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Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church
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Be Thou Clean |
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Matthew 8:1-13 Fourth
Sunday after Epiphany February 1, 2009 The first verse of our reading from Matthew this morning says, “When he was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed him.” The mountain is a hill near the shores of Galilee where Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount. This means the events of this passage occurred in the second year of our Lord’s ministry on earth. He spent much of His first year in Jerusalem and the surrounding countryside, but later moved back to Galilee and into the phase of His ministry John Broadus called the “Great Galilean Ministry.” This would occupy the next eighteen months of His time on earth, and much of the events recorded in the Scriptures occurred during this time. Matthew 7:21-22 tells us that, after the Sermon on the Mount people were astonished at His doctrine, and that He taught as one having authority. Jesus said things like, “Ye have heard that it was said … but I say unto you …” (Mt. 5:27-28). He spoke as one having authority because He is the authority. The Scriptures are about Him, and by Him, so He has authority to tell us what they mean. He is the Word who was with God and who was God, who became flesh and dwelt among us to reveal God unto us. He is God with us. He was not a scientist, testing and experimenting and putting forth a hypothesis. He was not a historian piecing together information and speculating about its meaning. He was not a philosopher postulating ideas about the meaning of life. He was not a theologian attempting to understand and teach the doctrines of the Bible. He was not even a prophet speaking the word of God on commission and inspiration of the Holy Spirit. He is the Word of God. He is God. He is authority. And people were moved by His teaching and His person. So when He came down from the mountain after His sermon, great multitudes followed Him. We know that on one occasion He fed 5,000 men, and on another occasion He fed 4,000. These counts were only of the adult men, so we can safely reason that there could have been as many as ten thousand people or more at these gatherings. Two people, especially sought Him after the Sermon on the Mount. His response to them reveals the heart of the ministry of Christ. First was a leper, and his request was “make me clean.” Leprosy was not merely a physical ailment, it was also a spiritual condition. It made a person unclean, and being unclean meant you were excluded from the congregation of Israel. It meant you could not participate in the religious festivals and ceremonies, could not go into the Temple, could not go into the synagogue, and could not really be around people. To be a leper is to be excommunicated from the people of God, which is to be excommunicated from God Himself. That is the predicament of the leper in this passage. So he does not simply want to be healed of a physical disease, he wants to be made clean and acceptable unto God so he can take his place again among the people of God. He wants spiritual restoration, which can only be defined as the forgiveness of sins and restoration to a right relationship to God and God’s people. He wants to be made “clean.” And here is the response of Jesus; “I will; be thou clean.” “Will” here is not a future tense of the verb to be. It is the present tense of the verb to will, or, to be willing. The leper said to Jesus, “Lord, if thou wilt,” if thou art willing, “thou canst make me clean.” Jesus said, “I will,” meaning, I am willing. “Be thou clean.” The second man is a centurion. A centurion was a captain in the Roman army. He was the commander of a company of soldiers, which consisted of one hundred fighting men. The centurion’s problem was that he was a Roman, a Gentile. It is difficult to translate the Hebrew word for “Gentile” into English. It literally means “nation” and refers to people who were not of the nation of Israel. But it held a deeper and much darker meaning to some of the Jews of that time. It meant something more like “unclean” or “filthy.” To put this in New Testament theological language, we might say, he was “lost.” He was outside of God and without hope in this world or the next. He was unclean. But at least he knew he was unclean. He said, “Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof; but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed.” I said these two events show the very heart of the ministry of Christ, and now I’m going to tell you what that is. The heart of the ministry of Christ is mercy for the unclean. Every time someone came to Jesus with some kind of claim to deserve His favor, Jesus rebuked him. Last Sunday we looked at the rich young man who claimed to have kept all the commandments of God, and, with his wealth and the power and position it bought him in the community, came to Jesus expecting to hear that he had eternal life, or could obtain it easily by his own efforts. But Jesus rebuked him. Jesus told him to sell all that he had and give the money away, and follow Him. Jesus was telling the man to trust not in his position or his wealth or his own efforts, not to come to Jesus as one who is rich and powerful with much to offer God, but as one who is poor and needy, with nothing to give, and everything to gain. When Nicodemus met with Christ in the night, Jesus said, “ye must be born again.” In other words, your wealth, your Ph.D., your position of leadership in Israel, and all your achievements in this life do not make you worthy in the eyes of God. You must be born again. You must come to God as a poor and needy sinner whose only hope is the mercy of God. On the other hand, every person who came to Jesus realizing his need before God, was accepted and welcomed by Christ. Jesus Himself said He did not come to call the righteous, that is, those who considered themselves righteous by their own works. He came to call sinners unto repentance. He receives sinners. He came to seek and to save that which was lost. He came to give His life as the ransom, the payment to God, for our sins. Let me close today with two short points I think get right to the heart of the first few verses of Matthew 8. First, those who would come to Jesus must come as sinners. If you think of yourself as righteous and good, and that God should be pretty happy with the way you turned out, or that you, by any efforts of your own can make yourself worthy of fellowship with God, you will not be accepted. We are beggars before God. All our righteousness is as filthy rags, unclean in the sight of God. He is of purer eyes than to behold sin. So our very best works are not good enough to win God’s favor. Second, God welcomes sinners. Like the Father in the parable, He runs to meet and welcome home the prodigal. He says to us, as to the woman taken in adultery, “neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more.” He says to us as He said through the Apostle John, “if we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” He says to us as He said to the leper, “I will; be thou clean.” To all sinners everywhere He says as He said to the centurion, “as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee.” The same Lord who received and cleansed the unclean leper, will receive and cleanse you. The same Christ who received the unclean centurion and healed his servant will also receive and heal your soul. He did not come to this planet to condemn. He came to save all who will trust and believe His promise. God grant that we, too, may trust and be cleansed. Thanks be to God. Amen. The Rev. Dr. R. Dennis Campbell, Vicar, Holy Trinity Anglican Church,
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