October 14, 2007
“Unexpected Healing, Unlikely Gratitude”
Luke 17:11-19

[Note: This is the sermon which I prepared for Sunday.  However, I did not preach it.  I felt that a service of anointing and healing was needed.  Thus, I summarized the sermon and then offered to anyone who wished an anointing with oil.  My prayer for each person who came forward was: "O God, bring healing and wellness in mind, body, spirit, and circumstance to this, your beloved child.  Amen."]

There is healing, and then there's healing.

The ten lepers who reached out to Jesus in our story today were obsessed with healing. You would be, too. Leprosy was, and is, a terrible disease. Because of the communicable nature of the disease, you were outcast from all others in your life, except for others who also had the disease. Thus, it affected your entire life - physical, social, mental, spiritual - in ways we can hardly imagine. Healing of the body would lead to the healing of the other aspects of one's life.

Or, should I say, it could lead to the healing of other aspects of life. If you were mean-spirited before getting the disease, being cured of it would not necessarily make you nice. If you were beset by spiritual questions before getting the disease, being cured would not necessarily improve your sacred aptitude. If you were living in abject poverty before getting the disease, being cured would not necessarily improve your economic circumstances.

In other words, there is healing, and then there's healing.

In the story, we learn that Jesus, on his way to Jerusalem, is going through a region “between Samaria and Galilee.” The gospels rarely give you such details without meaning to inform you of something important, that will prepare your heart and mind to better understand that which is about to be reported. Here, Jesus is between Samaria, the land of the despised “half-breeds,” and Galilee, a familiar place for him and his disciples. Jesus dares to walk the fine line between enemy territory and native land, the in-between place, purgatory, between hell and home.

And in doing so, Jesus dares to come face to face with the “other.” Frequently, Jesus chooses to hang out with the “other,” the outcast, the marginalized, those living “on the edge.” Lepers always lived on the margins of society, outside of the city limits, on the other side of the tracks, for their disease, at least in the ancient mind, forced them to do so.

But they recognize in Jesus a possibility for hope. After all, a rabbi who's willing to walk the line, that's something they don't often see. So they reach out to him, while keeping a safe distance as those with life-threatening illnesses are often taught. And, in a strange sequence of events, Jesus doesn't draw close, he doesn't touch them, he doesn't' even really engage them in conversation. He simply tells them to go present themselves to the priests, who will certify they are cured.

And they go. Why someone would head to the priests, who would avoid you like the plague, when you weren't even yet healed, is a mystery to me. Perhaps Jesus' voice was so commanding, or so gentle and assured, that they obeyed without question. Perhaps his piercing brown eyes told them this day would be different. Perhaps they were just so eager to get rid of this damn disease that they would try anything.

And on the way, “they were made clean.” They were healed. Skin that had been eaten away was restored, flush with life. Fingers and toes that had no feeling tingled with the joy of new existence. Hearts burdened with slowly failing organs beat again with passion. They were healed.

But, there is healing, and then there is healing.

Before they reached the priest to receive the certification they would need in order to return to full life in the community, verification that they were, indeed, healed, one of them turned right around and ran back to thank Jesus. As I have preached here before, we must be careful in our judgment of the other nine as to why they did not return. Martin Bell, in his wonderful book of stories, has a meditation on the many reasons that might have caused the others to fail to return, from fear, to anger, to an inexpressible joy in having new life.

But in any case, this former leper, now cleansed, has return. He prostrates himself before Jesus, and praises God for what has happened. He is deeply grateful to Jesus for what he has done, and he shows it.

But then, two strange things happen. Both remind us that there is healing, and then there is healing. First, we learn that this man was living on the margins of society for more than one reason. Not only did he have a horrible communicable disease, but he was one of them! He was a Samaritan, the despised peoples who at one time had been brothers and sisters with Israel, but who, through a complicated history of wars and occupations and different choices in religious expression, had become the “other.”

This man was healed of his physical disease, but he was still considered unclean by those religious authorities in power. Perhaps he did not continue in his journey to the priest because he realized that he might not have been received by him like the other nine would have. He would receive no certificate of healing, for he was still a despicable Samaritan!

Maybe we should have expected him to return to Jesus angry as all get out, infuriated that for him the healing was only half-done. Have you ever been frustrated with God that when something good happens, it doesn't happen completely, or in the manner in which you wanted, expected, or needed it?

But would he have known that Jesus did not consider “Samaritanism” a disease from which one should be cleansed. In fact, time and time again, the gospels show us that the Samaritans are beloved children of God, just like their full-blooded Jewish neighbors. It was a Samaritan who showed compassion on that dangerous road to the man beaten by robbers. It was a Samaritan woman at the well who first hesitatingly announced, “Are you the Messiah?” It was a Samaritan mother who cleverly caught Jesus in his own elitism, and proclaimed, “even the family dog gets scraps from the table!” So no, Jesus would not have deserved nor accepted this man's anger at not being healed of being an outsider.

But he didn't come back mad. The leper-now-made-clean comes back in joy, to give thanksgiving to Jesus for the healing that had taken place. And Jesus does the second odd thing. He proclaims, “Your faith has made you well.”

But, if this man was already cured, cleansed, and healed, AND he had no need to be “healed” of his ethnicity, why was he now “made well.”

Because, there is healing, and there is healing!

This incredibly powerful story reminds us that what is truly the most compelling condition for all of creation, human beings especially, is not for the physical body to be made whole, but for the spiritual self to be made well! That is what our hearts long for, that is what our spirits yearn for. To be made well. To be well is less about wholeness, having all the pieces working right and fitting perfectly together, and more about the spiritual fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Is it harder to be well when you are not “whole,” not “cured,” not “healed?” Well, yes and no. Yes in that our illnesses, our injuries, our hurts distract us from the real task of being well. But I've also heard story after story after story of folks who never recover from their illness, but who find deep and abiding spiritual meaning in their pain and suffering.

When my partner, Craig, worked in the Bronx as a chaplain at a health care facility that served persons who were both in recovery from addictions to alcohol or drugs and who were HIV+ and living with AIDS, it would not be uncommon for someone to tell him that they actually gave thanks for their disease for it had finally caused them to see what was important in life and to focus on their wellness.

I'm thankful to Jesus for working on both. Jesus does call us out of our pain and our suffering to a life of healing. That is why I give thanks for all the doctors, nurses, technicians, therapists, and scientists who are working to find cures for the illnesses that plague our lives. But I'm also grateful for those people who understand we are “whole” even when we are “broken,” that what is of ultimate importance in our lives has less to do with the physical and more to do with the spiritual.

The Samaritan leper understood this. And the chief sign that one is in tune with a wellness that is beyond healing is gratitude. A thankful heart is more to be cherished than a healthy heart. A life of gratefulness signifies a deep and profound “well of wellness.” When one is well, one weathers the storms of life so much better, so much more easily, so much more peacefully. I can imagine that tenth leper, kneeling at Jesus' feet, singing the words of the great hymn:

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
when sorrows like sea billows roll;
whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.
It is well with my soul,
it is well, it is well with my soul. Amen.



Rev. Allen V. Harris
Franklin Circle Christian Church
www.FranklinCircleChurch.org


 

Copyright 2007 -- The Rev. Allen V. Harris

Franklin Circle Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

1688 Fulton Rd., Cleveland, OH 44113-3096