13 October 2013

“Jour de l’Action de grâce”
Luke 17:11-19
28th Sunday in Ordinary Time
13 October 2013


After hearing those texts – especially our Gospel for today, you may well be wondering, did we make a mistake? I mean, the calendar says mid-October, but the texts definitely read “Thanksgiving.”
Well, that’s because these these verses from Luke are the “traditional” Thanksgiving reading … the ten lepers, standing on the side of the road, calling out to Jesus to have mercy on them … Jesus, seeing them, telling them to go show themselves to the priests … then, in their going away, they find themselves clean … but only one turns back to thank Jesus.
It is partly, just the way the texts go. We have been making our way through Luke’s gospel in a fairly linear manner, and this week’s Gospel follows immediately after last week’s.
But our lectionary also takes into account that there are other English-speaking countries in North America besides the US … and yes, tomorrow is the Day of Thanksgiving for our neighbors to the north, in Canada.
Or, if you are Quebecois, Jour de l’Action de grâce.
But even if you and I are not celebrating a Day of Thanksgiving tomorrow, there is plenty in this text for us to feast upon today.
Jesus meets ten lepers and heals them … and yet, only one turns back to give Jesus thanks.
There is, certainly, more than a hint of “entitlement,” of which the nine lepers who do not return serve as example.
Local author Dan Allender, professor at the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, wrote a book a few years’ back titled Sabbath. In that book, he offers a particularly salient word about our own personal sense of thanksgiving:

If you (only) get what you deserve, it is impossible to be grateful.

Those nine lepers … even though they were in the region between Samaria and Galilee … an ethnically and religiously mixed area of Israel … by their actions they show that they were most likely Jews, immediately heeding Jesus’ command to “go show yourselves to the priests.” They most certainly knew the laws and rules of their religion which, because of their illness, forbade contact between them and others … family, friends, and most especially kept them from being part of the community gatherings of their religion. They were considered “unclean” and had to stay away, to live away, from others. They were outcasts, forced to wander and beg, having a miserable existence.
So when they heard Jesus’ command to “go and show yourselves to the priests” they had to know something was going to happen to them … that they would be healed … because otherwise, the priests would run away from them, unclean as they were … so the nine went away right away to do exactly what Jesus had told them to do. When they saw that they were “made clean” … the word Luke uses here is catharsis- a complete cleansing … they just kept right on going … they might have recognized Jesus as something special when he came along, but as soon as they got what they wanted, they went right back to their religious “business as usual.”
The tenth leper though … Luke notes that “he was a Samaritan.” Samaritans were considered “half-breeds” by their Jewish relatives … they had their own religious center (not Jerusalem, but Mount Gerazim in Samaria) and had a syncretistic religion … a belief system which combined Jewish law and faith practices with those of the non-Jewish, surrounding countries.
But even if you didn’t know that about Samaria, or Samaritans, if you just read the Bible references to “Samaritans,” you would get that they were considered second-class citizens by the Jews.
The woman who meets Jesus at the well in John’s gospel … she is a Samaritan … and wonders why Jesus – one she realizes is a Jewish rabbi or teacher – she wonders why he is bothering to talk to her.
And then, of course, there’s the story of the Good Samaritan, earlier in Luke’s gospel … where the Jewish priest and lay religious leader pass the beaten up, injured man by … “just following orders” of their Jewish religion, because coming in contact with this man … injured, maybe dead, would have rendered them ‘unclean’ and thus unfit for their religious service … but it’s the Samaritan, the outcast, the outsider, who does the neighborly thing, picks the man up, puts him up at a local inn, where he can heal from his injuries.
Jesus doesn’t buy into this “second class citizen” business about the Samaritans at all.
Neither does that tenth leper, “he was a Samaritan.”
Again, the Samaritan, he’s the outsider, the outcast, here. He can’t go to Jerusalem along with the other nine and show himself to the priests because they don’t consider him to be a faithful Jew. Oh, perhaps, he could turn around and go to his own Samaritan priests … but he doesn’t.
He’s found something else … someone else … someone better than just “business as usual.”
He turns, turns back, to “return thanks” to Jesus.
And Jesus … Jesus sees this as an opportunity to make a point to his disciples, and the others traveling with him.

Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?

Jesus makes his point. This Samaritan, even though he has been made clean, the very fact that he’s a Samaritan makes him “unclean” to the Jews and there’s nothing he can do about that … to the Jews, he’s basically, the same as a Gentile. Impure of religion. Not to be ‘hung around’ by a Jew, least of which, a rabbi, a teacher, a healer.
And yet … and yet … this one… this foreigner, this outsider, this outcast with nowhere to go … he is the one who “gets” Jesus.
He is the one of the ten … all of them, given the “mustard seed” of faith by God … all of them, given all that they need for faith, hope and trust in God in this life … but only this Samaritan “gets it” … he “gets” that he has all that he needs … he “gets” what God is doing in and through the life of this Jesus … and in “getting it,” in his “returning thanks” … in Luke’s words, eucharisteo … yes, like our word Eucharist, a full, rich, compete thanks … his life is changed, forever.
It is only of him, and only for him, that Jesus says these words:
“Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”
It’s a sentence full of meaning, which we need to unpack to fully understand.
Well … it’s a weak translation of Luke’s word … which has a rich meaning of “wholeness, completeness, being restored to a former state of safety and well-being.” This man, this foreigner, this Samaritan, is being re-made, re-born. Born again, if you will.
Get up … the word is “arise,” the same word, yes, used to describe what will happen to Jesus at the tomb some time later. This Samaritan, he is being re-born for this life … this leper, once as good as dead to his family, his friends, the rest of the world, because of his illness … now, he’s been given a new life … as I said earlier, born again. Yes, it’s just for this life … but it most certainly points to the greater new life to come, which faith in Jesus will bring him and all who believe, in the One who lives, and dies, and is raised to life again.
Go on your way … it’s an interesting choice of words for Jesus … why doesn’t Jesus invite this Samaritan to join him as a disciple, to come along with him on his journey? It’s a fair question … but also, fairly answered, when we look at those other “Samaritan” stories.
The “Good Samaritan” in Luke … and the Samaritan woman who meets Jesus at the well … they both … do not stay put, but move on … move on, to take their message, THE Message, of love, faith, hope and life … to take it on to others.
The Samaritan woman at the well in John’s gospel … her words to other, when she’s telling them about Jesus, they say it all …
“Come and see …”
That’s what “getting it,” the mustard seed of faith, planted in him, in us, by God, sprouted, come to life, does for the tenth leper. He has all he needs from God, for faith, for freedom from sin, and sickness, and the curse of death, in this life and for the next … he has all he needs … so he claims it … and he goes forth to live in it.
And so … this is where this story of “returning thanks” connects for us.
What we take away from this simple little story, is a prayer … a prayer that this change would happen for us, too … that we would be changed, healed, made whole, like this Samaritan.
Not that we would just have religion … “go to church” … take our places as the insiders … the entitled, the deserving, why, even those nine cleansed lepers did that. Anyone can have a mundane religiosity … talk the talk … be part of “church,” and treat it as being no different from country club or gathering of soshy friends, with a cross slapped on top of it for good looks … comfortable, and easy …
anyone can, and many, many do …
But that isn’t what this faith as a mustard seed, planted within us … that is not what this is all about … NOT AT ALL …
And so we pray that we would be like that one thankful, changed Samaritan … that we would rise from this Eucharist, this thanksgiving, this praise, this meal and this worship, rise to live in this same deep, rich life-changing thankfulness … a thankfulness in which we claim that the faith we have been given is enough …
… enough to change us, cleanse us, heal us, through and through, inside and out, for the life to come and most certainly, for the life we are in, right here, right now …
… so that the mustard seed of faith given to each of us would sprout, and grow, and bear good fruit, in our lives, and always, always for others …
… sending us out, like the one who “returned thanks,” as whole, well, people of faith, Christ-followers … not just worshippers, not merely members, but all, DISCIPLES … disciples who follow Jesus, disciples for others, disciples for life, the life that really is life.
Amen.