St. Athanasius Lutheran Church: Sermon for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Jesu Juva

“Rejoice, O Pilgrim Throng!”

Text: Ruth 1:1-19a; Luke 17:11-19; 2 Timothy 2:1-13

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

Lord God, You have called Your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go but only that Your hand is leading us and Your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. (Collect for Guidance in Our Calling, LSB p. 311)

That’s one of my favorite prayers. I pray it, in fact, every year at our Annual Meeting, as we gather to consider matters for our congregation - where we’ve been and where we’re going. For the truth is, while we know where we’ve been, we don’t always know why, and where we’re going, we don’t know.

When our congregation was formed, who knew the challenges we would face, the people who would come, even if we would long survive. A rather large tree falling on our building! And I remember back in 2019, I was preparing for our Annual Meeting and planned a whole effort based on the number 2020 - seeing with 20/20 vision for the year 2020. Which I thought was clever. And to which the Lord said, Nope! And sent us a little virus instead which just blew all my plans out of the water!

Ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Indeed.

And true for your lives as well. Many of you trying to care for aging and increasingly forgetful loved ones. Dealing with disease, job uncertainty, family strife, and more. And there are good things that come into our lives as well that send us off in different directions than the path we thought our lives would take. Someone once said that we make plans and God laughs. Better, maybe, to say that we make plans and God makes better plans . . . even if we don’t think they’re better in the moment.

So give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go but only that Your hand is leading us and Your love supporting us. And again, indeed.

And this prayer was embodied in the folks we met in the Scriptures we heard today: (1.) Naomi and her family, (2.) ten lepers who lived on the border of Samaria and Galilee, and (3.) the apostle Paul, who wrote his words to Timothy that we heard today while bound with chains as a criminal.

First there was Naomi and her family, forced because of a famine to leave their home in Bethlehem to go live in the land of Moab for a time. Which was a bigger deal than we might at first think, because this was the land God gave you and your people, and for them specifically to Judah. It took so long to get there. The land was God’s special, promised gift, a sign of them being God’s people . . . and now they had to leave it. Or die. And it was ironic because they were from Bethlehem, a name which means “house of bread” - but there was no bread in their house. So they uproot and go to the land of Moab - who knows for how long or what will happen there. And while the Moabites were distant cousins of Israel, they were kind of the black sheep of the family, for they came from Lot, Abraham’s nephew, after an incestuous affair with his daughters.

Ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown.

Oh, there were some good times there - Naomi’s two sons got married, but not to Israelite women. So that was a worry. Would they depart the faith for their wive’s gods, Moab’s gods? And there was sorrow, too. No children for either of her daughters after ten years of marriage, and then death - three deaths, three widows. When the famine finally breaks in Israel, Naomi finds out that even though she feared her sons might be led astray, the opposite has happened - Ruth has become a believer in Israel’s God. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.

Our reading for today ended there, but you might know the rest of the story . . . that the hand of God led Ruth to a husband in Israel, and Ruth became the ancestor of a rather important man in Israel, named David. Which also makes her an ancestor of the son promised to David, another rather important man, named Jesus.

Not knowing where we go but only that Your hand is leading us and Your love supporting us.

That Jesus then shows up one day on the border of Samaria and Galilee - a kind of “no man’s land” where ten lepers were living. Well, if you can call it living. Really, waiting to die is more like it. Helpless, homeless, and hopeless - that was their famine, their lot in life. This was a venture, a path, a peril none of them had counted on or seen coming! Yet here they were.

Jesus, Master, have mercy on us! Maybe they were hoping just for a little bread to fill their empty stomachs. But Jesus gives them far more - healing! And while I’m sure all ten were thankful - I mean, who wouldn’t be thankful for being cleansed from leprosy and rescued from this awful life they were forced to live! While all ten were cleansed, one gets an additional gift. Because he was there that day in that place and at that time, he got to see God in the flesh. The one who had come not just to save lepers from their disease, but all people from their sins. As a leper couldn’t go to the Temple, so the Temple had come to him! So he falls at Jesus’ feet - at the feet of the one whose hand had led him there to that place, at that time, in that way, and whose love supported him, cleansed him, and saved him. Not the way he thought, not the way he expected, not according to his plans. A gift not from a God who laughed at him, but who loved him.

A God who also loved the apostle Paul, though He, perhaps, had a strange way of showing it. Persecutor turned missionary turned prisoner. It didn’t seem to make sense. I mean, why would God allow - or cause! - such a great missionary to be locked up? Which is his irony - the one who imprisoned others now imprisoned himself, bound with chains as a criminal. This was surely a venture, a path, a peril he didn’t see coming! But because of his chains, Roman soldiers were hearing the Gospel and believing. Even people in Caesar’s own household (Philippians 4:22).

And the same could be said about the cross. And Jesus wasn’t just bound with chains as a criminal, He was executed as a criminal. Those feet that dared to walk into Samaria, those hands that touched and healed and comforted, that tongue that spoke truth and forgiveness and life . . . the one who is love killed in hate, the author and giver of life killed by those He gave life to, the one who came to save killed by those who thought they were saving themselves.

That’s what happens when we take matters into our own hands. When God makes plans and we laugh at them, at Him, and do what we want. We think we know better, that our ways, our wants, our truth is better. Better than famine, better than leprosy, better than prison. Truth is, we don’t like ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. I want to know! And even more, I want to be in control. And because of that, maybe we get off track. Maybe we need some course correction. And find ourselves in Moab, or on the border between Samaria and Galilee, or some other place we hadn’t expected. Or maybe God put us there because someone else needs us there, and we get to be part of His plan.

So even though we want to know, and sometimes think we know, better to pray Give us faith . . . and then to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go but only that Your hand is leading us and Your love supporting us. Because those hands and that love that went to the cross for you then rose from the dead for you, and He is continuing His work for you. To feed you when famines come. To lead you when you must move. To heal you of your sins. To give you hope when you are locked in hopelessness and despair. To give you a home here in His Church. To make you a member of His family - not an ancestor of your Saviour like Ruth, but a descendant of Him by the new birth of Holy Baptism. Not that your life will be peaches and cream all the time - of course not! The sin in this world and the sin in us see to that.

So like those ten lepers, we cry out Lord, have mercy! And now just as then, He does. We come to this House of Bread, and our Lord feeds us with the bread that is His Body and the wine that is His Blood. We come with our weakness and receive His strength. We come with our sins and He says I forgive you all your sins. We come beat up and beat down and He says, Me too. That’s why I led you here to this place, at this time. To be with you. That you be not helpless, homeless, or hopeless, but find you help, home, and hope in Me.

So we prayed in the Collect of the Day for today: Almighty God, You show mercy to Your people in all their troubles. That’s what we heard in the Scriptures today, and in all the Scriptures, of a merciful God who shows mercy to a world in a world of trouble. That’s our confession of the truth and our faith. But then we went on to ask: Grant us always to recognize Your goodness, give thanks for Your compassion, and praise Your holy name. For we don’t always. We don’t always see the good God is working, but help me see it, Lord. We don’t always give thanks for what God is doing in my life, but help me do so, Lord. And we don’t always praise His holy name for what He is doing, but I need to.

For then maybe I’ll take matters in my own hands a little less, as I take His Word into my ears a little more, and His forgiveness into my heart a little more, and His Body and Blood into my mouth a little more. That what goes into me be also what comes out of me. His life, His love, His Word, His forgiveness. That on this road of life, which leads from Judah to Moab to Samaria and Galilee to a Roman prison cell to Vienna and to who knows where next . . . not knowing where we go, but knowing that the gracious and merciful hand of the Lord is leading us and His love supporting us, as we live in Jesus and He in us. As He leads us - by grace through faith - through this valley of sorrow to Himself in heaven (Small Catechism, Seventh Petition). And not alone, but with Ruth and David, Paul and Timothy, and a nameless leper. A rejoicing pilgrim throng (LSB #813), until we are with Him - our help and hope - forever, home at last.