God doesn't save us without us

My sermon for today, 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year 'C':
In today's first reading the prophet Elisha heals a Syrian man, Namaan, from the effects of leprosy. In the gospel Jesus does something similar. He heals ten lepers, and although all ten are presumably happy to be cleansed of the disease, only one comes back to actually thank Jesus.

The language of these passages shows that, as in many instances of miraculous healings in the Bible, the physical cure isn't the main point of the story. The main point is the spiritual impact and the spiritual change that takes place as a result of an encounter with God.

Namaan, when Elisha frees him from his leprosy, is overwhelmed with gratitude, and announces his new faith in Elisha's God: "now your servant will no longer offer holocaust or sacrifice to any God except the Lord".

The same thing is true of the one grateful man in the gospel story. Having been cured, he turns back to Christ "praising God at the top of his voice", St Luke tells us, and Jesus acknowledges that the decisive event here isn't the man's return to physical health, but his new faith and the transformation in his spiritual health.

The lesson we can take from these healing stories is that God's attitude towards us - represented by Christ and by the prophet Elisha - is consistent. God's love, his care, his desire to approach us and heal us and save us, is consistent and unwavering. But in the case of many men and women, that disposition on God's part doesn't awaken any response of love and faith on their part. They can remain closed and ungrateful, and, like the nine lepers in the gospel, they just go on their way, unchanged and untransformed.

Another way of describing this, maybe, is to imagine parents who love and care for their children, who act consistently for their children's good, but are met with ingratitude and sullenness and rejection. Or a teacher, perhaps, working hard to communicate enthusiasm for his or her subject, but being met with boredom and coldness and lack of interest.

In these kinds of situation no amount of love or concern or enthusiasm on one person's part will elicit a response on the part of other people - if they choose to keep up a barrier and refuse to be touched.

That can often happen between God and us. His loving-kindness and his strong desire to save us comes up against our refusal to be drawn into his life. And in the context of our Christian faith, I would say that in many ways we can apply this image especially to the sacraments.

It's always been part of our Christian belief that the sacraments are an important element in our spiritual life and our relationship with God. That's because God is present and active in the sacraments. His grace is available to us, in different ways, in Baptism and Confession and the Eucharist, in Confirmation and Marriage and Holy Orders and in the Sacrament of the Sick.

But they don't have an effect on us automatically, against our will, or without our cooperation. As with any offer of love or care, it has to be accepted or consented-to. God won't, and can't, force himself on us. We need to respond to him - willingly, openly, gratefully, like Namaan and like the solitary grateful man in the gospel. That explains why it's possible for people to be baptised and confirmed and all the rest, but still turn out to be selfish or cruel or even profoundly evil: because although God offers his life through the sacraments, we're always free to refuse to accept it.

So there are a few simple lessons we can take from today's readings.

One is to question ourselves generally about how open we are to God's grace. Is it that God is always ready to approach us, but we're closed towards him, too preoccupied, maybe, with other things to give him serious attention.

We can ask ourselves particularly if this is how the think about the sacraments. Do we tend to see the sacraments as quaint ceremonies, something nice for children to take part in, but really just survivals from a part era when people were more willing to believe in miracles or magic; or do we see them as gifts left to us very deliberately by Christ to help strengthen our faith in God and unite us more closely with God?

And the last point is that in instances where our love and care and concern for someone is met with coldness and ingratitude, the best thing we can do is to persevere as Christ did during his ministry, not grumbling about the fact that maybe only one person out of ten appreciates our efforts, but rather never withdrawing our love, always being ready to wait patiently for the moment when someone will be touched and awakened, like Namaan or the leper in the gospel.

Those are some of the ways, I would suggest, that we can take these incidents from Scripture and apply them to our own efforts to lead lives of Christian discipleship.