This message is dedicated to the memory of my deceased great-aunt, Adelia Miller. Aunt Dedie loved to tell how, when she was a little girl going to the Sunday School at the Cloverport Baptist Church in Breckenridge County, Kentucky, the pastor had all the children in Sunday School one day. He threw out a Bible question to see which of the children was alert: “Who swallowed the whale?” There was no answer. Again, “Who swallowed the whale?” The children giggled, all of them, that is, except young Dedie. She looked around, and did not understand why nobody was answering. Again the pastor tried his question, “Who swallowed the whale?” My Aunt Dedie could contain herself no longer, and shouted out, “Jonah did it! Jonah swallowed the whale!“ As the room erupted with laughter, Dedie realized that she was the only one there who hadn’t caught the pastor’s little joke. The only one there who got her Bible stories backwards.
And I’ll bet some of you, right now, who are saying, “So what’s wrong with the answer? It’s right, isn’t it? Isn’t it Jonah that swallowed the whale?” Did I get you on that?
In memory of my irrepressible Aunt Dedie, I bring you a message with the Bible story turned around. A lion in a den of Daniels. Not going to preach about Daniel, the fine righteous man, perfect in behavior, standing for God in the den of ravenous lions. That’s another sermon. But I want to think today about a lion in a den of Daniels – about what it is to be the only one who’s off the mark, the only one who doesn’t fit, the only one who gets it wrong, the only one whose life is a mess. I want to think with you today about being an outcast, an alien, and just plain wrong, when it feels like everybody else is right. That’s a lion in a den of Daniels.
In the time of Jesus, nobody was more wrong than people with leprosy. Leprosy was a dreadful disease that not only tore at your flesh; it tore at your very soul. They made you leave polite society. They were so afraid of leprosy that they sent you off to live in caves, and if you came out on the street, you had to go around shouting, “unclean, unclean”. Imagine if that were the defining pattern of your life! Whatever else you were didn’t matter. When people saw you, all they saw was a leper – sick, unclean, despised. Imagine how that would feel. Like a lion in a den of Daniels! The only one unclean in the midst of people who were oh so proper and oh so right.
One day Jesus encountered not one of these people, but ten of them. Ten lepers limping. All lions in a den of Daniels. Jesus healed them; and when He healed, He not only healed their physical hurt. He healed their spiritual hurt. Maybe you feel like you are the only one off the mark, that you are a lion in a den of Daniels. But faith in Christ and the love of His people can change all of that.
Luke 17:11-19
Our world has a way of labeling people and making them feel all wrong. I’ve told this before, but it’s worth retelling, how author James Baldwin describes his own feelings when, as a child, hungry for learning, he wanted to go to the main branch of the New York City Public Library. But he says that whenever he would approach this building, to read from its riches, he would see its huge doors, he would feel the immensity of its classical columns, he would be overwhelmed with its greatness, and he would lose his courage. Time after time, he would slink on back to Harlem and read again the few little books at his neighborhood library. He felt like a lion in a den of Daniels. He felt like a nobody, not worthy, unclean. A leper.
But Jesus healed ten lepers; and when He healed, He not only healed their physical hurt. He healed their spiritual hurt. You may feel like you are the only one off the mark, the only one wrong, a lion in a den of Daniels. But faith in Christ and the love of His people can change all of that.
I
Notice first that these lepers had banded themselves together in their own group. Ten lepers, not just one. A band of shutouts, a troop of losers, together. A lepers’ club.
People form clubs. We form clubs for all sorts of reasons. There are clubs based on hobbies and interests – like stamp collecting or model railroading. There are clubs based on place of origin – some of you are in gatherings of people from Nigeria or Cameroon or wherever. There are clubs based on the lodge ideal – the Moose, the Elks, the Masons, and the one I think I ought to join – the International Order of Odd Fellows. Imagine, a club for people who don’t fit into clubs. That’s my kind of place. People form clubs.
What is all of this about, this clubbiness? It’s about giving everybody a place to belong. It’s about making everybody feel that she or he fits in somewhere. Even when the basis of their getting together is that they are nobodies, odd fellows, unclean. Even lepers have a club.
Now that can be either very unhealthy or very healthy. It can be unhealthy when people who live out of low self-esteem get together. They often put on a pity party. Oh, what losers we are. We are nothing, nobody, sick, sick, sick! I’ve seen churches like that. Churches where the mood is low, we’re not doing anything, we’re just blah! Lepers can put on a pity party.
Or even worse. A group of losers can become a gang. A marauding, violent, destructive gang. At the heart of every gang of violent kids there is a core of self-hatred. They will tell you, “I ain’t nobody’s nuthin’.” To tell the truth, there is nothing more dangerous in all the world than self-hating people getting together with other self-hating people, who pretty soon turn their self-hatred outward and begin to take it out on everybody else. If a lion in a den of Daniels feels alone and unwanted, the lepers’ club can get out of control and be dangerous.
But did you know that when outcasts get together, sometimes healthy things happen? Did you know that when the putdown and the shutout of this world come together, sometimes wonderful things happen? Things like a whole race of people, segregated and deprived, founding schools and building institutions and shaping a civil rights movement? Things like a group of teenagers starting a Christ-centered club at their school to give a witness? Things like a broken, imperfect, messy people gathering every Sunday morning at the corner of Piney Branch and Aspen to sing about being on the battlefield for the Lord? Lepers’ clubs can be very healthy. What’s the difference?
The difference is faith. The difference is the shield of faith that helps you believe that no matter what darts of doubt others may send your way, you know that down inside, you have value. The difference is faith; it is not always a negative thing when others shut you out. Faith turns you to God to know that He loves you. When you find yourself put down and shut out and feel that you are like a lion in a den of Daniels, faith can give you a victory.
II
How does that work? What does faith do for us when we feel lonely and shut out? What is the power of faith? Notice that despite their second class status, the ten lepers called out to Jesus to ask for mercy. Despite their loneliness and that profound sense of unworthiness that every leper had, they had this much faith – they asked Jesus for help and for mercy.
You see, deep in the heart of every person, there is a need to be heard. There is a need to be understood. And deeper than that, I believe, in the heart and core of every person there is a hunger for God and a thirst for what only God can give. There is in all of us something that tells us that God cares. If you can just find that little instinct, if you can just discover that little shred of dignity inside yourself, you can turn to Christ’s love, and there is hope for you. There is possibility for you. If you feel that you are at least a little bit free, and if you can find some evidence of grace and gift in your life, then something can happen. Faith, reaching out, taking hold of whatever is there, however small it might be, but trusting that the God who gave you yesterday is alive today and will provide for tomorrow. The shield of faith will make a difference. Calling on the power of Jesus.
Look at it: “Keeping their distance, the lepers cried out, ‘Mercy’.” Keeping their distance, desperate, hopeless, they still had enough faith to reach out to Jesus and believe that He could help them.
I have to wonder today if you’ve given up on yourself. Maybe you feel isolated, alone, out of step, off the wall. You just don’t think you are ever going to lead a normal life. Too many things have happened, too many mistakes have been made, too much water over the dam. Maybe you feel like a lion in a den of Daniels; everybody else has their life together, except you. You are a mess.
But I ask you: isn’t there at least a little faith somewhere? Who has sustained your life thus far? If there is anything at all in your life that is positive .. if there are any successes, any friends, any assets, who gave them to you? If you have come here this morning, why did you come? Surely not to hear yourself condemned to a hopeless hell of hatred and failure! No, you came hoping that somebody would say something that would give you a little support, a shred of hope. You came with at least a little faith. You came to cry, like the lepers around Jesus, for mercy. You came to lift up the shield of faith.
So I say, Take courage! Take courage! It is going to work. It will happen. You may not believe in yourself, but call on the name of Jesus. Find just a little faith and cal out to Jesus. When you find yourself put down and shut out and feel that you are like a lion in a den of Daniels, faith will give you a victory.
III
But now watch: a curious thing happens. Jesus does something quite surprising. Instead of saying to the ten lepers, “I will heal you right here, on the spot”, he says, “Go show yourself to the priests.” Go to the Temple, roll back your sleeves, and show the priests your arms.
Well now, if those lepers had rolled back their sleeves at that instant, they would have seen nothing more than rotting flesh and mangled limbs. They would have seen nothing new. But Jesus did not ask them to look at themselves and inspect themselves. He asked them to go to the priests and show what was there.
Jesus connected the lepers to the community of faith, and he told them to act like they belonged there! He told them to march right up to that Temple, holding their heads up high as children of God. He told them to act like healed people! And the text says that as they went they were cleansed. As they went they were cleansed. The very act of going to the community of faith gave them hope and pride. And by the time they got to the Temple, they were healed.
We need to understand that God has created in His church an including community. We are here to witness and receive the healing that God is giving. We are not here to exclude people and to tell them why they don’t measure up. We are not here to sit in judgment on those who come from different backgrounds or who have engaged in mistaken behavior. We are here as the people of God to bear witness to what God is doing, healing people, saving people, loving people. We are here to widen the circle and welcome all those whom God has cleansed.
Just as the priests in the Temple would witness the healing of the lepers and would therefore embrace them and bring them into the company of God’s people, so we also in this church want to embrace those in whom God is doing a work of grace. When we baptize, it is not because we think that those who come into the waters are perfect and good enough to be included. It is because we see by faith that God has worked a work of grace in their lives, and that they, like we, are saved by that grace and are therefore included. When we come to this Table, we do not, as, I am sorry to say, some churches do, exclude people because their theologies are not like ours or their denominational label is not the same as ours. When we come to this Table, we announce God’s great whosoever .. whosoever will may come. And as the old hymn says it, “All the fitness He requireth is to feel your need of Him.”
We want to be an including church. We want to be a church whose faith is strong enough to believe in the Christ who binds up the brokenhearted, who heals the sin-sick soul, and who loves and loves and keeps on loving. We want to be the kind of church which will love you right into the Kingdom, love the meanness right out of you, overwhelm you with acceptance. Show us what God is doing in your life, and we will embrace you. Show us how God has dealt with you, and we will witness to that. When you find yourself put down and shut out and feel that you are like a lion in a den of Daniels, faith will give you the victory. And love will make you whole.
IV
For, you see, at the end of the story, although ten lepers were healed, only one came back and gave thanks. Only the talented tenth, to borrow Booker T. Washington’s phrase, seemed to recognize the gift he had been given. I expect that has to do with the fact that this one, this leper, was healed not only of a physical disease, but also of a profound spiritual disorder. This one leper had a distinguishing mark on him. Not only was he a lion in a den of Daniels; he was a cub lion in the pride of lions. He was not only sick with leprosy; he was “this foreigner”. This alien. This Samaritan. I can hear this serpentine hiss on the Jews’ tongues as they spoke of thisss Sssamaritan. This outsider, who doesn’t live by our customs and who doesn’t speak our language. This foreigner, who doesn’t do things the way we do and who doesn’t understand our values. Thissss SSSSamaritan.
But listen closely to Jesus’ language. Listen closely: Then Jesus asked, "Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? …Then he said to him, [this Samaritan], "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well."
Did you catch it? All ten were made clean. But only one was made well. All ten got rid of a disease, but only one was made whole. All ten got what they came for, and their faith was rewarded. But the one who felt like a double outsider, his faith did more than cleanse him. His faith made him whole. His faith made him complete. Healed of leprosy and healed of alienation! Healed of illness and made whole because Jesus told him that his history was not a problem. Wherever he came from, what language he spoke, who his ancestors were, what his skin color was, it didn’t matter. None of it. Made whole.
And you and I, no matter where we come from, no matter what we look like, no matter our circumstances, only one thing matters. Forgiven of sin and made a part of the people of God, complete! In Christ Jesus there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, bond nor free, but we are all one in Christ Jesus. For in the end the human problem is the same, whether we be black or white, American or international, young or old, rich or poor – in the end the human problem is all the same: we are all lions in a den of Daniels. We don’t measure up. We are not what God intended us to be. We do not by rights belong in His company. We do not deserve to be in fellowship with His angels and His saints. All have sinned and come short.
But – but – but the glory of the Gospel: that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us, the godly for the ungodly. The glory of the Gospel: we are lions in a den of Daniels, falling short of God’s expectations for us; but all that He asks of us is that, acknowledging our need for forgiveness, we call on Him in faith, and come to receive what He has to give!
Do not feel out of place at this Table because of what you have done; call on His name for forgiveness. Do not feel out of place at this Table because of what you have not done; call on Hi s name for empowering. Do not feel out of place at this Table because of what you do not know; know only this – that greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends, and he has called you friends. Do not feel out of place at this Table because there is a wrong relationship in your life or because there are things that need correcting or because you are just different. Do not feel out of place. Feel hope. Feel love. Feel the love of Jesus. Feel the love of brothers and sisters, in these pews, around you. You belong here. You are at home.
Father Damien was a Catholic missionary in the leper colonies of Hawaii. He served among those desolate people, but always felt a distance from them, always felt that he did not understand them. He even felt that he was not really able to share Christ with them. But one day Father Damien found that he too had contracted leprosy. On the Sunday after this discovery, as Father Damien stood at the Lord’s Table, whereas before he had addressed the people, “You lepers”, this time he said, “We lepers.” “We lepers.”
At this Table, we lepers come by faith, shielded from doubt and hatred and anxiety and everything else that attacks us.
At this Table, we lepers, put down and shut out and feeling like a lion in a den of Daniels – at this Table bring faith. At this Table know love. Victory! Victory!
