Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost. October 14, 2001
Heavenly Father, empower us to acknowledge you, with praise and gratitude, when you work in our lives. Amen.
Luke 17: 11-19
Title: “Responding to Grace.”
Of ten cured lepers only one, a Samaritan, returned to Jesus to give thanks.
“Leprosy” was a cover term for any type of skin disorder from a mere rash to full-blown leprosy, Hansen’s disease as we know it. Ancient people knew that some things were contagious, rashes being one of them. Thus, a person with “leprosy” was ostracized from the community- family, friends and society- until the disorder was cleared up. In Jewish society that alone was not enough. Since any disease was considered, at least, officially, to be a sign of and punishment for sin, the afflicted one had to go to a priest and be declared both “cured” and “clean.” The priests functioned as health officers issuing a clean bill of health. Then, the person had to offer the prescribed sacrifice both in atonement for sin and thanksgiving for the cure. Only after that could he return to the camp and company of his fellows. Consequently, lepers tended to group together for solace and community. In such a state they were not particular whether one was a Jew or Gentile. Even Samaritans were allowed entrance into this sorry society.
In verse eleven, On the way to Jerusalem, Luke continually reminds his readers that Jesus is on his way to his death. Yet, that awareness does not prevent him from being compassionate, from healing others, from teaching all he wants and needs to. These episodes provide examples for his followers as to how they are to behave on their own way to death.
Samaria: Originally, this was the name of a city, the capital of Israel in the north. Later, it became the name of the whole surrounding region or province. In New Testament times it stretched from the Plain of Esdraelon-Jezreel in the hill country to the northern border of Judea.
Galilee: This was the name of the northern part of Palestine or present day Israel, surrounded by the Jordan River, the Plain of Esraelon, Mt. Carmel, Ptolemais, Tyre and Syria.
In verse twelve, Keeping their distance, clustered together, these ten lepers had to keep away from uninfected people for fear others would catch not only their disease but their “uncleanness,” that is, the sin that caused it. Diseases, indeed any violation of the law, made one ritually and religiously unclean, unfit to worship God in the assembly. Anyone who came into contact, even inadvertently, with an unclean person became unclean himself or herself. This would require a ritual of purification on that person’s part. Thus, it was in everyone’s interest to avoid each other “like the plague,” as we now say.
In verse thirteen, have mercy on us! Typically, lepers would beg for alms. They had no other means of sustenance. Such appeals would use this language. However, it seems they were begging Jesus for more then money, a cure.
In verse fourteen, “Go and show yourselves to the priests,” Jesus knew the law and that mere physical cure would not be enough for these men to return to their families. They would need to meet the law’s requirements of a clean bill of health by a priest and an offering of the appropriate sacrifice in order to be considered ritually clean, acceptable both to God and humans.
And as they went, they were made clean. Normally, Jesus would cure on the spot, directly and immediately. These cures happened after a delay and at a distance. The background for this story is clearly that of the cure of Naaman by washing seven times in the Jordan River. Naaman had to trust the word of the “man of God,” Elisha, and obey his instructions. The same is true here. Their going to the priests is a sign of their trust in Jesus’ word and their cure a sign of trust’s effect.
In verse fifteen, “When he saw that he was healed.” The details become fuzzy here. Probably, the Samaritan would have to go to a Samaritan priest. It is hard to imagine a Jewish priest having anything to do with a Samaritan. Moreover, it is not clear whether the realization came after or before presentation before any priest at all. Apparently, Luke wants to present this cure as an awakening, a heightening of consciousness, his understanding of prayer and the results of prayer, an opening of his faith eyes. He would be saying to his readers, including us, that miracles can happen over time, gradually, and not merely instantaneously. So, we should not ask questions of the text that the author does not intend to answer. Nor should we speculate that the man might not have really followed Jesus’ instructions to the letter if he did not, in fact, go to a priest but stopped in mid-journey and turned around and came back. When Luke gets fuzzy on details he wants his readers to stay fuzzy as well.
Returned, praising God with a loud voice, The point of the story is that he, and only he, returned to give thanks to the source of his cure, Jesus. We can presume that the other nine also realized that Jesus was the source of their cure, also. Yet, the fact that it did not occur in front of Jesus would allow them to start rationalizing that there was some other cause. Luke is not interested, however, in such speculation. The focus is now on the one grateful man. He uses the same means, his loud voce, the means he used to lament, to cry for joy, to now praise and thank God for grace.
In verse sixteen, he prostrated himself at Jesus feet and thanked him.” This act of prostration means that he recognizes Jesus as the agent of God, priests notwithstanding.
Thanked him: Only here is Jesus himself thanked. Elsewhere God is thanked. Luke wants to teach two things first, in thanking Jesus we thank God for Jesus is God; and second, whenever we thank the human agent of God’s grace we should realize that we are ultimately thanking God. Saying “thanks” to humans can also be a form of prayer to God.
He was a Samaritan. This would hit a Jew like a ton of bricks. Of all people, this one out of ten cured, the only one to show some class, was a hated Samaritan. A Jew would not miss the point.
In verse seventeen, where are the other nine? These Jews who should have known better, failed to apply the same energy in giving thanks as they did in begging for a favor. Luke clearly wants to teach a lesson here about thanking God after a favor has been granted. They were obedient to a point, but they failed in the end. Jesus commanded them to go and they did. He did not explicitly command them to return and give thanks, but he clearly expected it and they failed. Again, Luke wants to teach that the will of God is broader than just explicit commands. The Lord expects his followers to use their own wits to figure out what God would consider appropriate behavior in contexts for which there is no express law or commandment. If a Samaritan, unschooled in Jewish law, can do it, certainly a Jew, with all his benefit of education, can do it.
In verse eighteen, returned to give thanks to God. Luke puts on Jesus’ lips the point made above, namely, that thanking Jesus or any human agent or means of God’s grace, should be seen as also thanking God.
In verse nineteen, “Get up and go on your way.” This should be seen as saying the same thing Elisha said to Naaman when he dismissed him (2Kgs 5: 19) and said, “Go in peace.” It is both a farewell and an absolution. The man has no real need for another priest or ritual of purification.
“Your faith has made you well.” This sentence should not be too tightly parsed. Of course, it is Jesus who saves, but not without trusting in him. So, it is not any faith, but faith in him. Jesus here equates the man’s gratitude, his response to what Jesus did for him, with faith and salvation. Gratitude is a necessary part of faith. Because the Samaritan had it and expressed it he was not merely cured physically, a cure the benefits of which would cease at death, he was saved forever. Not so the other nine.
Sermon
All ten lepers had some level of faith. They all obeyed Jesus’ word and all journeyed toward their given goal. Perhaps they were disappointed that Jesus or God did not answer their prayer then and there on the spot. Nonetheless, they all went off as told. On the way, something happened. They realized they were cured. They got what they asked for and wanted. If we can presume, the story is mute on the point- and so it isn’t the point, that they reached the priests and got their “clean” bill of health, then they could and did return to human society and live a “normal” life again. Yet, that is all they got and no more.
Jesus wants to do immensely more for us than cure our physical ills. He wants to give us a relationship with him that will not only last forever but will give us much more than “normal” life. Apparently nine out of ten people are willing to settle for less than that. They are interested only in this life, its comforts and its pleasures. It would not occur to them to pray for anything other than the tangible and visible realities, the only ones they know. What they got, physical cure, was miraculous and it was good. However, it is not really good enough.
How do we get that “more?” The tenth man, one outside the “faith,” certainly undeserving, the one who should not have been cured in the first place, after all, he was a Samaritan, not “one of us”, he did not stop at the physical change. He went deeper into the reality of his cure and found gratitude to be so overwhelming that it motivated his behavior from that moment on. Christian ethics is simply gratitude, responding to life and its challenges in the spirit that life is a gift. He returned to the source of God’s many blessings, to Jesus, to give thanks. Is the Lord to be outdone by a Samaritan or anyone else in generosity? Gratitude, after all, is a generous spirit. So, the Lord, having given him so much already, gives him more, “the more,” that which we are all looking for. He gives him salvation. He calls his act of gratitude “faith,” the broader vision that enables one to really see into reality, to see it as it really is. Jesus said to him, and says to us, that faith will give us cures beyond the physical. It will heal our skin disorders- too thin-skinned or too thick-skinned, too touchy, too itchy-, our blindness-spiritual blindness, our deafness and our hardness of the, heart.
The others missed the chance to respond to God’s grace, grace as opportunity. They responded to his commands and received what they hoped and asked for. But, they merely received grace, they did not respond to grace, did not seize the opportune moment to go beyond. This Samaritan’s example teaches us that conscious thanksgiving- constantly recalling God’s past graces- fuels faith. It brings us to a higher level or takes us further into a mutual relationship where we savor and enjoy grace.
This is an example of what we might call “horizontal prayer,” prayer prayed on the horizontal plane of life. “Vertical prayer” is praying to God directly, God who is above and beyond us, taking us to his heights. “Horizontal prayer is addressing God within us, within our world and within others. The grateful leper was addressing God through the human Jesus, on the level he experienced God. Just as God rather rarely communicates with humans vertically or directly from above, but rather prefers to communicate with us through human beings and human experiences, so also our prayer is more often horizontal than vertical. We, like God, use human agents and agencies to speak to him, speaking through them to him, just as he used the human being Jesus to speak to us through him. Only, with God, Jesus is God, not merely a human. Every time we praise or thank another person we should also recognize that we are praising and thanking God through that person, or object or event, since it is all by God’s gracious willing it that good things happen to us, to others and to our world.
All Christian ethics is not obedience to law but gratitude, responding with our lives to the gracious love of God for his gift of physical life, but more so, for his gift of eternal life.
Physical health alone is good, but not good enough to bring happiness in its wake.
It is not enough to say thanks; one must give it, indeed, live it.
We deprive ourselves about 90% of the time of fully enjoying God’s grace by neglecting to be grateful.
“Skin” Disorders, Jesus cured the ten lepers long ago, but the story has been preserved as a metaphor for any “skin” disorders we might have, ranging from being too thick-skinned to being too thin-skinned, too dense or too touchy. We might have inherited these disorders from our family heritage or we might have acquired them through a life of dysfunctional reactions to situations that scared us or hurt us. However, we have arrived at them, we all have a measure of “skin” disorder in our personality make-up. Only Jesus can cure these and only if we ask him and then trust his power to do so. That means following his prescription and taking our “medicine,” as required. Like any medicine, it must be taken in doses, over a period of time, and our behavior has to change. That’s about as far as the metaphor goes, for really the “medicine” Jesus prescribes is really a large and steady dose of gratitude for life as a gift, even gratitude for the challenges of life seen under the light of gratitude as opportunities for even stronger health. Physical health is a metaphor for total health, personal health, wholeness. If our edges, our outer layers, our skins, are not adequately clean, free from the aftereffects of sin, and lubricated, with the “oil” of the Holy Spirit, then either the grace of God cannot get inside or the inside grace of God cannot get out. How often do we hear a gruff and emotionally distant person described as “really loving but unable to show it,” or a very sensitive person, thin-skinned, as “wearing his heart on his sleeve”? These observations really describe disorders rather than compliments. A daily dose and steady diet of conscious, expressed gratitude, is the antidote for these “skin” disorders. It does not necessarily happen immediately, but like the case of the ten lepers, occurs over time and at a distance from the original moment of grace. Yet, for that very reason it has a greater chance of being longer lasting than an instantaneous cure.
Gratitude-deprived. Maybe as much as 90% of people deprive themselves of the joy, peace and confidence gratitude brings and as much as 90% of the time of people who are occasionally grateful, and that has to include all of us, deprive themselves of the same benefits. Even though gratitude to God for all his graces and blessings seems at first to be saying something to God or better, doing something for God, in his name, gratitude is really more beneficial to the person showing it, sharing it, giving it, living it. If more of us, and all of us more of time, were aware of life and all its components, especially the people in our lives, and were more consciously grateful, this world would be a better place, indeed a sin-deprived place. Jesus equated gratitude with faith, the awareness that all comes from God, that all depend on God and that God is gracious. The same is true of the attitude of gratitude. When our consciousness is alive with God, when he is at the center of our consciousness, our experience of life changes and we share in his quality of life. The other nine lepers obeyed the “law” Jesus gave them, but did not penetrate into the purpose for which he gave it. Only one out of ten got the point and returned to give thanks. Jesus then said to him that he could “stand up and go.” We presume, though are not specifically told, that chose to go with Jesus rather than return to the crowd and its way. We are not told because we are to put ourselves into this story and decide which way we will go and whether we will accept the full cure of Jesus, available only if we have gratitude for what he has already done or whether we will settle only for physical cures and comforts. Amen.
