Pentecost 19

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Pentecost 19
PROPER: 23C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: October 11, 1998

TEXT: Luke 17:11-19 - The Ten Lepers & Jesus
The he said to hom, "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well."

ISSUE: Several different approaches can be taken with this story. Yet, it seems to be essentially about how Jesus expands boundaries to include those who are often excluded. This is the a significant part of the Good News. The leprous Samaritan outcast is included into God's Kingdom through the healing Christ Jesus as this man comes to him in faith. The story is also one in which a man in great gratitude for his acceptance gives thanks and praises God. The story is insightful for the church today, and for the love expressed by the inclusiveness of Jesus. Through him we are healed for service.
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Ten lepers come to Jesus asking for mercy and healing. He sends them to the priest and Temple to show themselves, and they find that on the way they are cured. Of the ten lepers only one returns, and he is a Samaritan, to give thanks prostrating himself on the ground as a sign of his great humility. Many of us have learned and deduced, perhaps, that this story is one about the appropriateness of giving thanks, especially to God his his blessings. Truly, I think that that is one of the issues important to this story. We may assume that more often than not, like the nine healed lepers, we and others forget to express our deep gratitude to God for many of his blessing. Being thankful expresses our deep gratitude for being alive and expieriencing all the wonders of the world and the universe. What a gift it is to be aware of this marvelous creation. Without gratitude and wonder we can become a very uninteresting, and even grumpy lot of people. So indeed the story reminds us to be grateful to God for his many blessings.
This story is also one which attempts to say who Jesus is so far as Luke and the early chruch is concerned. Elisha who had been one of Israel's great prophets had healed Naaman, a foreigner Syrian general, of leprosy. Naaman returns to Elisha to offer him a gift, which Naaman will not accept. But Naaman declares there is no other God by the God of Israel, and he takes earth from Israel back to his homeland. (It was believed that God could only be worshipped on his own homeland. See 2 Kings 5 f) So the story is one which associates Jesus with one of the great prophets of Israel as the early church attempted to proclaim Jesus as a unique new prophet and messianic figure who is of the true God of Israel.
What really seems to be at the heart of this story of Jesus healing the Ten Lepers is the issue of expanding the borders of acceptance. The first clue is given when Luke writes: On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going though the region between Samaria and Galilee." He is skirting along strange boundaries, an unsusual way to Jerusalem. Some background is important to the deepest appreciation of the story. First of all the leprosy here was proably not Hansen's Disease. Leprosy of this type was not common to this area at the time. Leprosy in this area was any time of skin diseases, like psoriasis. Any skin irritation that was flaky, scaly, oozing was considered to be a form of leprosy. The fear of it was not that it was something to be caught, but rather it was considered an impurity, dirty, a pollution. Even a house could get leprosy, if there was mildew or some kind of deteriorating fungus on its wall. The skin, the wall of a house was a barrior or a border between the person and the outside world. Without a proper boundary, the person was subject to the pollution of the world or could pollute other by excretions. Women have their menses were considered unclean. A person who crossed the border from a foreign land when entering Israel would shake the dust off his feet. Israel was holy, was to be kept holy. Boundaries were very important. The marriage of Israelites to foreign women as various time in their history was forbidden. In the books of Ezra 10 and Nehemiah 9, Israelites who had married foreign women were called upon to divorce them and send them back to their home land back across the borders, for they were polluting and unclean. (Note that the Book of Ruth disputes, read today, disputes the exclusion of foreigners, as Ruth becomes a devoted Israelite, and the great grandmother of King David.)
The Book of Leviticus contains many purity laws. Marriage laws protected the boundaries of society; purity laws protected the homan body boundardes. All these laws were designed to ensure that Israel would remain "holy as the Lord is holy," and is a recurring theme in Leviticus (11:44). Lepers were not allowed to enter the Jerusalem Temple, for they were unclean. They were required to cry out whenever near other people, "Unclean, I am unclean." They had to keep themselves separated, placing a boundary between themselves and others so as not to pollute or spread their uncleaness.
Ten lepers come to Jesus begging for mercy, healing, so that they could be restored to the community. The requirement was that if their skin disease healed or went into a remission, they would show themselves to the priest to be declared clean, and then would enter the Temple to offer the appropriate sacrifices. Jesus sends the Ten to the priest. By the time them arrive they are healed. Since one of the Ten is a Samaritan, because he is a Samaritan he cannot go to a Judean priest, and neither can he enter the Temple. He is an outsider and Jews and Samaritans did not mix. He can only return to Jesus who he is declaring to be his new priest and Temple. He returns in great thanksgiving. Do you see what Jesus has done? He has enlarged the boundaries of acceptance. The leper, that is the unclean and impure polluted one becomes embraced and included. He is also accepting of the hated and alienated Samaritans.
The other nine lepers were a part of the Judean "in-group." They could show themselves to the priest and go into the Temple. There is no reason real for them to return to Jesus to give thanks. They simply saw Jesus as an equal, just another healer. You didn't thank your equals in these days you simply repaid them. They could do that anytime. The Samaritan's thanks meant he could not repay Jesus, and all he can do is give thanks and praise God. Jesus in turn praises him for his faithfulness, for his loyalty in returning to adore the Lord of his life. In this story, the Samaritan leper is not just cleansed, cured, and restored. He is made whole and fully, totally well in his faithfulness. He is not merely cured of his disease but has become fully aware of who is the Lord of his life.
What do we see in all of this? Well certainly the appropriateness of being thankful to God. We also see once again how Jesus is always pushing back, and pushing away the boundaries that separate and exclude people from God and from one another. The Samaritan, an hated alien becomes acceptable and included into the compassion of God expressed in Jesus Christ. Incidentally, it is believed that a very large population of the Samaritan Jews became Christians in the early church. The story tells just that Jesus is the truly great healyer, high priest and prophet of God. It calls for faithful turning to him to be true, genuine, faithful, loyal compatriots with him pushing back the boundaries that separate us from one another, and which makes us uniquely aware of his lordship in our lives.
It is sufficient for us at times just to continue do the same old things that are expected of us, as the nine lepers do in the story. Churches often surround themselves with fences, and in several instances that I know with barbed wire. Others set up less conspicuous barriers by subtle forms of exclusion that are not welcoming and all encompassing. Sometimes just being or trying to be invisible and unobtrusive in the community is a form of exclusion and non-welcoming behavior. But the Samaritan leper is acutely aware of his alienation, and his sickness. He makes the loyal and concerted effort to return to the Lord of his life in thanksgiving and we would assume servanthood. He is healed for service. All around us are broken lives and alienated people. There are people isolated from us for a variety of reasons. There are those separated by race and a culture and world steeped in racisim. There are handicapped, physically challenged people who are separated from one another because physical boundaries that keep us apart, not to mention that we are sometimes strangely threatened by people who are different from us. There are people who are allowed to be separated and forgotten because of the age and failing abilities. They become forgotten and separated. There are those who feel alienated and left out by being divorced, or by having some sense of failure among the so called "better" or more righteous people. We struggle as well in the church with the acceptance of gay and lesbian people in our society that are often ostracized and condemned rather than being met with the hope of finding ways to remove barriers that separate us, and ways that open dialogue and understanding. The Gospel of Jesus, the Good News is a matter of the constant expression of God's gracious outpouring of his love that goes beyond and through the barriers of sin and alienation that have separated people from him and one another.
No one of us is perfect; all have had their various forms of spiritual leprosy. It is likely that each of us have that part of ourselves hidden away that we would never want others to know. There are aspects of us that we perceive as unworthy and untouchable, and from which we would have others keep their distance. Yet through the greatest separations and boundaries comes the forgiving love of God. For that we can be and must be truly grateful. Returning to Christ Jesus in thanksgiving and healing in devoted loyalty makes us truly his compatriots, disciples, and friends. People who seek the healing are worthy of it.
Now a concluding note. Jesus reportedly says to the healed tenth leper, "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well." There may well be people who having had serious illness who have prayed for a cure that has not come. They may wonder if their faith is not great enough. We all know that not every disease is cured, inspite of our best efforts at prayer and trying to be loyal to God in and through Christ. The point of so many of the healings of Jesus does not lie in the curing of a person, but in that all people in their brokeness are restored always to the grace, mercy, love and compassion of God. Many folk with serious diseases and disabilities express a profound faith and good spirit just in being at one with God in Christ. They are often a real witness in terms of the way in which they accept their illness and maintain a beautifully warm and good spirit. Lazurus who is raised from the dead eventually dies. For all we know the tenth leper's leprosy may have returned. All we know is that in loyalty and gratitude he comes to Christ and finds a wholeness and acceptance. We all have those moments of needing to look to Christ for healing, and knowing full well he accepts, loves and restores us, for all the barriers that separate us from the love of God have been pushed back, and we may enter and know we belong in the Kingdom of God.