sermon preached by the Rev. Sue Judson Hamly at Faith United Church, UCC, International Falls, MN.
text: Luke 17:11-19
It seems that the lectionary—which is the selected readings for each Sunday that are scheduled for 3 years at a time—never fails me! Here we are on 10/10/10 and we’re reading a gospel story about TEN lepers! Is it a coincidence or not? You decide.
Everybody always focuses on gratitude when they preach on or talk about this gospel passage. And it is about gratitude. But it’s also—and I think even more so—about outcasts or outsiders because there’s really a lot more going on here than 9 people seeming to have forgotten to thank Jesus for healing them.
We have to look at who they are and where they are and what the local customs were.
First of all, these people are lepers. They have dreaded and contagious skin diseases, so they are ostracized from “regular” society and sent away from their families and communities to live in colonies where they have contact only with other lepers. They are generally beggars because no one wants to be close enough to them to give them work, so they must form their own community and rely upon one another and help one another.
They are sent away from home, family and community to places where no one else wants to go or live. So, basically, you’ll find them in a kind of no-man’s land. This particular group, we are told, is located between Samaria and Galilee. You may remember that Jews and Samaritans didn’t want to have anything to do with each other and Jews would go out of their way to avoid travelling through Samaria. So, here is this group of lepers in the in-between place—the no-man’s land—that is probably pretty isolated and scary because no one wants to go there.
No one except Jesus, of course! This is not the only story in the bible that has Jesus travelling through places no other respectable Jew would go. [1]
Jesus is making his way toward Jerusalem and his death. On his way, he encounters this band of ten lepers, a little band of them united by their suffering and their exclusion from the community. They don't come close, and this time he doesn't touch them, as he often does when healing the sick. Just a word, a command, sending them on their way—and as they go they are healed! [2]
Jesus knew the Law required them to see the priest, to show themselves, and to be certified as ritually clean so they could be restored to their community. That was what he tried to do for people—to restore them to wholeness and community, so that no one was left on the margins or in the lonely and scary in-between places.
So, when Jesus told them what to do, 9 of them went—gleefully I would assume—off to follow the rules. The tenth leper, though, cannot obey Jesus' instructions. He is a Samaritan. Samaritans, weren't welcome in the Temple in Jerusalem, and had good reason to expect ill treatment from those who saw the Temple in Jerusalem as being the only true Temple—the only true place to worship God.[3] So the 10th leper returns to Jesus praising God for the healing he has received and probably astounded that Jesus—a Jew—has included him—a hated Samaritan—in the healing of the whole group.
We might wonder why the foreigner did return to Jesus and the others did not. When all 10 of them were suffering from a common disease, they were bonded by their outcast status. When they were all healed, the nine returned to their life: their ethnic and religious life. The foreigner only had Jesus at that point—he could not merge so easily into his old life. And perhaps he had found his true home.
What’s it like to be an outsider? What’s it like to be different? We all know people who are outsiders. We all know people who seem “different” from everyone else. Maybe some of us are even outsiders ourselves.
I know quite a few of us here this morning are outsiders because we didn’t grow up in International Falls or the surrounding area. Some people are outsiders because it takes more effort to interact with them so not many people bother.
Some people are outsiders in much the same way the lepers were in Jesus’ time—because there’s something about them that sets them apart from everyone else and causes everyone else to be afraid of them or afraid of interacting with them.
There’s very little leprosy in the world today, but there are other things for which people are ostracized—such things as HIV/AIDS, mental illness, being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered, being deaf, having epilepsy or cerebral palsy, or being otherwise mentally or physically handicapped.
In general, I think most people think we, as a society, have gotten beyond that. In my lifetime there have been great improvements in attitudes toward people who are “different,” but believe me, gender-based discrimination, homo-phobia, and discrimination against people with mental and physical disabilities is still alive and well in our local communities and in our country. There is also discrimination against the poor. Can you believe it?
But Jesus seeks out exactly those people whom society forces to be outsiders. He travels where no one else dares or cares to go, and by doing that he makes himself available to the outsiders. And he heals them, reconciling them to their communities so that they can become insiders once again.
And one would hope that their experience would make them kinder, gentler people. Do you think it does? When an outsider has been shown love, will they then pay it forward and show love to other outsiders? What do you think? What would you do? What have you done?
Do we know individuals or groups who are banished to the “in-between” places in our society? Will we help them or keep our distance? Can they help us see things from a different perspective that might just challenge us to live differently and be more welcoming?
Sometimes it takes someone else—even someone quite unexpected—to open our eyes to blessings and wonders in our lives. A person on the margins, on the outside, may have a better vantage point to look inside and see the heart of the matter. “[This] passage, then, confronts us with more than a push for the common courtesy of saying our thank-yous. It gives us an outsider whose unrestrained and spontaneous appreciation…dramatizes the essence of faith and who disrupts an otherwise easy perception that we know who the real insiders are.” [4]
The UCC urges all of its congregations to offer an extravagant welcome to everyone who enters our churches. The purpose of this extravagant welcome is to bring healing, wholeness and community to people who have been wounded and ostracized by churches in the past. By providing an extravagant welcome to everyone who comes to visit here, we let them know that their perspectives, views and opinions are valued by all of us as they are welcomed into our faith community. They will bring new ideas, and we must be ready to hear and consider those ideas. Together, all of us will have the opportunity to change and grow and to worship and praise God in new and exciting ways.
The in-between places can be scary, but they can also be a “land of opportunity” because God is still speaking and I believe we are really and truly doing our best to listen! AMEN.
Endnotes:
[1] See John 4, the story of the woman at the well.
[2] Kate Huey
[3] Again, see John 4.
[4] Charles B. Cousar, Texts for Preaching.
