'So simple; so deep' a sermon

First preached as a sermon at Croydon Minster on the 17th Sunday after Trinity. The readings were 2 Kings 5.1-3,7-15c (the healing of Naaman) and Luke 17.11-19 (the healing of the ten lepers)

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It’s all so simple and yet so deep.

Receiving the healing love of God is simple: God’s unconditional capacity to heal, when it is sought, is simply there.

Receiving the healing love of God is also deep: God’s healing brings us close to God’s overwhelming grace, mercy and love; it is a deep healing.

Receiving the healing love of God is the Holy Spirit’s gift - given in the name of Jesus - pouring out the creative, healing of our loving heavenly Father.

That simplicity and that depth, heals, anoints and soothes the deepest and darkest parts of our nature so that we are freed and released to be the people God made us to be in God’s image and likeness; the deep identity we find in Christ.

This story of the ten lepers is simple and deep, as is the account of the healing of Naaman. Healing for Naaman is as simple as going to that particular river right here, and not a grand river faraway: just a simple Israelite river with no magical properties; a river that is deep and healing.

The gospel story of the ten lepers sounds like a bit of a morality tale to encourage us (or make us feel guilty) to say ‘thank you’. And indeed saying ‘thank you’ and showing gratitude is really important in human society; it soothes and eases relationships and creates a culture of gratitude. And when one person starts saying ‘thank you’ the other nine are more likely to as well.

That’s the simple lesson of this encounter with Jesus: say thank you, make that a habit in your life.

But also the gospel the story of the ten lepers is a meditation on deep healing, glorifying God and finding the place of true worship.

Let’s look at each of those three features.

Deep healing. Deep healing touches every part of us, throughout our bodies and minds to the end of each tiny nerve. What does that mean? When we pray for healing for ourselves or others what are we praying for?

Deep healing is the healing of body, mind and spirit; not just of the outer person, but in their depths, at their very core. Indeed some of the most ‘healed’ people can be those who bodies or minds are wracked with pain.

And that is hard to say, because we don’t want to live with pain or discomfort. It is the mystery of the words that say of the Crucified Lord, ‘by his wounds you have been healed’ (1 Peter 2.24). The healed leper prostrated himself, literally laid down his own body before Jesus: what a joyful posture of gratitude that is in response to deep healing.

Glorifying God. The joyful posture of gratitude that the healed man showed was his glorification of God in Jesus Christ: praise of God and the response of gratitude were intertwined and inseparable as water mixed with wine, as Christ’s humanity and divinity.

The pagan Naaman and the Samaritan leper both praised God, Naaman declaring, ‘Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel’ (2 Kings 5.15b). That God is the God and Father or our Lord Jesus Christ.

Finding the place of true worship. The young girl in the story of Naaman directed this great military commander to the prophet of God in the backwater of Israel and there he found the God of all Creation.

In Jesus’ day lepers lived in quarantine at a distance from society, ritually unclean, unholy, outcasts from the people of God. This group of ten were all sent back to the Temple, to the priests to signify that they were no longer excluded from worship. The man who was healed had been excluded on two grounds – he was a leper and a Samaritan. And on being healed he turned around: this is where God’s presence is to be found: found in Jesus Christ the true Priest; the true Temple of God; the Great Physician. Jesus told all ten to go to and show themselves to the priests and effectively only one did!

So we see the simplicity of the healing and depth of what it means. We see that healing, glorifying God and gratitude go hand in hand: that’s why there is close proximity between healing and holiness. The truly holy person, the saint, knows themselves still to be human and still flawed and also to be healed.

All this prompts us to consider our grateful response to the love of God. Like Naaman we have been bathed in simple yet deep waters; the waters of baptism. We are in receipt of the healing and deliverance of God. Do we adopt a posture of gratitude? Do we offer back tokens of gratitude through the church in our giving of time, giving of our talents, giving of money?

A tenth of the group turned back to give thanks. It is the Biblical principle of the tithe; the offering of a tenth of who we are and what we have back to God who gave the gift of life in the first place.

To paraphrase the prayer of David at the consecration of the Temple (1 Chronicles 29.10-14): all things come from you, O Lord, and we’re simply offering back what you have given us: our sacrifice in response to your sacrifice; our healing in response to your holiness; our love in response to your love. Amen.

Standing up straight & praising God

Preached as sermon at Croydon Minster on Sunday 25 August, Tenth Sunday after Trinity.

‘When Jesus laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God’ (Luke 13.12)

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This morning’s gospel reading tells us about an encounter that is both beautiful and disturbing at the same time.

Beautiful: because in it a woman who has been bowed down for eighteen years regains her stature and dignity of herself in in the sight of others.

Disturbing: because the reaction to this act of restoration and healing sparks indignation from those who should be most joyful that another human being has her dignity restored.

The woman typifies those who are bent over and weighed down, physically yes, but psychologically or spiritually too. This isn’t just physical: how often are the physically afflicted spiritually upright?!

This crippling aliment, described as a ‘spirit’ by St Luke, but not defined by him, has oppressed her for eighteen years.

The period of eighteen years will have had interesting connotations for the people gathered in that synagogue on that Sabbath Day.

In the book of Judges it was for eighteen years that the Israelites had to serve the foreign king Eglon of Moab (Judges 3.14) and for eighteen years the foreign Ammonite kingdom ‘crushed and oppressed’ the Israelites (Judges 10.8). The number eighteen is associated with oppression and being crushed down.

Intriguingly also, according to the Jewish numerological tradition, the number eighteen also signifies ‘life’, ‘alive’ or ‘living creature’.

So a woman oppressed for eighteen years, becomes a newly ‘living creature’ who can stand up straight and praise God.

Beautiful.

The fact this took place on the Sabbath Day is also deeply resonant and filled with meaning.

Observing the Sabbath is a good thing. A day of rest, a day when the pace of life changes, a day to know the gift of life; a day to honour God our Creator: it is telling that our society in all its turmoil and dis-ease neglects Sabbath.

But we miss the point of Sabbath if, like the synagogue leader, we cannot show mercy and loving kindness on that day. If we cannot show it on that day can we ever show it on the other six?

The Creation begins on the first day as God says ‘let there be light’ (Genesis 1.3) and unfolds over six days. The Sabbath is the seventh day of the week when God rested, seeing that all was good.

Yet the creation is marred and disfigured. People are oppressed, bowed down externally and internally, physically and mentally, and in the words of the hymn ‘Just as I am, without one plea’, we come to Jesus, the Lamb of God,

…tossed about

with many a conflict, many a doubt,

fightings within, and fears without’

We, like the woman, come to him now. And he beholds her; he beholds you; he beholds me.

To Jesus Christ we are not problems to be manged we are living creatures, who are loved, to be restored to life, to be released from all that bows us down.

So this act of restoration on the Sabbath Day anticipates the eighth day of creation, the first day of the new week, the Day of Resurrection, the Day of Life, the day of the New Creation, a day that has dawned today.

In the act of restoring that woman to dignity the crowds came to see that God’s priority is the lifting up of people from the dust, the gutter and into life.

The action of baptism is the Church’s sacramental sign that raises up men, women and children sharing in the raising up of Christ through his Resurrection.

‘If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God’ (Colossians 3.1)

Being baptised is an act of restoration and with this gospel reading we learn how we might approach God and our neighbour.

As Christians we should not be able see another person without beholding them as Christ does. In a brief walk outside this church we will see many people bowed down in spirit: Christ raises them up when they are freed from addiction, poverty, pain and we respond to them with kindness, hospitality and love. That is a sign of the Kingdom of God.

And what of our approach to God? This question comes not least in relation to the first reading today concerning the awe and majesty of God which perhaps prompts us to fall to our knees in reverence and humble devotion. Kneeling is a right and proper posture in God’s presence: just as how we bow reverently before the cross; bend our knee in genuflection at Christ’s presence in the sacrament; or kneel to receive Christ in Holy Communion.

But that is not the only posture of a Christian. Christ says, ‘stand up’ to the woman, ‘reclaim your dignity as a daughter, a child, of the Most High. Our Eucharistic Prayer says, ‘We thank you for counting us worthy to stand in your presence and serve you’ (Common Worship: Services and Prayers for the Church of England, Prayer B). Standing as a posture of prayer bespeaks dignity, presence and attention.

In church standing when a priest enters is not about doing the priest honour but rather saying that together with the priest we are the church, ‘a royal priesthood, a holy people’. Worshippers are not spectators but participants.

We are citizens of the Kingdom not consumers of it. As Jesus says, ‘Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near’ (Luke 21.28).

Of course kneeling or standing is not easy for everyone, or not for prolonged periods of time. But even in sitting we can sit in an anticipating way, a receptive, attentive way, with open hands and relaxed shoulders; or we can choose to button up, with our arms folded, and sit as if at a show.

Liturgy is not a performance; we are all ministers of it. Never allow your posture to turn you into a spectator whatever is going on in front of you, because in worship we are in the presence of the Living God, just as the letter to the Hebrews describes:

…since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe; for indeed our God is a consuming fire. (Hebrews 12.29)

It is for this that we are made, to praise and glorify God in the gift of life given to us by birth and renewed in baptism: ‘When Jesus laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God’ (Luke 13.12)