Saturday after the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity Sunday
Posted on September 11, 2021 by under
Scripture: St. Mark 1:40-45 (NKJV)
1:40 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.”
41 Then Jesus, moved with compassion, stretched out His hand and touched him, and said to him, “I am willing; be cleansed.” 42 As soon as He had spoken, immediately the leprosy left him, and he was cleansed. 43 And He strictly warned him and sent him away at once, 44 and said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go your way, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing those things which Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”
45 However, he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the matter, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter the city, but was outside in deserted places; and they came to Him from every direction.
Devotion
The leper in our text had reached a point with his disease that he knew only God could cure him. He evidently believed that Jesus was God because he believed that Jesus had the power to heal him. “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.’” If only Jesus would heal him!
Jesus cleansed and healed the leper. And with the healing came more than just physical healing. First, the healed leper would report to the priest at the temple that he was healed. With this would come his reinstatement at the temple as one who was ritually clean. And second, the pronouncement of cleanness would restore the healed man to his place in society and allow him into the fellowship of the community.
Thanks be to God that the leprous man was cleansed and restored to life in worship and community. Thanks be to God that the healed leper was reconciled to God. And thanks be to God that Jesus has cleansed and restored us to life with Him in His Church. We are spiritually alive; a reconciled people who live by faith in what the Son of God has done for us.
Prayer: Keep, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy Church with Thy perpetual mercy; and, because the frailty of man without Thee cannot but fall, keep us ever by Thy help from all things hurtful, and lead us to all things profitable to our salvation; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever One God, world without end.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
