Gospel: Luke 17.11-17

“He shall dwell alone; his habitation shall be outside the camp.” Thus it was written in the Law of Moses concerning the leper. He was cast out. Ostracized. Condemned to a life of solitude, as his flesh rotted away. “He shall dwell alone.”

The leper is not alone in being alone. God created us for the purpose of loving us; and being made in the image of God, we were created to be like God, to live sharing in His love. God made our first father to be in communion with Him and in community with his wife.

But the fall corrupted all of that. Suddenly man was alone. Hiding from God. The man and his wife blamed each other. We children who descended from them dwell in flawed families. We seek out friendship and love, and sometimes find it. Yet even at its best it cannot last. Death, distance, and the passage of time separate us all in the end. The parables of Jesus depict hell as an outer darkness, leading me to speculate that perhaps hell would be spending an eternity alone, alone with nothing but the torment of your own embittered soul, neither giving nor receiving love.

So these decaying, reeking lepers, condemned to a life of solitude, banded together. It’s hard for us to imagine their world. The Law did not merely isolate them from society for fear of their disease spreading. Their disease represented sin itself. Readmission to society required not a doctor’s note but a priest’s examination and blessing. The putrescence of their flesh was connected to the corruption of the soul. The very word “flesh” becomes synonymous with the sinful nature. That’s why St. Paul calls sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, and orgies – he calls all these “works of the flesh.” And he follows up that list with these frightful words: “Those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” Do you get angry? Do you envy others? Do you get drunk? Do you look at women with lust? Are you jealous? Who among us is not plagued and tempted by one or another of these various corruptions that God’s Word calls the works of the flesh?

The leper is a picture of death – alone, with rotting flesh – and his destiny is our own. That is what those damning words mean: “Those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

But this Gospel shows us the only thing there is to do in our plight, the plight of being alone, dying, with corrupt flesh so entirely prone to sin. The one thing to do is cry out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” Much of the church’s liturgy is just an expansion of those words. “Lord, have mercy!” we cry over and over again.

The liturgy keeps putting those words on our lips as a reminder that we need always to commit ourselves entirely to God and trust Him – and Him alone – for everything we need. And whatever good we have, whatever good thing comes to us, we glorify God for it. Everything we are and have is a gift from God – an undeserved gift.

The one leper who returns and worships at the feet of Jesus isn’t just being polite. He is thankful, and rightly so – but Jesus doesn’t commend his gratitude. Jesus praises the man’s faith. This shows us what real worship is.

We’re fussy about form and ceremony here at Immanuel. From what I can tell, throughout its history this church has taken ceremony and the traditional worship of the church seriously. But the true worship of God is not our ceremonies. Ceremonies, our Lutheran Confessions say, “are in and of themselves no worship of God or even a part of it” (FC X.9, Tappert).

So what is true worship then? True worship is not good form, the right ceremonies, good etiquette. True worship is not primarily about gratitude. True worship of God is faith in God. Trust in His mercy. Taking Him at His Word. Relying on the gifts God gives you in the Sacraments. The Large Catechism puts it this way: “True worship and service of God takes place when your heart directs all its trust and confidence only toward God and does not let itself be torn away from Him. It consists in risking everything on earth for Him and abandoning it all for His sake.”

Jesus sent the lepers to the priests at the temple in Jerusalem. There, they would be readmitted to the temple worship, brought back in to the presence of God. But the one leper who comes back has figured something out: “God is present in the flesh of the Man who healed me! If I want to go to the real temple, I need to go back to Jesus!” When Jesus said, “Destroy this temple, and I will rebuild it again in three days,” it wasn’t until after His resurrection that the disciples understood that Jesus was speaking about His body.

So the deep and wonderful lesson in today’s Gospel is that the temple, formerly located in Jerusalem for the Jews, is thrown open to the Gentiles. The temple is wherever Jesus is.

So what does Jesus say to this man? “Arise, go your way.” What way? We don’t know where he went – and I think that’s on purpose. We’re supposed to put ourselves in the story. What way am I supposed to go now? St. Paul tells us what “Go your way” means: “Walk by the Spirit,” do not gratify “the desires of the flesh.” Our life, therefore, as disciples of Jesus this week – and all our life – will be occupied with crucifying the flesh with its passions and desires, and praying for the fruit of the Spirit to be manifest in us: “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”

Finally, and circling back to the beginning: Let this Eucharist today remind you that you are not alone. God saw our wretched, rotting, lonely state, and came to take on our flesh and bone. He became one of us – amazing condescension! By this Eucharist He is in you and you are in Him, and you are never alone.