Explorations in Being [Grateful]: Sermon for 10/13-- 9 Cured, 1 Healed

Sermon: October 13, 2013

9 Cured and 1 Healed: Luke 17:11-19

The Gospel text for today, the healing of the ten lepers, is rich with meaning. In it we find again and again those core messages that Jesus preaches and teaches and lives out over and over again. It is a story of gratitude and of noticing the kingdom of God among all things, told in the familiar words of a parable.

We are taken once again to finding God in an unlikely place and in an unlikely person. It is the Samaritan, like the prodigal son; like the woman at Jesus’ feet who cleanses him with perfume in her hair; like the shepherd boy David; or like Rahab who offered hospitality and aid to Joshua’s soldiers as they entered Canaan—who returns from being cured with praise and thanksgiving. The Jews, who are part of the majority ethnic group, are not the ones who carry out Jesus’ message of total healing and wholeness; they are cured, but not healed. The word “thanks” used in this parable is the same word used by Jesus when he gave thanks to God for the cup and the bread on the night of the Last Supper. For the leper to return to Jesus’ feet, lower to his knees and give thanks when he could have walked away and basked in the afterglow of what had just happened to him, indicates a kind of wholeness that could only come from God.

“Go and show yourselves to the priests,” Jesus also says. Although the lepers’ crying out for mercy is heard and responded to immediately, it is not without accountability: accountability not in a punitive sense, or in a way that suggests that the lepers have done something wrong. It is quite the opposite, actually; the accountability occurs when the lepers’ cleansing is connected to their real and purposeful movement even in the midst of their physical suffering. It is their movement to the temple that they are cured, and in the movement of the tenth leper who returns and prostrates at Jesus’ feet, giving thanks, wholeness happens. Call me cliché, but I am reminded of a very poignant scene in Forrest Gump when the very act of his running from taunting boys causes the braces put on his legs by misguided medicine to shatter off in a scene of beautiful adolescent liberation. From that scene onward in the film, Forrest is running with all of his might, even if he doesn’t have to, almost as if he were giving thanks with all of his body for the restoration he has experienced despite often being marginalized for his less-than-desired IQ among the circles he finds himself in.

Living in community—any kind of community—requires the kind of unabashed thankfulness that the leper demonstrates here. In my own intentional living community of 6 (part of the Life Together program of this diocese) I must be diligent about taking time to remember and give thanks for the wisdom and devotion that I am given the opportunity to be a part of. My housemates are beautiful beings, and sharing a space where we can each bring our unique personalities and perspectives is a gift that also requires accountability. We are all of us searching for wholeness, and even in the midst of arguing about how to clean the dishes or how to pray together, I think Jesus’ voice is there, calling us to stop and give thanks for this gift to learn and grow together.

Jesus is asking you and asking me to open our eyes to the God at work in our lives, and in the world around us, even in places of despair and hopelessness. We might be one of the lepers, crying out in the midst of our pain with sores on our body, “God, have mercy on me!” And Jesus hears us, and bids us to go to the temple to be made well.

But he challenges us to not stay there; to accept the fullness of our being healed, and to give thanks. Tom Ehrich, an Episcopal minister who writes a daily reflection called On a Journey, wrote these eye-opening words in his devotion on this passage from Luke earlier this week:

“My read: we are afraid, we are controlling, and, in our version of Luke 17, we don't want to give God any credit for the providence we enjoy. We'd rather take personal credit for good times and blame an unfair God for hard times.
There, I've said it. If you'd like to quote me from your pulpit or kitchen table or office desk, please do so. This refusal to live in gratitude is, in my opinion, the spiritual crisis of our day.
It explains the greedy 1%, the anger tearing apart our political life, the well-advanced collapse of local churches, and the alienation from God that is making life seem unrewarding to so many.
This isn't about doctrine, conversion strategies, or denomination. It's about simple gratitude: seeing the hand of God at work in our lives. Sometimes as dramatically as the healing of a leper, most often less dramatically and yet as real.
In a sense, gratitude is the test of having any faith at all. The test isn't attending church -- some of my most faithful friends won't get near a church. Nor is it declaring oneself a Christian -- especially if "Christian" means being cruel, arrogant, judgmental and closed-minded.
The test of faith is seeing God at work. It is knowing that "goodness and mercy" do follow us "all the days of our lives." It is seeing God in the miracle of childbirth, the miracle of forgiveness, the miracles of self-sacrifice and justice and kindness.”

(pause) Pointed words, and not exactly easy to swallow. There is no easy fix to the challenges, large and small, that we face in our everyday lives and in the world around us; but I think Jesus is beckoning us to remember the impact that gratitude has on our lives, for it is an opportunity to respond to the impact that God has made on our lives.

I pray that the seeds of gratitude may be planted within us, and ground us in a way that transforms us. I pray that through gratitude we might find ways to move—our bodies, minds, hearts, churches, families, and communities—to do the work that is before us: work as treacherous  as raising the minimum wage (which we will be learning about today) and as simple as acknowledging the existence of injustice in our communities.

Interactive activity: We are going to pass out slips of paper now, and on them I invite you to write down words of gratitude you have for someone or something. I would encourage you to think of something that you might not normally give thanks for. As you write, allow your experience of it to fill you up and invite you to wholeness. As we write we will sing and I will bring an easel into the sanctuary for you to post them on. May these serve as a reminder that when we are grounded in gratitude, praising God and giving thanks for God’s presence, we are made whole. Amen.