A SERMON FROM ST. JAMES EPISCOPAL CHURCH,
Greenville, South Carolina
19th Sunday after Pentecost/Proper 23 C
Ruth 1:8-19a; Psalm 113
2 Timothy 2:8-15; Luke 17:11-19
Texts of today's lessons
Through no fault of our own, sometimes we truly miss the nuances and subtleties that enrich the Gospel stories. Separated by language and nearly two thousand years of thought processes and cultural differences, rich ironies and surprising insights that exist deeper within biblical stories often remain covered by the story itself, which on the surface still carries profound meaning and lessons for us. For instance, I don't think anyone misses the obvious point that, like the tenth leper who received healing in today's lesson, we ought to be grateful to God for all the goodness and blessings that we have received from God's hand. Gratitude and thankfulness belong on our lips daily for our very life itself; in this past month alone, we have probably uttered words of gratitude and thankfulness to God and to our family members quite often, with greater sincerity and heart felt feeling than we might usually use. And that is a good thing. So on the surface level, the story works for us quite well. But just beneath the surface of this very good story exist other meanings, other lessons that elude us unless we carefully explore the text and its cultural and historical environment. At its heart, we have a very subversive story here, for its hero and model of faith is none other than someone considered a deeply despised and untrustworthy neighbor. We find Jesus in a village located in the region between Samaria and Galilee -- a Border town, if you will. Galilee is Judean, and Samaria is not. The history of antagonism between the Judeans and Samaritans is well known, and we may even find its remnants in conflicts in the Middle East down to this very day. So when the Gospel of Luke reveals the identity of the tenth leper (the one who returned to Jesus to give thanks at his feet), Luke's original audience is no doubt shocked to hear that it is "not one of 'us' who was about to fulfill the Law by presenting himself to the priests at the temple, but rather, one of 'them,' those outsider Samaritans, who praises God and gives innumerable thanks to Jesus. This startling fact likely offended and quite possibly upset his listeners; but Jesus finds this Samaritan ex-leper the very role model of faith. "Get up and go on your way," Jesus says, "Your faith has made you well." Nobody in Jesus' time would likely have thought, nor wanted to think, of a Samaritan in this way, for it violated the accepted rules of social conduct -- Judeans found them repulsive, untrustworthy, and less than human. The Gospel of John says that Judeans simply had no dealings with Samaritans at all. It was total and complete prejudice. "Those people ARE this way, and nothing can change that fact." But Jesus did. And by healing the leper, Jesus also saved his life, thus allowing him to return to Samaria, to his family and friends, we presume. In the Greek language, the word for "health" and "salvation" is the same word; one could say here -- "your faith has made you whole" or "your faith has saved you," as well as "your faith has made you well." Salvation and health; health and salvation -- what does that interchangeability actually mean? For the nine other lepers, it meant restoration to the community. By going to the priests, they offer the proper sacrifice and receive certification that allows them to reenter the world from the Border town -- no longer standing outside, looking in. They have left their life of isolation and have been reunited to the larger community. A broken relationship has been healed; indeed, salvation has come to them. For the Samaritan, he, too, has been healed, his "leprosy" has left him, and he may rejoin his own community. But his salvation is even larger, for while his political and cultural status did not change much, his self-awareness in God's eyes changed, and that salvation also healed him. This Samaritan knows his acceptability in God's eyes, and that realization can also heal any one of us, even in the face of no known or manifested cure for a particular physical illness. In these respects, it's entirely possible for a person with a life threatening illness to be healed, to receive healing, and yet not be cured. In the Gospels, health and salvation have more to do with restoration of right relationship with God and neighbor than with mere physical well-being -- though often times that comes with it. In this story, Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem. There, Luke tells us later, he will offer the proper sacrifice to end all sacrifices -- that of himself, for the health and salvation of the whole world, to restore us all to right relationship with God. And like the Samaritan, we offer praise to God and thanksgiving to Jesus, as we relive this salvation and health story week by week in the Eucharist. A Greek word for "thanksgiving," the Eucharist recalls in broken bread and shared wine the broken body and shed blood that restores us, that heals us, that truly feeds us and makes us whole through Christ. "Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood dwell in me and I in them," we sing in the fraction anthem. Thanksgiving is a natural response from us for these gifts of God, like the tenth leper offered, along with the other nine, who were obediently on their way doing what Jesus asked them to do. But the return to community is also a response. Not only does Christ reconcile us, but he calls us into relationship with God and each other, including our Samaritan neighbors, those folks we really don't want to see up close, whom we fear for their differences, either real or perceived. In many respects, leper communities still exist in the world in which we live, people on the outside, looking in. People deep down pretty much just like us, in need of health and salvation, in need of community and relationship. But "different" in some way, sometimes in dramatic ways. Maren Tirabassi works both as a pastor and a writer. She teaches creative writing to individuals and groups of people. So when a prison approached her to conduct a writing workshop, she got really excited. Then she learned her class would be entirely made up of sex offenders, men who were confessed pedophiles and rapists, and committed to working a recovery program. Before she ever entered through a metal detector, or had her books, person and writing materials scrutinized by security, she said she went through an inner, spiritual strip search. She writes,
Well, friends, Samaritans exist all around us, if we only look. Ex-lepers sit next to us on the bus, at work, in restaurants, in the pews. And each one of us has experienced the pain of realizing the certain things we have done, and things we have left undone, "and there is no health in us," as the old Book of Common Prayer used to say. We call it sin, the condition of a broken relationship with God -- nothing more, nothing less. And, hard as it may seem, others might even see us as Samaritans. But those differences matter no longer. Jesus has gone up to Jerusalem and offered the appointed sacrifice to end all this unhealthiness, to deliver us from separation, and to restore us to health and salvation. In a short while, we will make Eucharist, we will offer thanksgiving to God for that restoration and healing, side by side as God's children, united by God's unconditional grace, and sent by the power of the Holy Spirit to share that grace, that healing touch, that saving health to others. It has come to us freely, let us freely give it in return to any and all in need. And may God grant us the faith and courage to follow Jesus in our faith journey, to break bread with Samaritans and neighbors of every kind, and to give praise and thanks to God with our whole heart, our minds, and our service in the work that Christ calls each one of us and equips each one of us to do. "Get up and go on your way;" says Jesus to us, this rag-tag Samaritan band we call the Church, "Your faith has made you well." (1) Tirabassi, Maren: The Other Side. July-August 2000, Vol. 36, No. 4.
The Rev'd Timothy M. Dombek
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