Julie Sermons

Returning to the Feet of the Healer

A sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, by Fr. Daniel Suelzle.

The story of the ten lepers (Luke 17:11-19) illustrates the deep connection between faith and thanksgiving. Leprosy isolates and destroys the body with no human cure, sin is a condition that corrupts humanity beyond self-repair. The lepers did not bargain with Jesus; they simply cried out for mercy, recognizing their complete dependence and need for healing to come from outside of themselves. While all ten received miraculous healing on their way to the temple, only one—a Samaritan foreigner—returned to fall at Jesus’s feet in gratitude. In the return of this single, former leper we see that the one who has received the gift of faith and healing, does not keep his gratitude private, but actively seeks out the presence of the Healer.

Living a life of active thanksgiving means consistently returning to the place where Christ promises to meet us. Though gratitude is an attitude of the heart, it is more than that. Gratitude is also a bodily act, as we return to the corporate worship of God in the Divine Service, where He delivers His salvation through Word and Sacrament. A faithful response to God’s mercy isn’t found in choosing a church based on personal preferences or entertainment, but in gathering where sin is rightly taught, the Gospel is purely preached, and the Sacraments are faithfully administered. When we recognize the depth of the disease we have been healed from, our natural response is to gather regularly with His people—returning again and again to the feet of the Savior who freely gives us life.

Listen to the full sermon below.

allsaintsjonesboro Sermons

The Good Samaritan and the Medicine of Christ

A sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, by Fr. Josh Leigeber.

“We love because He first loved us.” So what does it mean for God to make us love what He has commanded? That is what we prayed for in the Collect yesterday.

In the Gospel, a lawyer asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus responds not with a checklist, but with the familiar parable of the Good Samaritan. But the ancient Church heard in this parable something far deeper than a lesson about being kind to our neighbors. What if the wounded man in the ditch is not primarily someone we are being told to help, but a picture of us?

The man has been beaten, robbed, and left half dead. He cannot save himself. Then the Samaritan comes to him, binds his wounds, pours on oil and wine, and carries him to an inn. The Church has long recognized in this a beautiful picture of Christ’s work for sinners—and of the Church as the place where Christ continues to care for those He has rescued.

But if we are the wounded man, what does that mean for the Church, for the pastors Christ has entrusted with His wounded people, and for the Word and Sacraments by which He continues to heal us?

And what does all of this have to do with our prayer that God would “make us to love that which Thou dost command”?

Listen to the full homily below.

Julie Sermons

Opened Ears, Loosed Tongues

A sermon for the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, by Fr. Daniel Suelzle.

Healing the Deaf and Dumb Man

As sinful human beings, we are by nature spiritually deaf and mute—utterly incapable of hearing God’s promises or confessing His truth by our own strength and reason. When Jesus heals the deaf man with a speech impediment in the Decapolis (Mark 7:31-37), He does not work through vague, ethereal abstractions; instead, He uses means; things and actions. By drawing the man apart from the crowd, placing His fingers in his ears, spitting, touching his tongue, and commanding “Ephphatha,” Christ demonstrates how His living and active Word enters our physical reality to create life where there was only spiritual deadness.

This miracle reveals how Christ continues to deliver His grace today through concrete, physical means—in the preaching of pastors and teachers, at the waters of the baptismal font, and through His true presence, body and blood, at the altar. Rather than expecting us to pull ourselves up into heaven, God meets us right where we are, using ordinary people and visible Sacraments to bestow forgiveness and faith. As a set-apart community whose ears have been opened and tongues set free, the Church knows exactly where Christ promises to be found, giving believers the joy of bringing others to hear the Word that does all things well.

Listen to the full sermon below.