Sermon for October 9, 2016
Proper 23C – RCL Track 1
On the way to Jerusalem
Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a
village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out,
saying, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" When he saw them, he said
to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." And as they went,
they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned
back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus' feet and
thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, "Were not ten made
clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and
give praise to God except this foreigner?" Then he said to him, "Get
up and go on your way; your faith has made you well."
“Then Jesus
asked, "Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?”” This
is the phrase the struck me when I read the gospel lesson this week. Perhaps because sometimes that is how
ministry can feel. We put our hearts
into setting up programs and sometimes no one shows up. Sometimes only a few show up. And sometimes – especially when we are
feeding people – 100s show up. And even
if 100’s show up to an event – such as St. Matthew’s day or a community dinner –
the actions of a few can sometimes color our response.
It seems like
it is so easy to get trapped in our modern sense of instant gratification that
we expect others to give gratitude when we do something for them.
But what
should we expect? Should we expect that
all of the people that the church serves should prostrate themselves in front of
us and give thanks to God? Sounds a
little ridicules when I say it that way.
And perhaps it is easy to read the gospel lesson and Jesus’ reaction to
the one man – now formally a leper – who comes with immense gratitude as
demanding that gratitude. It is easy to
think, at least to ourselves, that this pattern of giving exuberant thanks
should be the norm.
And Jesus
asks about the other nine. Where is
their gratitude. Well perhaps the other
nine are following Jesus instructions to go show themselves to the
priests. Perhaps they have gone to give
appropriate thanks in the temple.
Perhaps they just did not think to turn around and give thanks to Jesus.
When we look
at Jesus healings he doesn’t do it to garner fame for himself. For example when Jesus heals the deaf man in
Mark he commands him to “to tell no one…”
Although we also hear that telling people to keep secret their healing
usually did no good “but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they
proclaimed it.”
So I don’t
think that Jesus is telling us here that gratitude is required for
healing. Gratitude is not something we
should expect when we are following Jesus command to feed the hungry. At least not from those who we are
feeding. The gratitude should more
likely come from us. We should be
grateful to God that we are able to provide for people that, in too many cases
society has turned away.
If you look
at this healing story Jesus is breaking all kinds of social taboos. He is risking becoming unclean and being
unable to enter a temple. Jesus is out
in the country and a group of ten lepers approach him. The rules are that they should never approach
someone. They are unclean and there was
great fear that they would make anyone else they approached unclean too. This fear of lepers continued until modern
times. The leper colony and forced
quarantine on Molokai only ended in 1969!
Jesus does
not scold them or fear them. He simply
tells them to go show themselves to the priests. He doesn’t even announce that they are or will
be healed. It just happens.
Another
scandal is Jesus doesn’t seem to care about the ethnic make-up of this group of
lepers. He doesn’t seem to care if they
are foreigners or gentiles or even great sinners. They are all just healed. No questions asked. It might have been more palatable to those
around Jesus if the lepers were all from Judaea. At least then he would be curing the right
kind of people. But Jesus doesn’t ask.
And the worst
happens. It turns out that at least one
of the lepers was a foreigner. He
belonged to a country that was despised by Judeans. He is, horror of horrors, a Samaritan. And it was the Samaritan – a member of a
class of people perceived to be enemies – that showed gratitude.
One of the
takeaways from this Gospel reading – and indeed in pretty much all of Jesus
ministry – is that if we are truly called to follow Jesus then our ministry
cannot be limited to those like us. We
cannot have a purity test before we provide ministry to folks. If we are following Jesus we have to include
those who our society would consider outsiders – or “the others” in our
ministry.
Today we hear
so much talk about who we should let in the country. People saying we should lock down our
southern boarder; we should keep people who come from countries that are
plagued by terrorism out. We should keep
non-Christian people out. We should not
allow equal rights for women, people of color, or gay, lesbian, bisexual,
transgendered or queer people. The news and some in society worry more about
who and how we should exclude rather than how we should love and embrace.
Jesus teaches
us that we are not to exclude. Our call
is to fling open the doors. Not to
restrict who gets served in our church.
We don’t require people to be members of this church to eat at the
community dinners. And you all made sure
that there was even “halal approved” hotdogs at the St. Matthew’s day festival for
our Muslim neighbors should they want to come and join us in our festival.
Which brings
me back to the phrase that stuck out for me this week “Then Jesus asked,
"Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?”” Because
when we are appropriately reckless with who we invite to the party sometimes it
seems that 90 percent of the people just take it for granted. Or we focus on the one or two percent who are
active problems. And it can bring us
down and make us question our commitment to being crazy Jesus people. We want to know “where are the other nine?” Sometimes it makes us question what we do!
The good news
is that it seems there is always the one.
There is always someone – either someone we are serving or someone who
is serving – that is grateful. Grateful
to receive or grateful to have the ability to give. There is always at least one. And I have found that it can often be the “other”
who is grateful.
It is often
the one who our current society would shun.
Or it is someone who is going through tremendous difficulty that
approaches life with such gratitude that makes us wonder why. I have known people with advance cancer who
go about life with gratitude and a positive attitude that amazes me. I have met homeless people who have an
amazing amount of gratitude just to be able to find a small amount of sanctuary
in our churches.
There is one
homeless gentleman at St. Paul’s who has difficulty with fine motor skills – and
perhaps has something like Parkinson’s – who from time to time will come in
before an early service and ask me to make soapy water so he can wash down the
15th street porch on days when too much happiness happened on the
porch the night before. He shows his
gratitude by doing what he can when he can.
Acts of
gratitude are out there. Unfortunately
the dominant societal position is to focus on the nine who are healed who don’t
give thanks. We focus on what is wrong
with the world and the disasters, violence, and out of control demonizing of
the other. All you have to do is open a
newspaper to see it. All you have to do
is listen to the campaign commercials.
Our call as
crazy Jesus people is to cultivate the gratitude that was expressed by the
Samaritan in our Gospel lesson. We are
called to find that gratitude in the world around us and to express the
gratitude that we feel in our selves.
Sure there
will be times when anger or sadness may overtake our emotions. If we focus on
the negative emotions we may miss the opportunity for gratitude. And it is out there – and hopefully we can
find ways to personally show our gratitude to God by radically welcoming “the
other” into our midst with no regard to societal expectation of who should or
should not be saved! After all Figuring
out who is 'saved' is God’s job – not
ours!
No comments:
Post a Comment