On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" When he saw them, he said to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, "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?" Then he said to him, "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well."
Sermon by the Rev. Carole Horton-Howe
There are many stories in the Gospels about Jesus healing people. Beautiful stories. This passage that we hear today has another side of Jesus. Although people are healed of their physical illness, the point of the story is on how those who are healed respond. The point is gratitude and the healing found in it.
Our first clue that it isn’t strictly a healing story comes early on. Ten lepers approached Jesus and asked him for mercy. Instead of doing something or saying something that tells us that healing is happening or has happened, Jesus gives them a command: “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” The actual healing of the lepers then occurred as they traveled away from Jesus, away from the center of the narrative. The healing happened “offstage” leaving Jesus standing in the center.
“Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed turned back praising God with a loud voice.” This one man reentered the scene. He came back to Jesus and offered thanks. This expression of gratitude met with Jesus’ approval and he asked what happened to the other nine who did not return. “Were not ten made clean? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”
Note that the other nine did what they were told by Jesus to do. It’s hard to find fault with that. They weren’t disobedient. Yet clearly it’s making the decision to pause, to turn to God is what the key. So what is it with this one guy? What made him different from the other nine?
All ten of the lepers were faithful enough to go on their way to the priests even though there had not yet been dramatic or definitive healing. All ten believed enough to start a journey that might have resulted in disappointment and derision. All ten had a mustard seed’s worth of faith in a mighty, healing God. Yet the text tells us that only that one “saw that he was healed.” Did the others not notice?
They had more to gain from continuing on their way to the priests. For them, the priests were the vital next step in the process – their way back, their way to life. The Samaritan had no such incentive. What hope was there for a Samaritan in Jewish rituals?
Remember that Samaritans were despised in Jewish society. This man was caught up in active animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans going back hundreds of years. They had been one people, but changes and tensions wrought by exile and return put them at odds regarding beliefs about scripture, worship, what it means to be holy. Think Protestants and Catholics in Ireland, Muslims and Serbs in Bosnia, rival street gangs in Los Angeles and you’ve got the picture. Sadly there are many, many apt comparisons.
Not only that but Jesus’ encounter with the lepers takes place in the “region between Samaria and Galilee,” a potentially hostile locale at the border, neither inside nor outside Jewish territory.
Everyone in this story is outside their comfort zone except Jesus who knows that people who are forced to survive on the margins of society see things differently from those in the center. They may be less invested in and less worshipful of the status quo. They also may be more open to change when the current structures are of little benefit them.
Instead of seeing healing as way to return to an old life, he saw it as a miracle from God - in a place and time where miracles were likely in short supply. His only possible response was praise.
The Samaritan kneels at Jesus’ feet, face in the dust in gratitude and wonder. And it’s then, for the first time in the story, that Jesus speaks words of healing: Get up and go on your way. Your faith has made you well.”
This raises an important question: Is there one healing in this story for the Samaritan or two? Jesus final words to him might be an affirmation of the healing from leprosy that already happened. But could it be that there is for this man a new level of healing that goes more than skin deep?
Only the Samaritan remembered and connected the gift with the giver. He demonstrates a faith that claims relationship with God and cannot and will not remain silent in response to what God has done in his life. Expressing gratitude is not a precondition for being healed by Jesus. All the lepers find themselves healed of their skin disease. However, the Samaritan turns around and comes back. He turns towards God.
Is there a second healing? I believe there is: and it is a restoration of wellness that comes through the Samaritan’s relationship with God. He has found peace, joy and wellness -- gifts that can be ours each day as we too give God thanks and praise.
Our earthly lives are a similar journey, somewhere between Samaria and Galilee, between illness and health, between rejection and acceptance. We are all travelers on the way. Because of the frailty of our bodies we will all succumb to illness at some point in our lives. Because of the devices and desires of the human heart, we will all suffer from the fear and distrust that separates us from our neighbors and from God.
And we all know that not everyone is healed of their illness. We pray, we beg, we ask God for healing for those we care so much about and for ourselves. And still we find ourselves saying good-bye, heartbroken and disappointed. And wondering where God is. Wrapping our lives in gratitude throughout our lives is the antidote, when there is a cure and when there is not.
To practice intentional gratitude is life-giving. It can also change a congregation’s life. When Christians practice gratitude as the abiding mindset in their lives, they come to God open to receiving the goodness that is the very essence of God.
We acknowledge intentional gratitude in our Eucharistic prayers asking God to forgive us for coming the Eucharist – which means “thanksgiving” by the way – for solace only and not for strength, for pardon only and not for renewal. The work that God calls us to do as believers changes from duty to a gathering of grateful hands and hearts. God created us for grateful joy!
This story of one who returns, drops his face in the dust and gives thanks points us to some truths: first, to stifle gratitude may prove as unnatural as holding one’s breath. Second, “Go on your way, your faith has made you well” is no longer a problematic saying, one that seems to apply to others and not necessarily to us and our circumstances. Instead it is a description of a life of blessing for us and sending for the church to go into the world living as people thankful and blessed.
As we go on our way, we rejoice and give thanks, for in giving thanks in all things we find that our extraordinary God is indeed in all ordinary things. Rather than remaining within the darkness of our despair and keeping ourselves at a great distance from others, God calls us to come close. God awaits our cry for mercy and responds by making us whole, by restoring us to life with others. God keeps scanning the horizon, looking for those he has already healed, who will realize one day that they too are already forgiven, that they too are already being made whole, who will return and give thanks and praise to God.
In his memoire All I Could Never Be, Bev Nichols, recalls an experience of gratitude in his garden. “It was inevitable, I suppose, that in the garden I should begin, at long last, to ask myself what lay behind all this beauty. When I had the flowers all to myself, I was so happy that I wondered why at the same time I was haunted by a sense of emptiness.
It was as though I wanted to thank somebody, but had nobody to thank; which is another way of saying that I felt the need for worship. That is, perhaps, the kindliest way in which a person may approach his or her God. There are endless theories on the origins of the religious impulse, but to me, Nichols says, it is simpler than that. It is summed up in one person at sundown, watching the crimson flowering of the sky and calling out to the great expanse before them — ‘Thank you. Thank you.’” Wellness restored, peace and joy found in turning towards God. Amen.