C Lectionary 28 – October 13, 2013
Text: Luke 17:11-19 – Healing of Ten Lepers
Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Grand Prairie, Texas
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Grace and peace to you, from God
our Father, and the Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.
On Wednesday morning this past
week, I found myself feeling very melancholy. I had no good reason to feel that
way: it was a beautiful Fall morning; the allergies I’d been fighting were
finally less oppressive; and I was looking forward to our Pet Blessing that
evening. Yet, for whatever reason, melancholy set in.
During some time of prayer and
Bible reading that morning, I pressed into the melancholy some, using this
verse from Psalm 42 as my guide: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are
you disquieted within me?”
Apparently the psalmist knew
melancholy, too!
I then wrote two lists. The first
list was the stuff that was hanging over my head, weighing me down. Getting it
out on paper helped me to pray about it more clearly, and – lo and behold! – it
all got lighter. It was still there, but it didn’t weigh so much. I felt the
melancholy beginning to lift.
After some prayer, I started the
second list - what I was grateful for, in that moment. Things like: Steve, Max,
our home, the upcoming Animal Blessing, the arrival of Fall, and on and on. I
found that giving thanks was easier than I thought it would be, given my
earlier mood. My perspective had changed somewhere along the way, and I was
able to turn to God in prayer, but also turn to him in deep gratitude. The
melancholy was gone by now, cast away by my thoughts, prayers, and words of
thanksgiving.
Our gospel lesson today from Luke
17 about the ten lepers healed by Jesus is an extraordinary story. Our term,
“leprosy” covers a host of skin diseases – so when we hear that someone was a
leper, we don’t know exactly what was ailing them. Whatever the case, people
suffering from skin diseases were outcasts for the duration of their illness –
they were required to be quarantined from others. Not until the priests checked
them over were they allowed to return to their regular lives. Often, in their
exile, they formed communities for themselves, fulfilling the adage that
“misery loves company.”
So, Jesus is on the road, and he
encounters these ten lepers, who cry out to him for mercy. He hears their cries
and tells them to go and show themselves to the priests, and – just like that –
they’re healed. And nine of them go off, presumably obeying Jesus’ instructions
to see the priests and be restored to their normal lives.
And then we hear of this one
fellow.
We don’t know much about this
fellow. We don’t know if he had been a leper for ten days, ten weeks, ten
months, or ten years. We do know that for however long he was deemed “unclean”
by the priests, he had been cut off from his family members, friends, religious
community, and society at large.
So this one fellow out of the ten
realizes he is healed, he realizes that a miracle has been done, and then – he realizes
that he has some unfinished business. It’s almost as if his mom or dad is
standing there with him, saying what parents often say to their children when
someone has given them something: “Now, what do you say?”
The text says that this one fellow
turns back to Jesus, full of praise and thanksgiving. What’s remarkable to me
is that this one who has been separated from society – for ten days, ten weeks,
ten months, or ten years – he doesn’t dwell on that. He doesn’t sit around and
complain about the time he lost. He’s too full of thankfulness!
And then Luke gives us this extra
bit of information: “He was a Samaritan.”[1]
Why this added note? Well, Luke is
giving us another example of the wideness of God’s mercy. Think of a person or
a group that you find difficult to love; a person or group that you cannot stand;
a person or group that you mistrust with everything in you.
To the Jews, those were the
Samaritans. There was such animosity between these two groups that in healing a
Samaritan, Jesus was crossing difficult and painful cultural boundaries. Then to
have a Samaritan come back and thank Jesus? Ludicrous.
And yet, he does. This is a story,
then, about the wideness of God’s mercy extending even to those we don’t expect
– and a story about those we don’t expect giving thanks and praise to God.
In turning back to Jesus, this one
leper hears Jesus say to him that he has been made well – other translations
say that he was “saved.” Now, all ten of them were cleansed of their skin
ailments, but only this one was “made well.” It would seem that only this one experienced
the deep joy that comes when we are deeply grateful.
For when we are deeply grateful, we
find it difficult to be anxious; we find it difficult to find fault in others;
we find it difficult to feel melancholy. When we are deeply grateful, as this
one leper was, we find that our hearts overflow with thanks and praise to God,
the giver of all good gifts.
Being thankful takes some
intentionality. That leper - once he realized what had happened to him - he
then had to turn around and go back to Jesus in order to thank him personally.
In order to be thankful, we must first realize what gifts we have been given, and
then we must turn from whatever is holding our focus in the moment: be it fear,
or bitterness, or jealousy, or complacency, and, turning back to Jesus, we
offer our thanks and praise to God.
“O give thanks to the Lord of
lords, for his steadfast love endures forever.”[2]
Amen.
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