Preached at Bethany Lutheran Church on Saturday evening, November 18 and Sunday morning, November 19.
Deuteronomy
8:7-18
Psalm
65
2
Corinthians 9:6-15
Luke
17:11-19
When
Pastor Elaina gave me the readings for this weekend,
I thought I knew the story of the Ten Lepers really well. It’s in a
beautiful illustrated volume of Bible Stories for Children that was
given to our family for Blaise’s baptism, and I’ve read that
version aloud many times over the past four years. But of course, the
authors chose to simplify the story for their audience to keep the
focus on the importance of saying Thank You to Jesus for your
blessings. So as it turns out, there was a key detail left out: the
fact that the former leper who returned to give thanks is a
Samaritan.
There’s
something about Jesus and Samaritans that keeps popping up, over and
over in the Gospels. Today,
when the phrase “good Samaritan” has come to be synonymous with
“helpful passerby,” it’s easy to overlook how shocking this
former leper’s ethnicity would have been, because for the original
audience, a
“good
Samaritan” would probably have been considered an oxymoron. A
Samaritan role model? Inconceivable!
It’s
not just that Samaritans were foreign. In fact, Samaritans were
actually descended from from the tribes that had been conquered by
the Assyrians. No, they were also heretics—they claimed to worship
the same god, but they didn’t do it in the “right way”—they
worshiped on Mt. Gerazim instead of at the Temple in Jerusalem, and 2
Kings claims that their worship had become corrupted by the worship
of other gods as well. Tensions erupted a little over a hundred years
before Jesus’s birth, when the Jews destroyed the Samaritan temple,
and then again around the time of his birth, when the Samaritans
defiled the Jewish temple with human bones.
So
for Jesus’s contemporaries, when they thought of their neighbors in
Samaria, there was disgust, there was anger, there was fear. Everyone
has those areas, of course—the parts of town, or the next town
over, where you don’t go, where you lock your doors if there’s no
way to avoid going through it, where you certainly wouldn’t let
your kids go for an event. Those countries where you would never go
for vacation, or let your kid go backpacking or do a study abroad.
The sort of places where the only Americans who do visit are
associated with the military in some way. And if the people from
those areas come here, they are often looked at with suspicion,
treated with caution or even hostility. For Jesus’s community,
that neighborhood was Samaria.
So
note that nine of the lepers are doing exactly what they’re
supposed to do—go to the priest to fulfill the requirements of the
law. In Leviticus, God directs people who have been cured of leprosy
or other skin diseases to go to the priest to be officially declared
clean by means of a special sacrificial ceremony. I looked it up—it’s
eight days long! And finally, once that’s done, the person who has
been healed can officially rejoin their community. So these nine
lepers already have plenty to do! Besides, Jesus didn’t tell them
to be sure to send a thank you note, or anything like that.
But
meanwhile, as you might expect, the tenth, the Samaritan, the
foreigner from an enemy nation, ISN’T following the directions.
Instead,
he’s overwhelmed with gratitude, so he ignores the rules and the
eight-day ceremony and runs back in the opposite direction from where
Jesus told him to go.
He’s
the one who gets it right—or rather, he’s the one who makes the
others look bad. I’m imagining Jesus’s disappointed father
look—you know the face, right? The one your dad made when he wasn’t
ANGRY at you, per se, but he knew you could have done better. The
other nine followed the rules! They were fulfilling their
responsibilities—things that weren’t just old laws or customs but
obligations important enough for Jesus to actually remind them to do!
Instead,
the
example we’re supposed to follow isn’t the nine responsible
former lepers, but the one who who
doesn’t live in
the right country and doesn’t worship in the right way,
the
one whose nation has been at odds with Jesus’s nation for hundreds
of years. By
focusing only on following the directions, the
nine responsible former lepers
missed out on something. Because
by
returning, the Samaritan is given another gift—being
“well.”
Being
cleansed is one thing, but being made well, being made whole, is
another. The
story uses two different words here, and the first one that’s
translated as “clean” means physical healing—their bodies have
been made well. The second one, though, that’s translated as “made
well” is a spiritual healing as well—it’s
the same word that’s translated “salvation.”
All
of the lepers
were made physically well, but the faith and
gratitude of
the one who came back
made him spiritually well, too.
What
makes gratitude so powerful
that it can bring about that kind of wholeness?
The
reading from Deuteronomy reminds us that giving thanks keeps us
turned towards God. After
the Israelites have settled into their new land, and become
comfortable and established and wealthy, God reminds them of the
importance of gratitude.
“Do
not say to yourself, “My power and the might of my own hand have
gotten me this wealth.” But remember the LORD your God, for it is
he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his
covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today.”
We
often
want to
give credit to ourselves,
for our
own hard work or good choices—but thankfulness turns us away from
ourselves back to God,
who gives
us the ability to work and the wisdom to make the right choices.
And
now that we’ve looked to God, what happens?
The joy is magnified!
In
the psalm for today, we catch a glimpse of the intense joy of
gratitude--it's full of images of overflowing delight! and it's intended to be sung as a congregation in worship, where speaking or singing your thanks to God amplifies it by sharing it with everyone else. And
then again, the reading from 2 Corinthians describes how gratitude
leads to generosity, which leads to more gratitude!
Gratitude is like a mirror, and when you light a candle in a room full of mirrors, the whole place lights up.
And
today, I would like to give thanks to God for surprising mirrors of
God’s gifts and God’s glory, like the Samaritan in our gospel
reading, who
help us turn back to Jesus after we’ve gotten distracted by all our
other obligations.
Maybe after he ran back to thank Jesus, he turned back around and
finished the task Jesus had given him, showed himself to the priest,
did all the sacrifices. Or
maybe
he accepted
Jesus’s pronouncement of his wholeness and salvation as
sufficient
and decided
that
he was as whole as Jesus said he was without the need to do anything
else,
and
went straight home to
get on with his life.
The
person who wrote the story down for us didn’t seem
to care.
The
story only says
that turning
back to Jesus to give thanks, before doing anything else, was more
than enough, regardless
of what else he may have done later.
Gratitude
was enough for the Samaritan, it’s enough for our neighbors—even
the ones who don’t
do things the way
that we do and make us a little nervous—and that means it’s
enough for us, too. Because it’s not like we always get
around to following every rule or
fulfilling every obligation exactly
the
way we’re supposed to,
either! Our gratitude, and our neighbors’ gratitude, and the
Samaritan’s gratitude, still reflects
the light of God everywhere we are, and
makes us whole, just as we are, whether or not we ever get around to
doing
all that other important stuff we know we’re supposed to do.
Thanks be to God.
