(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “From Faith to Eternity”, originally shared on October 29, 2025. It was the 379th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
What
is going on in the world?! Are we in a temporary blip of uncertainty, or is the
zombie apocalypse just around the corner? How can we endure? Today, we’re going
to find out.
The poem goes like this:
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Contrast that with this
poem, attributed to various sources, about Jesus:
The Greatest Man in History…
Had no servants, yet they called Him Master.
Had no degree, yet they called Him Teacher.
Had no medicines, yet they called Him Healer.
He had no army, yet kings feared Him.
He won no military battles, yet He conquered the world.
He did not live in a castle, yet they called Him Lord,
He ruled no nations, yet they called Him King,
He committed no crime, yet they crucified Him.
He was buried in a tomb, yet He lives today.
Or this one, from a
sermon by Dr. James Allen Frances in 1926,
He was born in an obscure village,
The child of a peasant woman.
He grew up in still another village,
Where he worked in a carpenter shop
Until he was thirty.
Then for three years
He was an itinerant preacher.
He never wrote a book.
He never held an office.
He never had a family or owned a house.
He didn’t go to college.
He never visited a big city.
He never traveled two hundred miles
From the place where he was born.
He did none of the things
One usually associates with greatness.
He had no credentials but himself.
He was only thirty-three
When the tide of public opinion turned against him.
His friends ran away.
He was turned over to his enemies.
And went through the mockery of a trial.
He was nailed to a cross
Between two thieves.
While he was dying,
His executioners gambled for his clothing,
The only property he had on Earth.
When he was dead,
He was laid in a borrowed grave
Through the pity of a friend.
Twenty centuries have come and gone,
And today he is the central figure
Of the human race,
And the leader of mankind’s progress.
All the armies that ever marched,
All the navies that ever sailed,
All the parliaments that ever sat,
All the kings that ever reigned,
Put together have not affected
The life of man on Earth
As much as that
One Solitary Life.
The reading from the Gospels
that will be shared in the vast majority of churches this morning, Luke
17:11-19, is also an illustration of what is bound in time and of what
endures.
We also read it at Thanksgiving
every three years. Why?
Our reading begins with Jesus
traveling with his disciples through a part of the Decapolis, 10 cities on the
east side of the Jordan river, north of Jerusalem, in Luke 17:11,
11 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between
Samaria and Galilee.
He’s teaching his disciples
and preparing them for what is about to happen in Jerusalem. The text continues
with a shock, in verses 12-13,
12 As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their
distance, 13 they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have
mercy on us!”
Some of us might remember the
movie “Ben Hur” and its depiction of the horrors experienced by those with
leprosy in Biblical times.
Leprosy was believed to be a
very contagious and fatal disease in Bible times. (Imagine the public reaction
to AIDS in the U.S. in the 1980s and the early 1990’s, just a few decades ago.)
Leprosy was believed to be a punishment for a person’s sin. People believed
that they had leprosy because they deserved it!
Leviticus 13:45-46
said, “The person who has the leprous
disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and
he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, “Unclean, unclean.” He shall remain unclean as long as he has the
disease; he is unclean. He shall live
alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.”
Today, leprosy is called
Hanson’s disease, it is not as contagious as once thought, and it is totally
curable as the result of the work of Father Damion and other Christian
missionaries in Hawaii.
Jesus showed no fear in the
presence of the lepers and offered no drama in today’s text. He simply told
them to do what the law required before they could be readmitted to society,
which they did, and they were healed, in Luke 17:14,
14 When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the
priests.” And as they went, they were made clean.
And they were ecstatic, and
they went to show themselves to the priests, they went to get their
lives back on track, except for one, in verses
15-16,
15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back,
praising God with a loud voice. 16 He prostrated himself at
Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan.
One. One came back to praise
God, God in human flesh, God in Jesus Christ. And that one wasn’t a child of
Israel, but a foreigner. We’ll see what that detail means in a second. The
reading continues in verses 17-18,
17 Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where
are they? 18 Was none of them found to return and give praise
to God except this foreigner?”
The 10 lepers were healed
because they were obedient to Jesus when he told them to go and show the
priests at the Temple in Jerusalem that they were healed. All of them.
Jesus is making it clear that
restoration and new life are coming, that forgiveness and new birth were
coming, that he is the Messiah, the deliverer from sin, death and all the
forces that defy God, not only for the children of Isreal, but for all people.
There is no one who is too far gone from God to be reconciled with God. That’s
the Good News, the Gospel!
Our reading continues with verse
19,
19 Then he said
to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”
It was a miracle!
Can you imagine the happiness
of the people who were cured, and of their families who got them back again
whole and well?
Can you imagine being so
focused on this positive reversal of your place in life that you would forget
to return to the source of your healing, recognize its source, and give praise
to God?!
Unfortunately, sure you could! 😊 We see it every day, and sometimes we see it in ourselves. We take God
for granted. We don’t turn back and give praise to God.
We are all sinful and unclean,
and we have no hope before God except in the Savior, Jesus Christ.
We need a miracle, and we have
been given one on the cross.
That is where we are made able
to endure the uncertainties of this world.
Paul writes in Romans
8:18-21,
18 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth
comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. 19 For the
creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20 for
the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of
the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself
will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the
glory of the children of God.
That is our hope, it is how we
endure in uncertain times, and it is based on miracles. That common hope is a
gift from God to all who repent and believe.
What is a miracle? It’s not a
suspension of the laws of nature. John calls them signs.
What is a sign? A sign points
to something else.
A miracle is a sign. It points
backwards and forwards.
It points backwards to the way
God created and intended the world to be before human rebellion against God
messed it up.
It points forwards to the way
the world will be again, restored in the new heaven and the new earth that are
coming with the Last Judgement of Jesus Christ. He is our one, true hope.
One of the best sermons I ever heard had
almost no words, and it was a statement of hope.
I was in Marine Corps Boot Camp at the
Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego. All our days were full. Six days a
week we were given 20 minutes of free time, during which we were restricted to
our Quonset huts, but we could read letters from home and write them, and also
polish our boots and our brass.
But on Sunday mornings we got four hours of
free time, during which we did those other things, and we could buy a Sunday
paper and we could sleep.
We could also go to church at the base
chapel.
The services there were led by a rotating
group of local pastors who preached and brought their choirs. I went every
Sunday, because that’s who I was. And also because it was the only time that we
young men saw women all week.
One Sunday, some prayers and Bible readings
happened, and the choir sang, and then the pastor came out to preach his
sermon.
He looked out at we hundreds, maybe
thousands, of Marines all dressed in our olive-green utility uniforms buttoned
up to our necks, our heads nearly shaved. The war in Vietnam was in its final
years. Half of us would be going and half would, like me, be staying in the
U.S. Many of those who went, like many who had gone before them, would not be
coming back.
He stood silently at the pulpit for what
seemed like a long time. And then he began, “My text for today…,” and he
stopped.
Then he started again, “My text for…,” and
he stopped again.
It was quiet. He was quiet. And then we
heard the sound of him weeping. I think he said, “I’m sorry,” but he walked off
the stage and someone else wrapped up the service, and we filed back to our
areas.
There were almost no words to that sermon.
But I’ve never felt the love and compassion of God, the sense that we were not
alone, communicated so directly, as in that moment, that God was present
whatever the condition of our lives or of the condition of our world and that
He cared for us.
I’ve sometimes wondered if that man thought
he was a failure that day. He sure wasn’t to me. I thought that he embodied the
real presence of God. He was a faithful steward to us of what God had given
him.
He gave us reason to hope and an opportunity
to turn around and give praise to God for all he has done and will do for us
for eternity.
May we turn back and give praise to God
every day.
And may we all share the hope and healing
that comes from God both with those who are around us, and with the world.
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