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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
In all likelihood, at one time or another, in some critical moment in our lives, all of us have asked ourselves what God’s will is for us. As believers, we rightly consider that God has at least in some sense willed, or permitted, the situations in which we find ourselves, and, as believers, we rightly seek His will for our lives, then either passively suffering that which He has permitted or actively going the direction in which we think He would have us go. In this morning’s Gospel Reading’s account of the cleansing of a leper, we find a perfect example of a believer confessing his faith and at the same time submitting to God by asking Jesus for healing “if You will”. So, we consider God’s Gospel Reading message for us today under the title, “If God wills”.
Again today, our Gospel Reading picks up just where we left off last week, as Jesus “went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons.” By divine inspiration, St. Mark then gives us this vivid account of a leper coming to Jesus. Bible commentators debate whether the “leprosy” from which this man suffered was the rotting fingers and toes of what today is called Hansen’s Disease or whether he just had spreading white spots and such on his skin as described in the Old Testament proscriptions regarding leprosy. But, the precise medical identification of the disease does not really matter, as the Mosaic Law would hold either way. Any such lepers were to be regarded as dead, and so they were considered religiously unclean.
This leper of our Gospel Reading is aware of his unclean status and apparently also was aware of Jesus’s fame that had spread everywhere throughout Galilee. He is coming to Jesus, imploring Him kneeling, saying to Him, “If You will, You can make me clean.” Unlike another man we heard about recently in our midweek Bible Study, the leper believes Jesus has the power, or ability, to heal him; he does not doubt. But he also submits to Jesus’s will regarding his case. Having been moved with pity and having stretched out His hand, Jesus touched the leper, which touch itself was scandalous since it would normally be thought to make Jesus unclean, though in this case the flow is in the opposite direction. While touching the leper, Jesus says to him, “I will; be clean.” Jesus was willing, and so He cleansed the leper. His word and touch together immediately performed what Jesus said: the leprosy left the man, and he was made clean. (Whether the cleansed leper ever showed himself to the priest, St. Mark’s Gospel account does not tell us, and so we do not know for sure.)
Unbelievers look at the world with its sin, injustices, and disasters, and, they doubt both the will and the power of a God Who says He is holy, righteous, and loving. We believers can also look at the world and our own circumstances in it and also doubt God’s will and power. As I said earlier, in some sense, God wills everything, even if only by permitting it. He even permits our sins, though they are against His will. How that happens, we must leave to God, for He has not revealed it to us. Yet, too often, we sinfully probe into that part of God that He does not reveal. Or, unlike the perfect example of the leper, we may refuse to submit to God’s will in our cases. Or, we may grow sinfully frustrated with the timing of His answers to our prayers, or, like Naaman in today’s Old Testament Reading, we at times may reject the means by which God answers our prayers. Though only some of us may have skin issues that might by some definition be called “leprosy”, all of us are by nature religiously sinful and unclean. We sin against God in thought, word, and deed, by what we do, and by what we leave undone.
According to His essence, God has only one will, but theologians nevertheless make various distinctions in it, in order for us with our limited abilities to better understand His will. According to such a distinction, God’s “first will”, or what is sometimes called His “antecedent will”, wants to save all people. But His “second will”, or what is sometimes called His “consequent will”, damns to hell those who do not turn in sorrow from their sin and trust Him to forgive their sin for Jesus’s sake. The risk of such judgment is a stern warning for us—a stern warning that God in part uses to call us to turn in sorrow from our sin—from our sin of probing into parts of God that He does not reveal to us, from our sin of refusing to submit to God’s will in our cases, from our sin of frustration with the timing of His answers to our prayers, and from our sins of rejecting the means by which God answers our prayers. We turn in sorrow from all our sin and trust God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake. When we so turn and trust, God forgives our sin, whatever our sin might be.
You know that gut reaction you can get in sad situations? Our emotional reactions to someone else’s plight might make us literally feel sick to our stomach, or we might just figuratively say our heart goes out to someone. Either way, we still want to do something in order to relieve or remove the person’s suffering. That sort of “moving of the gut” is the idea behind the “pity” the English Standard Version says moved Jesus. In the narratives of the three synoptic Gospel accounts, that “pity”, or what other translations call “compassion”, is found only in Jesus and the divine nature of His acts. Jesus had such compassion on the leper after the leper confessed his faith in Jesus’s power and submitted himself to Jesus’s will. Jesus’s power, like the kingdom and the glory, is the power of God, Who acts in history in keeping with His righteous will, and acts by His power serving His will. In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus uniquely displays His will and power in the life of the leper, just as Jesus later displays His will and power in dying for us on the cross and rising from the grave. As the faith of the leper is linked to his cleansing, so through our faith God by grace cleanses, or forgives us.
Though not in every case, very often in St. Mark’s Gospel account miracles involve touching: either Jesus touching someone or someone touching Jesus. Touch is still involved today, too, as preachers of the Gospel continue Jesus’s cleansing and saving activity. They stand in Jesus’s place and carry on His work, by His power operating in the weakness of earthly, human existence. We think of Holy Baptism, where, as in the Old Testament, water is used for immediate cleansing, and even children are touched with the saving power of God. We think of Holy Absolution, where called ministers of Christ cleans individuals by speaking words that perform God’s forgiveness as validly and certainly as if Christ, our dear Lord, dealt with us Himself, personally. We think of Holy Communion, where we kneeling are cleansed as we receive bread and wine that is Christ’s body and blood, given and shed for our forgiveness, life, and salvation. God’s Word touching us in these three ways are signs of God’s will, and we look to them to know His will for us. And, we know that God’s working through them is resistible, and so we know that some unbelievers resist Him to their own damnation.
The leper in the Gospel Reading believes in Jesus’s power but submits himself to Jesus’s will, and that is what we do when we ask God for earthly things such as the physical healing that the leper sought: we believe, but we submit ourselves to God’s will. You see, we do not know and cannot know what God’s specific will regarding such temporal and earthly gifts. As St. James advises in his divinely-inspired epistle, we say, “If [God] wills, we will live and do this or that.” God may will our suffering, tribulation, and persecution for the good purpose of conforming us to the image of His Son. We may not like it, and so we may sin undergoing it, but, when we repent, there is forgiveness for that sin. For, we can and do know God’s specific will regarding divine and spiritual gifts: He wants us to have such things as pardon, comfort, and peace. May He accomplish in us His gracious and good will, especially that for which the Small Catechism reminds us we pray in the Third Petition of the Lord’s Prayer: God’s strengthening and preserving us steadfast in His Word and faith unto our end.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +