Ephesians 2.14 – 22

Luke 17.12 – 19

Leprosy eats away at the body and disfigures it. To survive, lepers form their own colonies because they must live outside society. In the Church, we are directed to call on the LORD as lepers, because our souls are all leprous and sinful. Sin is a spiritual leprosy that eats away at our soul and disfigures us.

In the Church, we learn the names of these sins. They include fornication, uncleanness, greed, lust, sexual perversities such as homosexuality and sodomy, and covetousness. These are the spiritual essence of idolatry (Col 3.5). There are other sins named in Holy Scripture. They include anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy talk.

The list does not come from social convention. The list is given to us from Holy Scripture, which is inspired by the Holy Spirit. Followers of the Biblical God, then, are not free to add or subtract from the list of sins to accommodate society’s cherished proclivities and perverse ideologies. Too much is at stake. We’re not talking about prejudices or phobias or pet peeves generated from sociological norms or cultural constructs. We’re talking about spiritual leprosy that destroys the soul.

The spiritual leprosy of sin, however, affects the body as well. Sin, spiritual leprosy, first murders the spirit. This is the root of our being. The death of the soul, and finally of the body follows.

The ten lepers this morning, then, include us. When Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree in disobedience, they drank the poison of the serpent, and man fell into spiritual leprosy. No longer allowed to dwell in Paradise in communion with the Holy Trinity, man was expelled from his home, the Garden of Eden.

Children of Adam and Eve, we have followed Cain and his descendants, and formed colonies here in the world, here in the hill country opposite Eden, all of us infected with spiritual leprosy from the venom of the serpent that has spread like a toxin through the whole of human nature. Our souls all leprous and sinful, we are infected with the corruption of death in soul and body.

And, the colonies we have formed here in the hill country opposite Eden are cultures of idolatry; they are corrupted at their root with sexual uncleanness of all kinds. The corruption used to be hidden. It has become less so in our generation. If the LORD’s WORD is true, the leper colonies of this world are worse than Sodom and Gomorrah. Here, in the hill country opposite Eden, the spiritual leprosy of sin and idolatry has deadened the mind: evil is called good, good is called evil. To practice perversity is considered a right, if not normal.

One observes that the spiritual leprosy of sin has infected the mind even of many Orthodox Christians. That is possible only because they have chosen to set themselves up as though they were God who are wise in their own sight. This is the mind embraced by Adam and Eve, and it is what led to their expulsion from Eden. If these have not been expelled from the Church it’s because the LORD sees them as tares who might still before the end return, like prodigals, to the Church as wheat.

I said, IF the LORD’s WORD is true: one is free to maintain that the LORD’s WORD is culturally conditioned and therefore not binding on us in the 21^st century. But the LORD says that His WORD will never pass away. To dismiss His WORD as culturally conditioned in order to justify one’s cherished proclivities – and therefore to excuse oneself from the call to repentance – is to embrace the murder of one’s soul as one’s highest good.

In this light, one makes note that in the icon drawn in our minds by this morning’s Gospel, we see but two ‘cities:’ that of the ten lepers that is afar off from the City that is the LORD. Ten is a complete number. The ten lepers, then, represent the leper colony of the whole world, populated by all of us who are lepers; for all have sinned, all have fallen into leprosy, all of us fall short of the glory of God (Rm 3.23). All of us dwell in the hill country just short of and opposite the City of God on the Mountain of Eden.

But today, dear ones, Sunday, is the Day of Resurrection. Coming to the Church this morning, we have come mystically into the Tomb of the LORD’s Resurrection. The risen LORD Himself stands before us. ‘Christ is in our midst,’ we proclaim. He is invisibly present from His Holy Dwelling Place on high. But, He makes Himself visible in all the visible movements and gestures and sensual aspects of the liturgical, sacramental worship of the Church – which is His Body, the City of God set on the Hill of Golgotha, the Mountain of Eden.

He is present to us, both visibly and invisibly, because He took flesh from His Holy Mother. On Christmas Day, all could see with physical eyes that God had become a communicant of our flesh and blood (Heb 2.14). He took flesh; He became man; He became our flesh and blood ‘kinsman.’ If so, that means that God, even though He knew no sin, even though He Himself was holy and not leprous, became sin for us. (2 Cor 5.21) He became a leper with us if, in fact, He became flesh and dwelt among us, here in the leper colonies of this world.

When He suffered outside the camp on the Cross in the flesh, in our flesh and blood all leprous and sinful that He made His own, it was our spiritual leprosy that was put to death in the absolute obedience of Christ, the New Adam, the Son of God (Lk 3.38). And, when He suffered death and burial, the Gates of Paradise were opened again. The flaming sword withdrew, and the Path to the Tree of Life was open to all. And, if we unite ourselves to Christ in the likeness of His death, if we put on His Body as the Robe of Light – the Light in whom is the Life of men (Jn 1.9) – so that we die and are buried not apart from Him but with Him and in Him, in His Body, then our spiritual leprosy, our sin, the wall of enmity that separated us from God, is put to death by His death in the flesh outside the camp where we are. United to His Body, we enter the Garden through His Tomb; we come into the City of God, for we have been grafted into His flesh and blood. We are no longer strangers and foreigners. No longer are we lepers cast out from the Heavenly Society of the Holy Trinity. We have become fellow citizens with the saints and all the angels, members of the Household of God. In the Holy Spirit, in the Life that was poured out on us in the Baptismal Font, we draw near the Tree of Life in the fear of God, with faith and love, and we are granted to eat the Fruit of the Tree of Life and drink its Life – the Heavenly Spirit. It takes away all our sins, it removes all our iniquities. It destroys our leprosy. We are restored to our original beauty; we are raised up into Life everlasting.

On Friday morning, the Feast of St Nicholas, we read from St Luke: ‘He came down with them, and a great multitude of people came to hear Him, and to be healed of their diseases, and they were healed. The whole multitude sought to touch Him: for Power went out from Him, and healed them all.’ [Luk 6.17-19]

The Church is the Body of Christ. The Power of healing unto eternal life that goes forth from the Church, from the mystery of Christ’s Body risen from the dead, is the Holy Spirit. It destroys death by His death; as Living Water, it cleanses of spiritual leprosy all who touch the LORD. All who want to can prove this to themselves. Come to the Church; hear the LORD’s teaching; follow His commandments given to us in His Church. Do the spiritual disciplines of the Church. They are the Cross, our weapon of victory, and so they carry the Power of the Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead in the flesh, in our flesh and blood. Live your life on this earth in the Heavenly Spirit given to you in the Body and Blood of Christ, in the sacramental mysteries of the Church. All of this is how you ‘touch Him.’ And you will be healed!

For, if, with this one leper, who was a Samaritan, a foreigner and stranger, we draw near in the fear of God, with faith and love, and become a communicant of Christ’s flesh and blood (Heb 3.14), if we live our life on this earth in the joy and thanksgiving of Holy Eucharist – not just on Sunday but every day of our life, in all we think, say and do – we will become a partaker of His divine nature (2 Pt 1.4). We will be cleansed of all spiritual leprosy. We will become fellow citizens, members of the Household of God – members of Christ’s Body risen from the dead unto eternal life. Therefore, let us not live in the life of the leper colony but in the joy and thanksgiving of the City of God that is being built in us! Amen!