"Not Everyone Who Receives Grace Gets It"
October 14, 2007: 20th Sunday after Pentecost, Year C
The Rev. John MacIver Gage, senior minister
United Church on the Green, UCC: New Haven, CT
www.UnitedChurchontheGreen.org

Scripture:

Luke 17:11-19

"Our reading this morning picks back up in the Gospel According to Luke, in chapter 17, verses 11 through 19. May God take these words and make from them a holy word for us today."

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, Jesus 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 Jesus said to him, "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well."

"Friends, God is still speaking to the world. May our hearts be open to listen and respond. Amen."

Sermon:

Ten lepers—suffering from a painful physical condition and completely cut off from the larger community by the stigma attached to their situation by the ritual laws of First Century Judaism—ten lepers met Jesus on the road. Ten lepers asked the wandering rabbi for mercy—a coin, a kind word, perhaps even a prayer for their healing and restoration. And when Jesus sent them away to the priests at the great temple in Jerusalem, the arbiters of all things clean and unclean and so the gatekeepers of the Jewish community, they went.

As they went, the ten were made clean, healthy, whole. But when they were, only one returned to Jesus to give him, and God, thanks. So Jesus asked the question: "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 one?" Notice that Jesus doesn't ask what's so special about the one, that he should come back to offer God prayer and praise for such a gift of grace. It's as though Jesus assumes gratitude should be the norm, even for an outside Samaritan. Instead he asks: What of the nine? Why did they not return?

In their defense, I'm sure they had their reasons.Perhaps they didn't notice they were being made clean. It may sound silly, but look at the story again and see how their healing is tucked away behind a bend in the text. No blinding light, no voice from heaven, just "...And as they went, they were made clean." They may have spent so many years internalizing the majority's definition of them as physical and social lepers and were so unused to thinking of themselves as anything other than broken, defiled, maybe they were just unprepared to recognize real healing, even when it happened to them.

Perhaps they did notice but literally couldn't believe their own eyes—or dare not. The experience of oppression may have robbed them of their sense of themselves as agents in their own lives. Years of being told by outside "authorities" just who they were, where they could go, whom they could touch may have left them unable to trust their own experiences, even their own bodies. Sure, it felt like they were healed, but that new rabbi had told them to go to the temple where the priests would decided whether they were clean or not. Maybe they should just let the priests tell them what they were really feeling.

Perhaps they were just glad to be rid of that pesky Samaritan. Mongrel, that's what he was, really, half-breed left-over of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, long since destroyed, without the good sense to know that Jerusalem alone was where Yahweh God could be worshiped rightly. Not a real Jew at all, but an outsider still, and unclean, even in their little community of unclean outsider non-Jews. So when he began to babble about being made clean, they didn't listen—after all, what good news every came out of Samaria? And when he then stopped and turned around and headed back, maybe they didn't join him because they just didn't care for his sort, whether well or unwell. So they let him go, good riddance.

Perhaps they recognized their healing, but didn't understand its relation to Jesus. Sure, they had greeted Jesus' appearance in their town with cries for mercy, but after so long, it's likely they did that to everyone, anyone. There's nothing to suggest they guessed Jesus' particular power to heal; after all, he didn't do what the other traveling healers did. There were no salves, no incantations, no bill, not even a clucked tongue over their pitiless plight, just those peculiar instructions, that they should present themselves to the priests in Jerusalem and then this. Maybe they just couldn't connect the dots back to him.

On the other hand, perhaps they didn't recognize God as the source of their healing. Not the sort of thing we're generally supposed to say in church, I guess, but they'd been living with pain so long—the pain of their illness compounded by the pain of being cut off from their communities, even their families—well, after ask Why, O why, Lord? Why me? Why this? over and over again, maybe they'd given up. Maybe they'd decided the idea of God was just as meaningless as their suffering, and not even the sudden end of that suffering could tempt them to trust again.

Of course, it's possible that at least some of them did recognize all this—their healing and its relationship to Jesus and to God—and wanted to go back and give thanks. It's possible they wanted to dance and sing and shout Hallelujah! but didn't. And perhaps they didn't because, well, none of the others were. Through long years of oppression and ill-health, this ragtag band had been their only place to belong. How break step now, even to acknowledge this miraculous gift? It's a testament to the power of a group to persist, even in unhealthy ways, but maybe they just didn't dare change, even for the better.

Perhaps they didn't return to Jesus and fall at his feet and give thanks to God for the gift of healing grace because... because they couldn't face giving up the very last scrap of control they'd managed to maintain over their lives. I realize it may sound ridiculous, but think about it: After having everything taken from them—health, home, relationships, work, their place in society, even their supposed place in God's affections—maybe the idea of having the very last thing that belonged to them—their pain—of having that taken away, of having to react one more time, even to this miraculous healing, maybe that was just too much to contemplate.

Perhaps there's a simpler explanation, though. Perhaps the nine were so overcome by joy at their sudden healing they simply gave no thought to how or who or why. Maybe, feeling the fog of pain finally lift to reveal possibilities for health and restoration they'd barely dared dream mere moments ago, maybe they allowed themselves to be carried away, back to family and friends, back to life. So they didn't return to Jesus? Maybe they didn't make it all the way to Jerusalem to see visit the priests, either. We're not told they did. Maybe they didn't even stop to talk together and bid one another goodbye, but scattered like birds rising from a harvest field, all raucous laughter and singing.

Or perhaps, just perhaps, they were all miserable, ungrateful wretches. We'll never know. But doubtless they all had their reasons for not showing gratitude for the gifts they received. What's yours?

Friends, we do know that there was one who not only received grace, but got it, too. He got that something was different—He was whole again. He got that despite everything we've been told, we can trust experience. He got that it doesn't matter who delivers the good news—even a Samaritan! even a Jew!—as long as it really is good. He got that even though he was every bit as human as anyone else, Jesus is somehow intimately bound up with power and purpose of God. He got that just because God may not have caused the pain doesn't mean God can't be part of the healing. He got that everyone has the power to break with an unhealthy community in order to seek something better. He got that giving up our desire for control doesn't mean giving up ourselves. He got that every good gift from God, freely given, without price and without strings, calls us to be response-able, to respond with glad and thankful hearts. And by turning and returning to Jesus, he got to see and recognize the face of God, the face of the power behind the universe, turned toward him—him, a leper, a Samaritan, penniless, helpless, hopeless—Jesus' face, turned toward him in love. And that made all the difference in the world.