Orthodox Sermons & Articles

Today, dear brothers and sisters, the Holy Orthodox Church again reminds us of the importance of asking God for help in any situation and giving thanks to God for everything. The story we just read happened on Jesus Christ’s way to Jerusalem between Samaria and Galilee. There was a special deserted place given to the sick with leprosy. This terrible disease required that everyone afflicted with it should stay far away from the rest of the people so that the sickness would not be spread. It was a most sorrowful sight to see afflicted people walking around the desert without any help from others.

Can you imagine the situation in which those lepers were? They could not even approach within a certain number of steps towards healthy citizens. They were considered unclean by the law and could not return to their homes unless they got permission from the priest after he checked them. But this hardly ever happened because there was no cure for leprosy. Only a very few returned to a normal life after a long fight with the illness or after a miraculous healing.

And today we witnessed another miracle of Jesus Christ. Ten lepers (all men) met him close to one the villages that Jesus was about to enter. Hopelessly exploring the wilderness the ten stayed close to their village hoping to see somebody from their families from a distance at least. And then they saw Him, and as we heard from the reading, recognized Him. St. Luke the Evangelist noted this in his Gospel. "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" – they cried out. They were asking for mercy knowing that Jesus would never reject this kind of petition. But what I want to underline here is that they were confident that Jesus was the Son of God! Otherwise, what reason would they have in asking for mercy from just ordinary person? What kind of mercy could an ordinary man provide? An average person could offer only compassion and nothing more. So, they were confident He could cure them, but would he do it? "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" This desperate crying was already full of hope and faith, so Jesus did not ask them if they had faith in Him. He simply said to them, "Go, show yourselves to the priests." Obeying to the words of the Son of God they turned around and started walking towards the city when they discovered that they were completely cured from their leprosy. What a relief! We can imagine how glad they were now when they could return home to their families. And they all ran to the priests but one. This one returned to Jesus to thank Him for the healing. One out of ten! One might say that the nine were very excited and forgot or did not think about returning back to Jesus. In answer to this thought we can refer to the words of Jesus Christ, "Were there not ten cleansed? But where are the nine?" Jesus underlines here that the nine had to return too and thank God for the miracle, but they neglected it. Christ points out the fact that regardless of the situation we have to find time to give thanks and glory to God. This makes us appreciate every single act of God in our address. Only after giving thanks the cleansed one was permitted to go, "Arise, go your way. Your faith has made you well."

Dear brothers and sisters, this story from the Gospel is not just a story about helping others but a lesson to all of us; this is the lesson of living with God, under His guidance and providence. How often we find ourselves outside the village, which is our sonship to God, and walking around through the deserted place of our passions and sins. We all understand this and I can tell you that we can feel it. Sometimes we feel that the entire world is against us. We feel loneliness being in the center of the crowd. We usually blame others because we think we cannot make mistakes. Would the lepers blame the rest of the world for their illness? No. So should we first examine ourselves to see if the reason of our loneliness is within ourselves? Without Question! In most cases we are the source of our so-called "leprosy" or loneliness in the midst of many. But there is no cure to our individual situations until we realize that we need Christ to intervene. Then and only then we will cry out to Him like today’s lepers, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" This short and full of hope prayer of ours will bring His attention to our sins caused by spiritual leprosy as well as it did for the ten in the wilderness. Next, we should strongly consider whether we should be giving thanks to God for His merciful help (In all cases the answer is yes!).

In today’s Gospel reading Jesus Christ has revealed to us that which was previously known only to God: only one out of ten comes back to give thanks to God. Do you think He told this story just to emphasize the importance of giving thanks? I doubt that this was the main reason. As the Son of God, Jesus perfectly knew about what was happening in the world. He showed us exactly what He knew about us. Here I agree that this was done in order to change our attitude to everything happening around us and to teach us to give thanks to Him every time we received His help. This is not hard to accomplish but how many are still doing it? When we meet with somebody we hear: "I’ve accomplished this and that!" "I’ve achieved this and that!" And not so often we hear, "Thanks to God, I was able to accomplish or achieve something!" People are scared to mention the Name of the Lord in these situations because of two main reasons: either we don’t want people to know that we are believers or because our pride is keeping us from saying this. What do you think, were the lepers (or anybody else who received Christ’s healing) afraid to tell who helped them? No, they were telling everybody about Jesus; this is why all knew Him! If we are afraid to mention the Name of the Lord, then we are like the nine who ran away fast to reunite with their families; they weren’t religious. So, dear brothers and sisters, let’s learn from the Gospel reading that giving thanks should become a natural custom for us Orthodox Christians. Don’t be afraid to say: "Thanks to God or glory be to God for everything." Let’s remember that being thankful is one of many tools that are necessary for our salvation. Amen.