The Wednesday of the Fourteenth Week after Trinity

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Now a leper came to Him, imploring Him, kneeling down to Him and saying to Him, “If you are willing, You can make me clean.” Then Jesus said to him, “I am not willing; you are not cleansed.” Of course, this is not what happened in today’s Gospel text. Our Lord had compassion on the man, stretched out His hand, and cleansed him. But such a text does not offer an immediate promise of the same for everyone who asks.

Many of us know this all too well. We have repeatedly and fervently asked the Lord for something, and it has not been granted. The healing, health, or rescue never came. Our loved one is left suffering and dying. We are left in pain. And the Lord seems to be silent. This is the experience of many a faithful Christian. Suffering and pain is their lot. And the compassion of Christ seems nowhere to be found.

Such is the hazard of the Christian prayer, “Thy will be done.” When we pray according to God’s will, there is always a chance that His will does not conform to ours. And so, when the leper implored Christ, saying, “If You are willing, You can make me clean” (Mark 1:40), there was always a chance that it would not be Christ’s will to make him clean. As it turns out in this case, it was Christ’s will to make him clean. And so He said: “I am willing; be cleansed” (Mark 1:41). But we have no such promise that when we pray according to God’s will it will always work out for us as it did for the leper in our text. This is because: Submitting to the will of God means submitting to His way and time. And so, we do not have a promise of God’s will always matching ours. But Christ does offer three particular promises in today’s text.

The first promise is that Jesus always has compassion. Just as He was moved with compassion to cleanse the leper in our text, so are His actions toward His people always motivated by compassion. Sure, we may not always see it in the moment. And we may never come to understand how a tragedy or a certain moment of suffering in our life was meant by God for our good. And yet, we do have this promise from His Word:

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren (Romans 8:28-29).

Whatever His exact motives or methods, God’s will is that those who are called to faith in Him would be conformed to the image of His Son. And like as the good of our redemption came about through Christ’s suffering, so too does our suffering contribute to our sanctification, conforming us more and more to the image of Christ. To be sure, our suffering is not justifying. But mysteriously, our suffering does join us to Christ.

But Christ does not leave us alone in our sufferings. Just as He did for the leper in our text, so too does Jesus touch us today. This is the second promise—that in His Body given and His Blood shed in the Holy Communion, Christ gives to us the forgiveness, life, and salvation which He purchased and won upon the cross. He invites us to “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8). For even though we do not have a promise of health, wealth, and prosperity in this life, Christ does promise to touch us bodily in the Sacraments, wherein He delivers to us His grace and mercy through tangible means. And these sacraments demonstrate to our fickle, self-absorbed human hearts that even when Christ does not give us what we want right away, He still looks on us in compassion and mercy. He still gives us strength for each day. His touch assures us of this.

Finally, this text promises us that, indeed, Jesus is willing to heal us. However, we must come to terms with the fact that this healing might not be right here and now. But Holy Scripture does grant us this word of promise:

For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself (Philippians 3:20-21).

This promise offers the greatest kind of comfort. If you have a fever, and the doctor tells you that you could either feel better immediately, but the fever would return in an hour, or you could remain sick for an hour and then get better fully, who would not choose the hour of discomfort in exchange for the permanent healing? And so it is that for some of us, Christ lays upon us temporary suffering with the promise of eternal healing in just a little while. If we endure and keep the faith in the midst of such suffering, it is the will of Christ to grant us complete and total healing and restoration at the end of all things, whether or not we experience the healing we desire on this side of glory.

And so, dear friends in Christ, submitting to the will of God means submitting to His way and time. At times, His will lays on us suffering and pain in this life. But His compassion and touch sustains us in this life until He returns to make all things new and to grant full and final healing. God grant us the strength and perseverance to remain faithful until that day.

In Jesus’ name. Amen.