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October 12, 2008 sermon

A Spectacle
(Joel 2: 21-24; 26-27; Luke 17: 11-19)

Reverend Minister Sally Harris

O Generous One may we be grateful for your abundance. And when we do not see it , when we can not hear it, where we do not perceive it: Astonish us into gratitude that we may be your Presence in the world. Amen

How many of you have heard the news these last couple of weeks? How many of us have been shocked by this spectacle of greed that has created a global economic crisis? It seems to be a tough week to be thankful. A tough week to see any abundance except an abundance of uncertainty and fear. It’s a tough week of economic crisis and election fatigue. A tough week to take the news and the Bible and offer not only a word of hope but a praise of thanksgiving. I don’t know how the economics and the elections are affecting you. I do know that both economics and elections need to be linked with our faith and with our worship. I also know that hope is found in gratefulness. Gratefulness - great fullness - is the full response of the human heart to all that is given to us even in times of uncertainty and fear. Gratefulness opens our eyes. Gratefulness reminds us, in fact, to whom our very life belongs.

Perhaps that is the point of the gospel writer in the story of Jesus and the healing of the ten lepers. Leprosy, like poverty was a dreaded but common affliction in the days of Jesus. So common, in fact, that lepers had a prescribed social role, and a religious one too. The book of Leviticus spends two whole chapters teaching priests how to diagnose diseases of the skin, how to pronounce lepers ritually unclean, how to perform rites of purification should they be healed. As for the lepers: The one who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his lip and cry, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean; he shall dwell alone in a habitation outside the camp. (Lev. 13: 45-46)

Leprosy, like poverty, was not seen, however, as a punishment from sin. It was acknowledged as an incomprehensible act of God, which made it even more frightening. If there was nothing you did to deserve leprosy then it followed that there was nothing you could do to avoid it, and so lepers were shunned – because their disease was contagious, certainly, but it was more than that. It was their pain, their loneliness, their unspeakable fear no one wanted to catch, and so they were kept at a distance, barred from the religious community and declared unworthy of God. They were the unclean outsiders, not to be mistaken as having anything in common with the healthy insiders. You see, they lived over there; we lived over here. We are not like them. God knows we feel sorry for them – love the sinner, hate the disease.

The lepers, like the poor themselves challenged none of this. They could not work, after all, and they depended upon the assistance of the insiders for their livelihood. So they dressed as they were told, and spoke as they were told, and did not cross over the line that had been drawn to separate them from those unblemished. They were obedient. They followed their orders, and even when Jesus, that renowned healer of lepers, came to town they did not break rank. They stood at the proper distance and said the proper things. Jesus! Help us! Have mercy on us! So Jesus looked at them and saw what anyone could see, that they were eaten up with leprosy and needed all the mercy they could get. And Jesus said, Do what the law requires of all those who are healed. Go, and let the priests check out your sores. There was no talk of faith, just an order and the ten lepers disappeared as obediently as they had appeared in the first place. None of them asked why, but there was only one reason to go see the priest and that was to receive a diagnosis, a verdict: clean or unclean, insider or out, member of the community or beggar on the outskirts of town. None of them asked why, but as they went to do as they were told they were cleansed – the scabs went away, the color returned, the feeling came back into limbs that had been numb for years. And nine went on to do as they were told, to have the priests in Jerusalem certify their cures and restore them to society.

But one did not do as she was told. One, when he saw that he was healed, cried out, turned back, and did not rest until he lay on his face in the dirt at Jesus’ feet, praising God and giving thanks. He made a spectacle of himself, all the more so once he was recognized as a Samaritan, a believer in the Torah as far as he was concerned, but a Gentile and foreigner as far as the house of David was concerned. He was in fact a double outsider – once by virtue of his leprosy and twice by virtue of his non-Jewish blood – a double loser lying at the feet of Jesus and thanking God as if God were somehow present in this One, somehow revealed in the presence of this healer. Yes this one was one of the unclean who saw what the clean could not see, and who refused to be separated from that which gave life.

It is hard to say what affect the tenth leper’s response had on Jesus. Something happened, because all of a sudden Jesus started asking questions: Weren’t there ten lepers here a minute ago? Where are the other nine? Is this foreigner the only one who knows how to say thank you? And then he turned to the thankful healed leper and said: Get up and go on your way. Your faith has made you whole. Once you stop to think about it, this is all very odd. Didn’t Jesus tell all ten to go show themselves to the priests? And didn’t nine do what they were told? Didn’t this one, in fact, not do what she was told, and even flaunt her disobedience with a great sloppy show of emotion? And weren’t all ten healed?

Then how come this one got special treatment, got told it was her faith that had made her well? Weren’t all ten made well? What is going on here?

Ten were healed of their skin disease; only one experienced wholeness. Ten were declared clean and restored to society; only one was said to have faith. Ten set out for Jerusalem as they were told; only one turned back to the Giver instead. Ten were cured; only one was transformed. Nine behaved like good lepers, good Jews; only one, a double loser, behaved like one in love. Only one responded with gratefulness – great fullness - only one gave a full response – only one loved in return.

The church has been good at knowing how to be obedient to their rules but not so good at knowing how to be in love with their God. It is not something one can command from oneself or another. And so we end up doing and promoting those things we can learn - like read and study the Bible or say our prayers or pay our pledge. And there is nothing wrong with that, nothing at all. In fact it’s tough just finding time and space to do those kind of steady, law-abiding discipleship things. And it has been the folks faithful to those tasks that have kept the great ship of the church afloat for thousands of years. I understand the obedience of those nine lepers but it is the tenth leper who intrigues me. It is the outsider, the double loser, who captures my imagination – the one whose disease I fear, whose passion and poverty challenges me, whom I may not see at all because this is the one who does not need a priest to certify the cure.

Where are the nine? Jesus asks, but I know where they are. Where is the tenth leper? That is what I want to know. Where is the one who follows her heart instead of instructions, who accepted his life as a gift and gave it back again, whose thanksgiving rose up from somewhere so deep inside of her that it turned that one completely around, changed that healed leper’s direction, led that one to Jesus, made that thankful, emotional outsider not only well but whole? Where is the disorderly one who failed to go along with the crowd, the impulsive, spontaneous one who fell on his face in the dirt, the passionate one who loved God so much that obedience and proper decorum was beside the point. Where did that one go?

And if we knew, would we likely go after that one? I don’t know. It is safer here with the nine who know the rules. Who knows, who does what, when. Those are the ones upon whom the institution depends. But the missing ones, the ones who turn back, the spontaneous, outrageous, in-love-with God ones.

where are they? Who are they? Who are they with? What do they know that we don’t know? What do they know about living in uncertain times and fearful times and yet remain open… Yet still be open enough for miraculous living? The nine have found their way back to the inside. But where for the love of God, is the one with great fullness? The one in love, in gratitude for all that is given. Can we be that one? Do we dare be that full? That grateful? Even in these times? And so we come to pray, to pray to Christ, the healer, for how can we fail to be restored to gratefulness when reached by love that never ends?

[resource: Barbara B. Taylor]

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