Oct 25 | “Thanksgiving,” (Sermon, October 8th 2017)

“On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. ¹²As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, ¹³they called out, saying, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!’ ¹⁴When he saw them, he said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were made clean. ¹⁵Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. ¹⁶He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. ¹⁷Then Jesus asked, ‘Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? ¹⁸Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?’ ¹⁹Then he said to him, ‘Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

Luke 17: 11-19

 

There he went again, running his mouth at the table, the relative who always had to have the last word, always had to be louder than anyone else, always had to prove his point. And oh did I want to slay him with my wit, but it was a bit dull, having been bathed in a couple glasses of wine, one of which was in my hand. So I bit my tongue, and set that glass down on the table…and everyone jumped as the foot of the glass just exploded beneath it.

I guess I “set it down” a little more enthusiastically than usual! I guess biting your tongue is no guarantee that your opinion of a person won’t be known.

That was Thanksgiving dinner several years ago. We’ve all experienced something like that, right? I know there’s got to have been one awkward Thanksgiving dinner for each one of us in this church right now. I’m lucky enough that none of mine have been actively painful or toxic. But all of us have experienced the awkward. Awkward conversations, awkward kitchen mishaps, awkward political situations in the world that guarantee someone’s going to get into a screaming match, awkward subtext left unspoken, you know how it is.

And yet we do it, and all too often still feel thankful. Many folks, with families or friends, will still fold themselves into the chaos and occasional sharp edges of being gathered together. There is something profound about gathering together in a world that often appears far more violent than gentle, far more cruel than kind, to eat – to aggressively celebrate our status as living creatures who love each other.

Thankfulness is not a simple emotion. Like hope and joy, thankfulness has a shadow. It is painted with shades of awe. At its most pure, thankfulness reminds us of how vulnerable we are. Maybe that’s why harvest celebrations feature it so prominently. We are bringing in the sheaves and rejoicing in the feast because we know that lean times are coming. We bask in the love we have for one another because we know that that will have to be our light for the next few months as the nights draw in and winter comes. I was made most aware of this as I wrote this particular passage Friday night and heard the rain pounding on my windows and tolling ghostly bells in my flue.

The gift of our faith is that vulnerability is a sign of blessing. This is a precious and radical thing that we give to the world as Christians. It’s precious because it’s truly a balm for those who suffer; it’s radical because in an often senselessly violent world like the one we’re living in, it’s a little unsettling.

Today’s story is a perfect reminder of that truth. It’s a standalone story, sandwiched between two other stories that occur at unspecified times in separate locations. This is unusual – it’s far more common for a Sunday Gospel passage to be part of a much longer narrative arc. And it only occurs in the Gospel of Luke.

We may then very well ask what this despised Samaritan was doing among all these Jewish lepers? Well, Semitic purity culture made for strange bedfellows. Not just lepers but anyone who had a skin condition like psoriasis or eczema or even bad acne had to be segregated from the community. But it was pretty much unheard of for people to live isolated lives back then, so naturally they banded together, with their only commonality being their conditions and the resulting outcast status. Notice that Luke says they kept their distance while yelling to Jesus, out of respect to his status as a Jewish holy man who was not to touch the unclean.

Being made clean then represented not only health but liberation, the ability to reintegrate into society. It must have been such a strange moment of joy and confusion, so I don’t really blame the guys for just taking off and not going back to Jesus. Who knows who they had left behind in their illness, and who knows how long they had had to stay away?

But something very interesting is happening here. The blessing is in vulnerability. Perhaps these people were so astonished by their liberation that they couldn’t help but run screaming away from that previous vulnerability, that previous sense of loss and self-loathing.

We can empathize with that, right? How many times have you thought to yourself, “The sooner I do x, the sooner I can put this whole sorry business behind me”? “The sooner things can go back to the way they were?” We’ve all been there; some of us may be there right now. There is nothing wrong with the desire to return to a strong, capable state of being. I am not trying to say that anyone should feel compelled to wallow in helplessness.

But there is no sense in disavowing vulnerability as though it is shameful. This is impossible in the long run, and can make us see the vulnerable as obscene or unworthy.

There is no sense in pushing vulnerability away so forcefully that we forget the one upon whom we rely to see us through in the first place.

It’s not just that the Samaritan remembered his kindergarten manners while the others forgot.

It’s the fact that not only did he say thank you; he turned back; he literally “repented,” that’s what the word in Greek means. He went running back to Jesus – Jewish Jesus, whom he would normally have no contact with, as a Samaritan – and fell at his feet.

Jesus then says something interesting. “Your faith has made you well.”

It’s a testament to the over-the-top generosity of God that all of them are made clean, all of them are reintegrated. But only this one is proclaimed by Jesus to have been “made well.”

What could that mean?

Here again the Greek gives us a new lens. The word used can mean to be made well. But it can also have another meaning. It can also mean to save, or to deliver.

Your faith has saved you. Your faith has delivered you.

Saved from what? From the disease? Well, he didn’t say that to the others. It must be deliverance from something else.

Perhaps from the sting of vulnerability, the fear of shame, the sense that he was any less.

Not in the Temple, which he would not have even entered as a Samaritan. Not in the gilded hall of a king.

On the highway, within a group of other unclean people, forced to beg from a distance for liberation and reintegration.

God saw him, where he was, at his worst, and healed him. Not because of a sacrifice, not because of an act of righteousness, but because he asked.

All of them admitted that their need was greater than their pride. But only one realized the beautiful gift of a God who knows our needs even before we ask, and desires only that when we are afraid or in trouble or unclean, whatever the modern version of that may be, we lean into those arms.

What else would you expect from God, our Father in heaven?

This thanksgiving, as we come together in a world that is all too often marked by hate and mass shootings and apathy, name your need for God and for the people you love and who love you. Name that you would not be the same without them. Say thank you. Say I love you. And if you can, say grace before you eat.

I feel the need to say this to you personally, as someone who like anyone has also known unexpected loss, and had to learn the hard way to speak love before it can’t be done face to face. This week I bet a lot of people wondered if there really is anything to be thankful for in our world.

There is.