what the leper says to Jesus as he approaches him—“If you are willing, you can make me clean.” The leper did not doubt that Jesus had the power to heal him. Rather, he wondered if our Lord was willing. Like that leper, it is sometimes easier for us to believe in God’s power than in his mercy, isn’t it? Perhaps we are that way because like the leper, we see the hopelessness of our own lives if left to our own devices and wonder how this good and holy God could ever choose to have mercy on someone like us who is so unclean.

Where is God’s Grace?

But thanks be to God that we DO have an all powerful and merciful God and this story is one of Mark’s ways of validating Jesus as being the Son of God. Mark reports that Jesus was filled with compassion for this poor, suffering person. He reached out his hand, touched the leper, and said, “I am willing. Be made clean!” (Mark 1:41).

What Jesus did was remarkable on several levels. First, he could have healed the leper by saying the word and not touching him. But Jesus reached out and provided a human touch to this suffering man who so desperately needed it. In doing so Jesus defiled himself according to Mosaic law but that did not matter to Jesus. Ritual and regulation never trumped compassion for the human condition for our Lord. The Greek word Mark uses for compassion, splagchnizomai, means literally to be moved as to one’s bowels (the ancients believed that the bowels were the seat of love and pity), thus conveying to us the power and depths of compassion Jesus had for the man. That is why he willingly healed him.

Moreover, that Jesus had this visceral reaction of compassion toward the man’s suffering is all the more remarkable because as we saw in last week’s Gospel lesson, early on Jesus struggled mightily with the nature of his ministry and withdrew to pray about it in the early hours of the morning. His earthly ministry, in part, was to help people redefine their notion of what real life was all about. For Jesus, real life was not about biological existence and/or the stuff of the world but rather in having a relationship with the living God and with him (John 17:3), and he did not want to be known primarily as a miracle healer. Yet even after this terrible inner struggle, Mark reports that here is Jesus, being filled with a deep compassion that would not allow him to withhold his healing power by turning this suffering man away, even if in doing so he knew that it would interfere with the primary message of his ministry. Of course all four evangelists report an even greater example of Jesus’ compassion benefiting us—when he willingly went to the cross to die for us so that we could live with him forever.

I can love a God like that. How about you?

Where is the Application?

As it relates to this month’s theme of ministry, in this poignant story of compassion and healing, our Lord provides the only right reason for any of us to do ministry—a willing spirit that is borne out of love for both our Lord and the rest of us who compose his Body, the Church. Too often when we hear calls to ministry (like you are this morning), we sometimes answer those calls out of a sense of guilt or obligation, but there can be no joy in doing so and those are quite the wrong reasons for agreeing to serve in a ministry. Rather, we are called to do ministry because we are called to imitate Christ and grow to his full stature (Ephesians 4:13). When we do ministry in this church willingly because we love and have compassion for each other, we have a natural desire to build each other up and to look out for each other. 

In serving one another with a willing spirit, we find joy in knowing that we are serving those whom we love, building them up in the process, and imitating the One who loved us and gave Himself for us. It allows us to do our ministries without feeling resentful or having our work feel like drudgery because we know that the Lord is using us to help build up his Body here at St. Andrew’s. 

And when we build each other up, we are helping each other make this place and our work to be a bright shining beacon of Christ’s light to this broken and hurting community that surrounds us and which so desperately needs to hear and receive the Good News of Jesus Christ. What better way to show others about the love of Christ than to demonstrate that love by serving his church in its various ministries?

But there is also another reason why it is important for us to willingly engage in ministry here at St. Andrew’s—our Lord needs us to act so that he can accomplish his will. We see this truth illustrated powerfully in today’s OT lesson. Consider the story of Naaman for a moment. Here we have this powerful Syrian commander coming to the prophet Elisha so that he can be healed of his leprosy, full of expectations and hope that Elisha would do something spectacular to heal him. But what did the prophet do? He sent one of his messengers to meet Naaman and told him to go wash himself seven times in the Jordan River. Naaman was furious! How insulting, this so-called prophet of Israel! Not only did he have the audacity to not meet him face-to-face, but he did not even do anything spectacular to cure him! 

So Naaman went away seething in anger and this is where the story gets really interesting because the writer tells us that one of his servants came to him and dared to speak the truth in love to him (a huge benefit of being in a small group, BTW, and another biblical example of what it means to hold each other accountable in love). He suggested to his enraged master (and risked incurring his wrath, which could have been life-threatening) that Naaman should DO what Elisha told him to do. Naaman finally did go wash himself in the Jordan and it was only then that he was healed.

Naaman had to DO before he was healed. 

Could the Lord have healed him without Naaman doing anything? Of course. Can the Lord accomplish anything he wants without our help? Absolutely. But it is one of the glories of our Lord that he CHOOSES to involve us to help him accomplish his will and that when we respond to his call with a willing heart and spirit, we should never be surprised with all that our Lord can accomplish in and through us.

I had this truth driven home to me recently. A couple of months ago I took a Webinar that talked about how to raise up leaders for small groups. One of the suggestions was to pray for leaders, meaning that I should pray to God to raise up leaders for us here at St. Andrew’s. I dutifully starting praying, and like Naaman, expected God to send me leaders without me doing anything. Then one day in prayer, God slapped me up the side of the head and reminded me that I needed to do my part in this great endeavor. How was I going to raise up small group leaders if  I did not call and ask them to serve, he asked? You know, I hate it when he asks me those kinds of questions! 

But I digress.

Can God raise up leaders without my help? Yes indeed. The point, however, is that God chooses to use me to help him accomplish his good will and purposes for St. Andrew’s and that will not happen until I choose to DO what I am supposed to do to help him build up his Body here (nor, BTW, will any of us see the power of small groups in our discipleship and the life of this church until all of us who are able have joined one).

Now we can debate God’s wisdom in choosing to use someone like me to help him accomplish his will for St. Andrew’s, but like Naaman, I am sometimes guilty of sitting back and expecting God to get things done around here without me doing anything in that process. And like Naaman, I am usually disappointed when I try to pigeonhole God into acting in a certain way or when I refuse to do my part. 

But when I willingly do my part because I love our Lord and you all, and want to see you get plugged into small groups so that he can use those groups to help you all grow in your faith and to become more like him, I trust that God will use my puny efforts to help him accomplish his good will and purpose for us here. What an awesome thing, and that is why I am confident that starting next week when I begin to ask some of you to be small group leaders, my prayers will be answered. 

What about you? What is Jesus calling you to do here at St. Andrew’s to build up his Body? Whatever it is, you can be sure that he will equip you and be with you every step of the way to help you accomplish his will through your ministry and service. And because you love the Lord, you can be confident that when you serve, you will find a joy that will be inexpressible and cause you to want to continue serving him all your days. 

Our Lord is all powerful and merciful. He loves you and has great compassion for you, especially in your weakness, and consequently your weakness is no reason not to serve him. He wants you to love him, in part, by serving the other members of his Body so that he can use you to bring him glory and help equip the saints here at St. Andrew’s to bring the Good News to the people in this surrounding community. His love for you will never end and can never be broken, not even by death. He promises to give you his Spirit to help serve him here, and when your work in this life is done, he promises to let you see him face-to-face.

That’s good news, folks, now and for all eternity. 

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.