Hallelujah! I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart.
In the assembly of the upright, in the congregation. Ps. 111:1
This text lends itself well to what we do today. In recent weeks we have taken up the important task of fund raising because it is the one important way we have as a congregation to share together in the life of Christ and to welcome others into that spiritual life. We have attempted to emphasize several things: making an annual pledge, discerning how much you will give through that pledge, and the vision we have to fulfill the mission of St John’s. We also acknowledge that financial support is important, but, so is the time we volunteer here, and the particular talents we have - time, talent, and money, the traditional framework of support for mission.
When we bring our offering to God’s altar today we take up not only bread and wine of the Eucharist, but our offerings and also our pledges for the coming year. Each of these are symbols of our thanksgiving for the new life we receive here in community.
I noticed that The Feast of St. Luke falls on Friday this week. We remember St Luke the apostle as the patron saint of the Church’s healing ministry which is an important part of the mission we support. To heal is to make whole, and we believe that God is concerned about our social and political wellness as well as our physical wellness. As we have heard last week, that mission of healing can take place right here in our church, or in our organizing on the steps of
Well Fargo, or in the state’s immigration legislation, or in the clean water wells of Nicaragua.
That brings us to our readings in which we find the theme of healing with a special emphasis: the healing of the outsider. In the story of Naaman the commander who is healed by the prophet Elisha, he is a Syrian and an outsider to Israel. He is told to go bathe in the Jordan river, but he believes his own streams of water in his country are just as good as the Jordan in Israel. However, he yields to the prophet and learns that God’s inclusive healing power goes beyond geography and culture. In the gospel story of the ten lepers, while all ten were healed, God’s inclusive healing power is manifested in the case of the tenth leper, a Samaritan prostrating at the feet of the stranger, Jesus the Galilean of Israel.
To anyone who has experienced or appreciates the experience of being an outsider, these are stories that really reverberate. To anyone like myself and each of you, who has more than a curiosity about knowing the welcoming love of God that brings you home into God’s arms of embrace, these stories will strongly resonate within you. If you are an outsider you know how it feels to not belong, you have a special sensitivity and openness to others who don’t feel they belong. The cause of concern can be social, political, or one’s state of health. No more pertinent and poignant, than, are these stories about victims of leprosy.
In the bible, leprosy is a physical and social disease. It not only endangers your health but it also causes isolation, loss of community and deep fear and prejudice. The book of Leviticus spends two whole chapters teaching how to diagnose skin diseases, how to pronounce lepers ritually unclean, and how to perform rites of purification if healing occurs. We read in
Leviticus these admonishing words, “The one who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and cry ‘unclean, unclean’. He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; and he shall dwell alone in a habitation outside the camp.” Besides all the pain of having the disease, this dreadful affliction was considered an act of God, which besides it being contagious, gave more reason to why those with the disease were shunned. In pain, isolated and lonely, living in camps set apart from the mainstream of life, lepers were feared by the rest of society, especially the religious community.
And so our tenth leper knows full well the pain of isolation. While the others being healed go off to the temple to do their duty and resume their normal lives, when he discovers he is healed, he turns back toward Jesus. He let’s out a burst of praise and prostrates before the man he hardly knows, but senses something of the divine in him. I don’t know about this for certain, but I can imagine that if you begin your life being born in a stable because the sign said “No room in the inn” that might give a person some sensitivity to what it means to be an outsider.
Plainly, he worships, Jesus, which is not what a Samaritan or a Jew would do. The Samaritans worship God on Mt. Gerizim, the Jews, including the nine who were healed, worship in the temple. It is no matter that he didn’t follow the rules and do as he was told. He was a leper and a foreigner, a double loser; now he is thanking God as if somehow God were present in this man Jesus, whom he hardly knew. But, he was one of the unclean who could see what the others could not see, and what he saw was new life and he wasn’t going to be
separated again from that. That’s why the tenth leper makes me more than just a bit curious. I wonder what he has to teach us.
As I reflected on this story this week, many images came to mind. I thought about my childhood and how I learned about who the outsiders were - in school and in the neighborhood I grew up in. The outsider didn’t fit in, didn’t conform to expectations, or didn’t follow the rules. But I never questioned who was setting the rules. I thought of healing stories in the bible where being an “outsider” was characteristic of those who came to the prophets or Jesus for healing, and how through God they had found a new life. And then I thought about my ministry in the church and how we were always working at being welcoming to the stranger who was looking for a spiritual home, or at least needed for a time the strength and comfort of a community in which there were some who were much acquainted with being on the outside. I remembered street people, visitors from another state or country, people who needed had just experienced some personal loss or trauma, people of all sorts and conditions. The ministry of healing to those who at any time in their lives feel on the outside, is Jesus’ ministry to the tenth leper.
Our calling at St John’s which we support today, this month, every month, year in and year out, is to be a warm, welcoming place to which an an outsider, could bring his or her deepest needs for belonging and find God in community. That just happens to be what this place, and you, the St John’s community, means to me, and I would think to each one of us. We know this because the passion and the prayers of people’s deepest longings for God stick like glue to
these wall. Just think of people you know here, or used to be or will be here, from years back and to years to come. They are part of the fabric of this place. That is why the tenth leper should make us more than just a bit curious. AMEN
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