Lessons In Gratitude
Jeremiah 29:1, 4 - 7
Luke 17:11 - 19
Text: "Why is this foreigner the only one who came back to give thanks
to God?" . . . Luke 17:18
While I have never seen a real leper, I have read several stories about them. From those stories and articles I can visualize lepers in my mind. The characters my creative conscience constructs are older men with sores seeping and scaly skin horribly discolored. Their hair is long and tangled. Their scent is rank. Their deathly disease severely alters the ordinary tasks of life like walking and talking. In my mind, these are the characteristics of a leper. And, no matter how lepers appear, sound, or smell, they are always outcasts - despised, feared, and rejected by the rest of society.
In this country we don't have leprosy as a common disease, but we have lepers all around us. They are our outcasts. The ones our society either tries to ignore or just doesn't know what to do with. They are illegal aliens. They are the homeless we see in the city, laying on top of the metal sidewalk vent, where steam escapes and provides warmth. We see beggars and winos and wonder, "If only they didn't spend so much money on cigarettes and cheap wine, perhaps they wouldn't have to beg." These people are like lepers. They are kept at arms length at the fringe of society. We fear their scent, loathe their touch, and avoid their communication. We desire to keep a boundary between them and us, seldom doing anything to help them, let alone say "hello" to them. These are the modern day lepers - homeless men and women who struggle to survive in a society that often rejects them and refuses to offer help.
You see, the barriers we put up to protect ourselves, essentially serve to create lepers around us - economic lepers, illegal alien lepers, sexual orientation lepers, persons of color lepers, age lepers, and the list could go on and on.
But before I get to preaching too much, let's look at the Gospel Lesson.
In today's text, Jesus is leaving the region of Galilee in northern Palestine or Israel on his way to Jerusalem by taking a most peculiar route; it is one that goes through the despised area called Samaria, home of the Samaritans, enemies of faithful Jews. And out there in foreign territory Jesus meets a gang of lepers, outcasts because of their terribly disfiguring skin disease.
Jesus meets these lepers on his way into a village. As outcasts they had to stay outside the village. The book of Leviticus tells us a couple of things about the lepers. First, they were to be outcasts. They probably begged and foraged at the town dump on the outskirts of the city. Then as now, we tend to put those who are terribly disfigured, those who are afflicted in body or mind, out of sight and out of mind. That's what they did with lepers. To be a leper was not only to suffer physical pain but psychological, social, and spiritual pain as well.
Secondly, the ten lepers probably bellowed out at Jesus. The book of Leviticus prescribed that they announce, in a loud voice, "Unclean! Unclean!" whenever they neared other people (Lev 13:45). They call out to Jesus by name addressing him as "Master," begging him for healing.
And "Poof!" Jesus just speaks the word telling them to go to the priests and "show themselves." That's a third thing about the outcasts, they can't be certified as healed - and therefore be restored to a normal place in society - until the priest validates it. And they go and do as Jesus tells them. After all when you have lived your life as an outcast your last hope is a healing miracle worker from Galilee, you will grasp at anything. But a funny thing happens on the way to the priests - they notice that they are healed! The priests would certify that these once unclean were now clean.
Jesus has broken a biblical boundary. He has healed the outcasts. He has reached out to those social outcasts who were deemed to be untouchable. He has had compassion on those whom everyone else avoided.
This is not entirely unlike our lesson from Jeremiah that has the prophet tell the exiles from Israel that they are to pray for their Babylonian oppressors and to seek the "welfare of the city, to marry, raise a family" in the city that is holding them captive - the home of the enemy. Here is a God who is merciful even to those who do not show mercy, even to the foreigner. I don't know if the Revised Common Lectionary paired these two texts together to make that point, but I think it works.
How amazing it is that the Bible keeps reminding the church that there is a "wideness in God's mercy, like the wideness of the sea," as the old hymn puts it. We make the boundaries; Jesus breaks the boundaries. If we are to be with Jesus, we must go with him as he moves out to the margins.
But the story doesn't end there. One of the lepers returns to give thanks. And Jesus marvels. There may have been good reasons for the other nine not returning; after all, the nine are only doing what Jesus told them to do - they were going to the priests to have their healing validated. But one leper returned, overflowing with gratitude and praise for Jesus. Unlike the other nine that leper was a Samaritan. And Jesus marvels at the gratitude of this "foreigner."
One in ten practiced gratitude. One came back to say thank you for the gift of healing. And it was the leper who was an outcast not only because of disease, but because of his culture. He was a Samaritan. He is a "stranger" or "one of another race." The one who is most tangential is the one who returns and offers thanks. The one who is most ostracized and ignored by society becomes central to the story about God's power and grace.
This Gospel finds Jesus' critics charging, "This man receives sinners and eats with them." Earlier, a sinful woman comes in to a meal (open only to men) where Jesus is present and falls all over Jesus, lets down her hair, and almost worships him because he has forgiven her sin. And the insiders are shocked at his treatment of her, this sinful outsider. Earlier he told a story about an unfortunate man who is beaten and left nearly dead in a ditch. No righteous insider helped the man, only an outsider, a Samaritan.
And maybe Jesus is making a point, not the about ungrateful lepers, but maybe he is making a point about us, the insiders. We have been given so much. But when you are an insider, one of the "family," you tend to expect things and what was once a gift becomes a right. And who gives thanks for their rights?
What are we, the insiders; what are we supposed to learn from these Samaritans, these outsiders? What is Jesus trying to teach us this day about our boundaries and His love?
We speak of the need to convert others to Christ. But today we need to pay attention to who got converted in this story of Jesus and the lepers. Was it the man who showed such gratitude to Jesus for being healed, or was it the followers of Jesus (us!) who were converted into a new understanding of the wide reach of Jesus' love?
Such a conversion can be risky. Walter Brueggemann reminds us that "in a culture-bound church such as most of the North American churches are, our preferred strategy for evangelism," says Walter Brueggemann, "is to invite people in, with the winking assurance that 'everything' can remain the same." (Walter Brueggemann, Biblical Perspectives on Evangelism: Living in a Three-Storied Universe, Abingdon Press, 1993, pg. 130.) But when our boundaries are expanded by God's accepting and all embracing love, everything is not the same.
I had such a conversion. In 1981 I became pastor of the Lexington United Methodist Church. It was a church that was strong when I was the Youth minister there 9 years prior. But they had a difficult time in the intervening years - they had to sell an acre of land to be able to keep up with finances. Now it was opening it's building to a Korean United Methodist Church. I was very open. But about two years later I was shocked when some of the Korean lay leaders told me that they saw their church as a way to do mission in the United States! They saw the culture in this country as one that had lost its passion for the Gospel, one that no longer reached out to make new disciples. They were being a missionary to me!
How hard it is to learn lessons from those outside our culture, outside our normal boundaries!
Ten lepers are healed. Nine go on their way. One returns and gives thanks. . . . Hmmmmmmm . . .
One in ten, a tithe if you will. And where else do we encounter "tithes?"
What a segue!
We are about to embark on our Stewardship Campaign. The mechanics will be similar. But there is an important emphasis this year. I once came across a stewardship slogan - "From being givers, to being receivers who give!" This idea helps us to understand stewardship as a practice of gratitude. It is gratitude of which Cicero once said, "Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all." The Samaritan leper is a perfect example.
You see during the next few weeks you are going to here people give testimony about what the church means to them - and then why they give to the church! And from those people we will see gratitude practiced! These people give not because it is an obligation, not because there is a budget to support, but they give simply as a way of returning thanks to God who has given us all things. The fundamental motive is not to give - but the fundamental motive is that we give because of what we have received. In fact it is an awareness that we have received so much that we give thanks by sharing with others, knowing the God the giver will continue to bless us!
And we all know that is not the common culture in which we live. When it comes to returning gifts and thanksgiving to God, we are more often like the nine lepers who go on their way instead of like the one who returns and falls at the feet of Jesus.
As we move into Stewardship, and you begin to think about your support of this church with your pledges - not only of money, but also prayers, presence and service - remember you are being invited to be made whole, not just cured. You can practice gratitude by becoming a receiver who gives.
On my first visit to Nicaragua our delegation visited a community in the northern mountainous region. We ate lunch in Estelí, a village that suffered huge losses during the Sandinista Revolution. As we passed by a large Catholic church there was a statute of Jesus in front. We got out of the truck and went to look at it. The hands of the statute had been blown off by gun-fire, and it appeared that Jesus himself had taken quite a few body shots. But rather than take the statue down and try to restore it, someone had placed a sign on it that read simply. "Jesus has no hands. We must be the hands of Christ."
We are God's hands, God's heart, God's eyes, and God's ears. In the words of Paul, we are "special utensils, dedicated and useful to the owner of the house, ready for every good work." We can serve others. We can share what God has generously provided. We can tell what God has done in our lives. We can touch those individuals whom Jesus would touch - the poor, the rejected, the battered, and the bruised - the ones beyond our normal boundaries.
Healing is not the end. It is a beginning. It is a beginning of countless Hallelujahs and words of thanksgiving. Ten were healed. Nine went on their way. One returned. Are you the one? Get up and go on your way. Your faith has made you well. You now understand what it means to move from being only a giver, to being a receiver who gives.