Not wellness, but salvation [Trinity 14]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE. 

READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Proverbs 4:10-23

• Galatians 5:16-24

• St. Luke 17:11-19

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (Rom 1)
 
Who speaks you this morning saying,

“Rise and go your way; your faith has saved you.”

 
Now maybe you noticed it and maybe you didn’t. But if you go back to your bulletins, or even bring out your Bibles, you will not find my verse that I just quoted, as I quoted it. Out of 62 English translations of the Bible, 49 of them will have some form of what’s in your bulletin which says, “Rise and go your way, your faith has made you well.” The last verse of the Gospel reading.
 
The vast majority of translators have made the choice to translate one Greek word into “made well” instead of “saved”, as I have done for you. Is it because these translators are evil? Not any more than you or I. However, what this translation error produces leads to doubt and that will lead to evil.
 
There is a word you know, from the Bible, as one of Jesus’ titles. That of Savior. In the Greek, Savior is related to “saving” or “being saved”. One cannot be without the other. You cannot be saved without a Savior and there is no Savior if no one is being saved. Which you would think goes without saying, but sin’s only purpose is making us forget our Savior.
 
As today’s Gospel reminds us when we hear of 90% of the people who had the life giving Word of God given to them directly from His own mouth, do not return in recognition of this fact. 
 
Regardless, God is Savior. He saves because He is Savior. It is Who He is and what He does. He has not earned it as a merit badge and He has not studied it for centuries to become a master. He is Savior. Christmass reminds us, “unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Lk. 2:11) and Acts 5:31, “Him God has exalted to His right hand to be Prince and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.”
 
These 10 leprous men today seek out a master, not to learn from, but a master who has control over what is going on in their lives; their lives that are turning against them and killing them. And in this English translation, it is given to us that these men are sick, so of course the miraculous thing would be to heal them. Thus, it says Jesus says, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”
 
In the Gospels, there are at least 4 of these incidents. In St. Luke 8, Jesus is approached by a woman with a 12 year flow of blood. He says to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace” (v.48). to Jairus, about his daughter who died, in the same chapter of St. Luke, Jesus says, “Do not fear; only believe, and she will be well” (v.50).
 
To the solitary, former leper, Jesus said that same thing, as you already heard, and to Blind Bartimaeus in chapter 18, Jesus says, “Recover your sight; your faith has made you well” (v.42).
 
It is no wonder people believe Jesus is just a simple healthcare worker, helping others wherever and whenever He can. Even we agree, because we believe Jesus is God so why couldn’t He heal as needed? Jesus is a master healer, in that respect, and diseases need healing. What else do you do with a disease that current medical practices cannot cure? Faith makes you well. Its so obvious. Its made me well…that….one time maybe and of course God was in control, so who else could have made it happen? So yeah I gave thanks. I am the Leper who comes back.
 
Yes. God so loves me for that. Maybe? 
 
Repent. The group of nine, healed lepers are sinners. You are a sinner. You have accepted the easy and good things from the Lord, but curse Him when He sends the bad. You demand that God major in the matters of daily life and you want to gauge His presence and His activity based upon what you see and feel and want.  You are dying sinners in a dying world, yet you do not by nature long for God to serve you with His forgiveness, life, and salvation.
 
So if Jesus is simply a master healer, why is He so upset? Isn’t He happy with just doing good and not getting thanked for it? Turns out, Jesus is not applying simple healing hocus pocus here in the hopes of spreading random acts of kindness.  For in those multiple places where we heard Jesus “makes someone well”, only demote Jesus and His station as Savior.
 
He is called Jesus, because He will save people from their sins (Mt. 1:21). The word “savior” is also related to Jesus’ Name, because it is Who He is and what He does. In this light, our Gospel reading does not make sense. In our English translations that we heard, all it taught us was of healing. But when Jesus heals, more is happening than simply a biological and pharmaceutical event.
 
To get us going in that direction, Jairus prophesys for us. In St. Mark 5:23, Jairus is speaking to Jesus about his daughter and says, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.”
 
What’s interesting there is that Jairus doesn’t just want his daughter healed. He wants it so she can live. And as a father, I’m sure he wants her to live the best life she can. Does that include healing her only for her to die again later? No. Any good father would not want his child to ever experience anything like that ever again.
 
And Jesus delivers. For it is in the Greek that we discover the English “made well” is used to translate the word for “saved”. For the woman with the flow of blood, for Jairus’ daughter, for the lepers, and for the blind man. In each and every case, Jesus is not saying “made well”. He is saying, “Your faith has saved you.”
 
With this piece of information, Scriptures begin to make more sense. The Bible becomes less and less of the hard nut that we mistake it for. Jesus really isn’t just healing, He is saving. Before we thought of Jesus as just a wandering miracle worker Who only helped those that were near to Him, because He didn’t heal everybody. And if He didn’t heal everybody, it means He couldn’t, which then would mean He wasn’t God. a dangerous slippery slope.
 
But all of those doubts are unfounded. The Bible talks about healing, but it talks about healing in terms of salvation. You can believe and not doubt that this is true about all of Jesus’s actions and words. He was constantly and intimately concerned about salvation. So concerned, that He went to the cross.
 
If God was only a physician, He would not have to suffer and die for something He easily did for anyone who asked Him. Our God is a physician of body and soul. His interest in you does not end with a healthy happy life. Though He gives those things to us, there is no promise of its permanence. This can be seen in the repeated application of medicine, necessary to keep us “well”.
 
Jesus’s interest lies outside of what corrupt medicine can do. Though medicine is God-given, it can only heal, it cannot save. it cannot prevent the same thing from happening later and it cannot prevent death. the world is still after the fountain of youth, but it is dried up. Sin has corrupted every and all things. Jesus’s main interest is in purifying those things and remaking them.
 
So Jairus’ prophesy comes true. His daughter not only is saved by the words of Christ Crucified, but lives as well. Not just until tomorrow and not even just until her funeral. She lives within the salvation that the Savior purchases. Thus, she is healed, saved, and will live forever.
 
Here is the importance of making the distinction between the words we hear others translate for us and the Word. The Crucifixion must inform not only everything we read in the Bible, but also how we interpret the world around us. If God goes to the cross and grave, that means that my health is of temporal and eternal importance. 
 
And God does go to cross and grave. He does not open a hospital. He does not join Red Cross. His desire is for all to repent of their sins and live. Live a life fulfilled in faith and have that life continue forever. The True Master is master over life and death, not just temporary diseases, and He uses all His power to save, not just heal.
 
God’s love and mercy is three-fold. Where the world offers potions and placebos, God gives immune systems to naturally fight, defend, and heal. Where the world offers shallow comfort in the midst of strife, Jesus offers everlasting peace and forgiveness. Where the world has no recourse in the face of death, Christ offers life eternal by His side through His heavenly medicine of Word and Sacrament.
 
It is important that Christ is saving by His dying and rising again, because if we were to view the world as God being a wandering healer, then He is fickle and incompetent, not healing everyone, healing those who we think don't deserve it, and not healing where its needed most. Not a God to continue to worship.
 
However, if Jesus, the God-man’s, goal is to rescue us from needing to be rescued all the time, if His aim is to bring us away from sin and death, if His true intention is to bring us to His side where we will never face sickness and death again and offer this for free in Word and Sacrament, then all honor, glory, and blessing should be His forever and ever.
 
And since this is true, if He were to set up some sort of convenient place where He would appear and commune with people, handing out these gifts for free, then the Faith which Christ gives would recreate us in His image and we would all, like the 10th leper, return to our Lord as often as possible, eating and drinking His eternal life and forgiveness from a fountain that never dries up.
 
Because it is in this house, the House of the Lord, in which the Lord does present Himself, as He did to the 10 lepers. It is in this place in which we cry out to God for mercy upon that which finds no healing here on earth. It at this Altar and Pulpit which Jesus proclaims His judgement, “Go and show yourself to the Priest”.
 
Praise God, that the Priest has shown Himself first. Our Great High Priest Who knows our needs has accomplished everything for us, first, just as He did for the 10 lepers as they were already healed before they left His side. 
 
Our Great High Priest, Jesus, has healed both body and soul, by His Crucifixion, and continues to make us into Himself, such that we are made to be the 10th leper that returns, gives thanks, and is once again saved and strengthened by His Lord, to go back and face life, and wait for His return by returning to His Body and Blood as often as we can.