Luke 17:11-19
“No One is an Outcast”
Leprosy was the most terrible disease in Jesus’ day.
The leper was considered utterly unclean—physically and spiritually.
A leper couldn’t approach within six feet of any person, including family members, and as Leviticus chapter 13 reads: “The person with such an infectious disease must wear torn clothes, let his hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of his face and cry out, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ As long as he has the infection he remains unclean. He must live outside the camp.”
Lepers were the outcasts!
They were totally ostracized from society.
Just try and imagine the anguish and the heartbreak of the leper…
…being completely cut off from family and friends and society.
Imagine the emotional and mental pain.
Let’s ask ourselves: “Who are the lepers in today’s society?”
Who are the outcasts?
I’m sure we can think of many.
There are those who are outcasts in schools and on playgrounds because they just can’t quite fit-in with the other children.
There are those who are outcast and ostracized because they are living with certain diseases like HIV and AIDS.
These people are often cut-off not only from society…
…but also by family members, friends, and in some cases—the Church!!!
There are also those who are outcast and ostracized because they have mental disabilities.
And these mental illnesses have names like: schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, and others.
These illnesses are biologically-based conditions that involve biochemical imbalances in the brain.
Mental illnesses are not caused by a lack of faith, a secret unconfessed sin, parenting styles, or a curse from God.
As a matter of fact, one out of every four families has a person dealing with mental illness.
So there is a pretty good chance that many of us know someone or are ourselves dealing with some of these problems.
Sadly, like leprosy in Jesus’ day, there is still a social stigma attached to these afflictions.
People with mental illness are often treated like outcastes, annoyances, and this only makes things worse…
…this is one of the reasons that suicide runs so rampant.
So where can folks with mental illnesses run?
To the Church?
To Parkview United Methodist Church?
Let’s hope and pray that they can, because as we see in our Gospel lesson for this morning—Jesus does not ostracize anybody!!!
We see in verse 11 that Jesus was in the middle of a journey.
He could have been heading for an important meeting or He could have been tired and exhausted—with no time for interruptions…but out of desperation the lepers interrupted Him anyway.
“They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, ‘Jesus, Master, have pity on us!’”
Notice that within these ten outcasts were a mixture of both Jew and Gentile. At least one of them was a Samaritan.
Normally Jews did not associate with Samaritans, but leprosy broke down these social barriers while creating new ones.
Isn’t it interesting how tragedy and adversity can bring people together?…
…an earthquake, hurricane, fire, flood, or some terrible thing like 9-11 can reach across those many barriers that, in good times, separate us.
Maybe that’s one of the blessings God gives us, a way of helping us to figure out this puzzle of life, when we are devastated by some traumatic events.
The normal barriers of race or creed or class or ethnic origin or mental stability, that we artificially and demonically build, God erases when we no longer have the luxury to just focus on them.
I think this says to us loudly to get rid of these perverse prejudices and hatreds we somehow learn over the years.
That is not the way God would have us see each other.
Like those lepers, we are all in need of God’s mercy and salvation.
This should bring us together as one people who cry out in one voice: “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!”
And that’s exactly what Jesus did for the lepers and that’s exactly what Jesus does for us: He has pity on us.
And this is exactly what we are to have for each other, pity, concern, empathy, kindness, love.
I heard a story about a church that decided to rent out the town square for the day and throw a picnic for the community.
They decided that this would be a great evangelical out-reach to their neighbors—a wonderful way to get to know them, invite them to church, invite them to accept Christ as Savior.
As it turned out a good number of folks did turn out for the affair….but….they weren’t the people, or shall I say the “kind” of people that the church had envisioned.
Many of the people who responded to the church’s invitation for fellowship were from the lower socio-economic part of town.
The majority were of a different race, many were not dressed in clean clothing, some had mental disabilities which got on the nerves of the church folks who were hosting the picnic.
The people who showed up for the picnic were nice enough, that wasn’t the problem.
The problem was that they didn’t have any money, their skin was of a different color, and many of them had mental handicaps which just ruined all the fun!
The guests turned out to be annoying people that this church didn’t want anything to do with, and this was the last time they acted on this brilliant evangelical idea!!!
What a shame.
God is very strong in His call upon us to care for those who are marginalized or outcast.
God has a clear concern for classes of people like aliens, widows, and orphans—and it’s not much of a stretch to add to this list the mentally ill.
These are people God values and whom God’s people are supposed to value as well.
As Christians, we are called to imitate God, and God through the prophet Isaiah tells us that we should: “…learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”
Again and again in the New Testament Jesus reaches out to those who are considered marginal, even sinful, in His world.
And, as Christians, we must remember that “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.”
As Christians, we are urged to “put on Christ” or as Philippians instructs us: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”
We are called to see others and respond to others as Jesus Himself would, to have the same mind or attitude toward other human beings.
Many times we claim to want to reach out to the marginalized, to the mentally ill, to the poor, but we don’t want to have to touch them…or we don’t want them touching us or coming too close to us….
…and we certainly don’t want them talking to us, wanting to get to know us, wanting to become our friends.
The Book of Genesis explains that humankind was created in the image of God.
This means that we are all manifestations of the divine, the sacred.
And as long as the marginalized, as long as people living with mental illness are forced to be in exile from the spiritual community—which is the Church—an aspect of God, an aspect of the sacred is in exile as well.
The presence of God cannot fully dwell in a church that has no place for people with mental illnesses; we cannot be whole when a part of the community is absent or invisible.
So there’s actually a mutual need for healing here…
…people living with mental illness need healing and the church needs healing in the sense that we need to move toward wholeness!
The people I have come to know who are living with mental illness have the same essential longings as most people.
They long to feel welcome, they long to have a sense of belonging, and many of them long to live within the loving community of faith which God calls the Church.
Jesus Christ is the Kingdom of God made Flesh, and Jesus Christ made it very clear that no one is an outcast in God’s kingdom.
We are called to represent Christ’s body on this earth…
…we are to be the kingdom of God living on this earth…
…and if we are going to actually live up to this highest of callings—then no one is an outcast at Parkview United Methodist Church.
We are all of equal value, and we are all to have equal concern for one another.
There is so much healing to be done here in our community.
Those whose minds are distorted by hate, those whose lives are paralyzed by guilt, those who have become totally possessed by an addiction, those who suffer a lack of self-worth, those who suffer from depression or any other mental illness—there are many who stand at our village gate and cry out: “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!”
We can help.
We can make a dramatic difference in their lives with the love of Christ flowing through us to them.
Not everyone will return to give thanks.
In fact, the percentage might be about one-in-ten here as it was when Christ healed the ten lepers.
But we are called to continue our ministry of compassion anyway.
May Jesus say to all of us today: “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”
Let us pray: O Lord, you have searched us and known us. You know when we sit down and when we rise up, and You know our innermost thoughts. So guide us along this journey of faith to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil, to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen, our Judge and our Hope. In life, in death, in life beyond death, God You are with us. We are not alone. Thanks be to God. Amen.
