Show Yourself to the Priest: A Sermon for 2 Pentecost

As you may already know, today marks the beginning of our Summer Sermon Series – “The Miracles in Matthew.” This whole idea began when I received the Spring issue of The Anglican Digest, which focused on this topic. As I read through the articles on the miracles, I became excited about preaching on some of them this summer. But when I looked up the lectionary schedule, I was surprised to see that we are only given two of the ten miracles in Matthew for the next six months! So, we will be veering away from the assigned Gospel lessons for at least a month so that we can explore some of the miracles in Matthew’s gospel.

The purpose of this project is for us to be reminded of the miraculous healing power of God in Jesus Christ. Though Jesus is no longer physically here with us, he is still, through the power of the Holy Spirit, capable of healing us and making us whole. As members of Christ’s Body, when one of us suffers, we all suffer, for we are one Body. So, we too are the lepers. We are Centurion’s servant. We are Simon Peter’s mother-in-law. We are the paralytics. Weare perishing in the storm. We all need to experience the healing mercy, grace, and power of Jesus Christ in one way or another. And we need to share these stories of miraculous healing with the world around us. So, with that, let’s dive in to the first Miracle in Matthew.

The transitional phrase “When Jesus had come down from the mountain” is a detail that we cannot pass over. These eight words are a critical turning point in the gospel. Jesus had just finished preaching what we call “The Sermon on the Mount,” and he descended the mountain to resume his public ministry. The parallels to Moses on Mt. Sinai are clear as day, which is typical of Matthew’s gospel. Moses went up on Mt. Sinai to receive the Law from God. While he was up there, he carved the Law on two tablets, and then descended the mountain to deliver the Law to the people. 

Jesus delivered the words of the Law in the form of a sermon atop a mountain. He made it clear that in doing so, he wasn’t abolishing the Law that Moses had delivered to the people centuries before. Jesus didn’t come to abolish the Law; he came to fulfill it. And while Moses presented the Law on two stone tablets to the people, Jesus presented himself to the people. Jesus himself was the Law; it was carved on his heart, his mind, his hands, and his feet. And today’s passage marks that critically important transition between Jesus speaking the law and Jesus embodying the Law. In other words, the phrase “action speaks louder than words” comes to mind. Jesus has just spoken the law in his Sermon on the Mount. Now…how will his actions embody it?

Well, as is oftentimes the case, the “great crowds” didn’t give Jesus even a moment to gather himself for this important transition. As soon as Jesus descended the mountain, he was greeted by a person suffering from leprosy in need of healing. The rubber had officially hit the road; and Jesus wasn’t even given an easy case to begin with. Not that any miraculous healing is an “easy case,” but the man with leprosy presented Jesus with a particularly difficult scenario because the issue wasn’t just a matter of a physical ailment – it also had to do with Jewish Law. The leprosy wasn’t just the man’s problem, it was the community’s problem as well.

As we heard in our Old Testament lesson, those suffering from leprosy were considered to be ritually unclean. In other words, as if their terrible physical ailment wasn’t enough, they were also cast out of their religious community – as well as their home, neighborhood, and the marketplace. Any physical contact with a person suffering from leprosy would deem that person ritually unclean as well, and they too would have to be removed from the community until appropriate ritual cleansing was made. Sound familiar?

So, the fact that the man suffering from leprosy had the courage, initiative, and instinct to seek and find Jesus is a miracle in and of itself. And, of course, the fact that Jesus “stretched out his hand and touched [the man]” is shocking as well. This was the first embodiment of what Jesus had just spoken about up on the mountain. This was the first “sign” of Jesus’ new interpretation and implementation of God’s Law. It was a visible, sacramental sign of what Jesus meant when he said that he had come not to abolish, but to fulfill the Law. It was the “bridge” between Jesus’ powerful words to Jesus’ powerful deeds. But as Steven Peay of Nashota House Seminary reminds us, Jesus’ deeds aren’t over-and-against his words – they are confirmation of his words. As such, “this little bridge story demonstrates that Jesus doesfulfill both the Law and the Prophets, and more.”

The “and more” of this “little bridge story” is what I am most interested in. How might we appropriate this miraculous healing of the man suffering from leprosy to our current situation? Is this sort of healing available to us today? Lord knows, we need it in a big way, and in more ways than one!

Many of us might hear this story and immediately link it with the current covid-19 pandemic; and that makes perfect sense. Those with the virus are expected to quarantine themselves away from the rest of society so they don’t infect anyone. They are in many ways “the unclean” of this day and age, simply due to the contagious nature if this virus. 

But I’d like to invite us to move beyond the more obvious link between leprosy and covid-19 to a sickness that infects us all. This sickness is sin – something most mainline Christians prefer not to talk about too often. Sin is the great equalizer because none of us are immune to it. There is no such thing as “herd immunity” to sin, though churchgoers might like to think that is true. And sin is not something we catch due to exposure. It is simply something that infects us all to the core of our being. We are born with it, we live with it, and we will die with it. And good deeds, being kind, or respecting the dignity of every human being do not inoculate us from the human condition of sin. 

In today’s story, the man suffering from leprosy was miraculously healed by Jesus. But notice that Jesus didn’t just say “Voila! You’re healed!” and tell him to go his way. After he healed the man of his leprosy, Jesus ordered him to go show himself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them. Again, Jesus wasn’t seeking to negate or abolish the Law. Though the man was no longer stricken with leprosy, he still needed to participate in the ritual cleansing process in order to be reincorporated into the community. Because as I said before, the man’s leprosy was an individual problem and a community problem. The rituals of the community were still important, because these rituals weren’t focused only making the individual whole again– they were focused on making the community whole again. The apostle Paul wasn’t the first one to say that when one member of the body suffers, the whole body suffers. 

And for our nation to experience true wholeness and healing from the whole hosts of crises that we are facing right now, I don’t think it will be a matter of “Voila! You’re healed” because of an election, legislation, rally, or miraculous event – though they are an important part of the process. Throughout our history, and still today, there have been miraculous displays of prophetic power and healing when it comes to the racial divisions that continue to plague us. But for healing and transformation to genuinely take hold over the long haul, all of us must do the difficult, slow, long-term, and repeated act work of “showing ourselves to the priest” so that we may be made whole as a community. 

In other words, in today’s story, it wasn’t enough for the man to say, “I don’t have leprosy anymore. I’m good to go.” That certainly was an important – and indeed a miraculous first step made possible by the mercy, love, power, and grace of Jesus Christ. But the second step was re-incorporating his newfound wholeness into the wider community so that he and his community could be reconciled with one another. There were important steps to be taken for mutual re-incorporation, and much of it involved acknowledging God’s role in the process. It is God who initiates healing among individuals, and it is God who initiates healing among communities. Hence, “showing yourself to the priest” in our time is akin to, in my thinking, the steady, routine participation in the sacramental life of the Church. Like healing, baptism is a both-and event – it is a one-time cleansing of sin as well as a lifelong process of faithfully living out the baptismal covenant within a Church community. It is a one-time miracle and a lifelong series of miracles. 

One example of individual and communal healing that we at Christ the King will begin this week is our engagement with the Episcopal Church’s film-based Dialogue Series on race and faith called “Sacred Ground.” My hope, prayer, and expectation for this series is that it will initiate both individual and communal healing. I imagine that we will experience some one-time miracles while we also lay the sacred groundwork for more long-term miracles.

 In our gospel story, the person in desperate need of healing sought out Jesus and asked him to make him whole again. Such an act by this man who had been cast out of society was an act of great courage, faith, and humility. I think we all need a dose of this type of courage, faith, and humility if we as individuals and we as a nation are going to be made well. And I believe that the role of the Church is to model what this looks like for our communities. What if we as Christians were the first to drop to our knees and ask for forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation? If we can show the world that we recognize our own sinfulness – our own desperate need for God’s healing touch – and if we can be the first to drop to our knees and say, “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean,” the Church will indeed be the bridge between the words and actions of Jesus for our world today. 

But we must remember that leprosy wasn’t just an individual problem, it was a community problem too. And such is the case for us now. Jesus has given us the words and the deeds for making individuals and communities whole. May we, through our baptisms, and through our steady, faithful, and courageous participation in the sacramental life of Christ’s Church, heed to and imitate these miraculous words and deeds of Jesus.