Tag Archives: 10 lepers

Sermons

Simultaneous Lament and Gratitude – Luke 17:11-19

Pastor Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church, Thanksgiving Eve, November 25, 2015

[sermon begins after Bible story]

Luke 17:11-19  On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, 13 they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” 14 When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. 15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. 16 He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. 17 Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? 18 Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” 19 Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

[sermon begins]

Almost exactly 15 years ago, I was serving as Council Vice President of my family’s congregation.  Pastor-land was not yet on the horizon.  It was a leadership design such that when elected by the congregation to Vice President, it was also an election to be President the following year.  My year spent as Council Vice President was partly a year during which I watched the current President closely, basically picking up the nuts and bolts of what was expected by way of responsibilities.  It was a fun and challenging year getting to know this way of serving the church.

During one Council meeting, discussion became heated.  This can happen at Council meetings.  After all, people who love Jesus and who love their church tend to bring some passion to the task.  And as General George Patton said, “If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.”[1]  Our Council President let the conversation and disagreement follow its course for a bit and then did this thing with her hands.  Two of her fingers were raised up like closed peace sign.  Making a half-circle with her hands in the air she closed her fingers and thumb together and said, “Let’s press pause.”  Essentially pressing invisible buttons in mid-air.  And that pause, along her summary of the key points, gave people some time to reflect and regroup.  Probably gave some time for the gray matter to kick in so that thinking could happen after reacting.

“Let’s press pause.”  A great line and a good move.  Giving people time.  Time to see.  Time to think.  Time to respond well.

The tenth leper in the Bible story could be having a similar “press pause” moment.  He is hanging out with his fellow lepers – likely long cut-off from their families and community.  They know the rules.  No contact between people with leprosy and people who are well.  They are socially, religiously, and physically unclean.[2]  The ten lepers yell out to Jesus from a distance, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”  Somehow they know about this Jesus as they roam in the borderland between Samaria and Galilee.  They cry out to Jesus.  “Have mercy on us!”  There is the first pause.  The pause for lament, to cry out for mercy.

We “press pause” for communal lament in worship on Sundays during the Kyrie when we sing together, “Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy.”  That lament we do together, singing to the Lord all of our individual laments poured into one voice made up of many.  “Christ have mercy.”

Because of the lament of the lepers in the borderland, this is a timely passage for our reflection this evening.  Many of us bring into this sanctuary questions about borders, who crosses them and who doesn’t.  Some of us bring the fear of the villagers in the story who need the lepers to stay contained.  Except in our 21st century moment, the undesirables are not as easy to spot and contain.  So there is fear.  There is heated conversation.  There is a love of country, love of world, and love of life.  And right now, there is time to “press pause,” bringing a lament to Christ.  “Have mercy on us!”

In the Bible story, the lepers’ lament “presses pause” on whatever Jesus was heading to do.  Giving Jesus time to see.  Time to think.  Jesus sees the lepers, talks to them, heals them on their way to the priests, restoring them to family and community.  All ten of them receive this healing from Jesus through no merit of their own.  They didn’t earn it, not one of them proving themselves worthy of help first.

One of the now healed men “presses pause” on the way to the priests. The healed man sees what just happened, the healing that’s taken place.  He pauses to use his gray matter to think.  Before following Jesus’ direction to continue on to the priests, he turns around to go thank Jesus.  The healed man thanks Jesus first by flinging himself down at Jesus’ feet. That is no less than enthusiastic gratitude!  Jesus points out that it is the “foreigner” of the ten who returns to give praise and thanks. The tenth man, however, presses pause, giving praise to God and gratitude to Jesus.  We could describe what the tenth man does in a single word – worship.

We follow this healed man’s example in our Sunday worship.  After we sing the Kyrie together, giving voice to our lament, very often we sing a song of praise and thanksgiving.  Pressing pause, and giving thanks and praise to God at the beginning of our worship just as the healed man does.

Of the other nine men, Jesus asks, “Where are they?”  Note for a moment that the other nine do nothing wrong.[3] They do exactly what Jesus asks them to do and they retain their healing.  To the healed man lying on the ground in front of him, Jesus says, “Get up, go on your way, your faith has made you well.”  The word translated as “well” is translated from the word “sodzo” in the Greek.  Sodzo is translated across the New Testament in multiple ways.  In the verses today it reads “well.”  In other places it reads healed, made whole, or saved.[4]  All ten lepers are healed.  One returns to Jesus after pressing pause, thinking.  He is not just healed but “is made whole, restored, drawn back into relationship with God and humanity” – in a word, saved.[5]

We talked in Adult Sunday School these past few weeks about the Gospel of Luke.  Salvation is a big theme in this gospel.  Salvation being communal, concrete, and cosmic.  Jesus followers hear his word and act on it.  Tangible acts of healing, feeding, inclusivity, restoration, liberation, and prophetic action taking place in community with each other.[6]  We also talked about whether or not we could see our need for Jesus.  Salvation and need go hand-in-hand.  The lepers saw their need clearly.  They wore it on their skin.  We’re better at hiding our need, or at least not acknowledging it with other people or maybe even to ourselves.  Yet here we are together.  In need.  Bringing lament.  Bringing gratitude.  Lament and gratitude simultaneously.

Many of us don’t have the luxury of the linear progression from lament to gratitude that the lepers do.  We carry both lament and gratitude at the same time.  A lament for a relationship gone awry. A lament for a health issue of our own or someone we love.  A lament for our own fear in a world of uncertainty.  A lament for so many people around the world and in our own neighborhoods who cry out for help.

Woven through our lament here together, gratitude pours out in praise to God and thanksgiving to Jesus.  Gratitude for our life and breath.  Gratitude for family and friends Gratitude for work and pay if we are employed or retired well.  Gratitude for our congregation through whom we hear God’s good Word to challenge us and to comfort us as well the community of the body of Christ to connect us.  Gratitude for God in whom we live and move and have our very being.

By grace, salvation is given to us in Christ Jesus.  Like the lepers, it is without merit – pure gift.  “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”[7]  Praise God and thank you Jesus!  Amen.

 

 

[1] George Patton, US Army Commanding General, World War II (1941-1945). http://www.generalpatton.com/quotes/

[2] David Lose, President of Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, for Working Preacher, Commentary on Luke 17:11-19 on October 10, 2010.  https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=783

[3] David Lose, “Dear Working Preacher…” October 7, 2013. http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=2796

[4] Lose, October 10, 2010.  https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=783

[5] Ibid.

[6] Raymond Pickett, Professor of New Testament, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago.  The Year of Luke in Sundays and Seasons 2016.  (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2015), 12-14.

[7] Ephesians 2:8-9

Sermons

Luke 17:11-19 Through Difference to a Common Humanity

Luke 17:11-19 Through Difference to a Common Humanity

Caitlin Trussell on Thanksgiving Eve, November 26, 2014, with Augustana Lutheran Church in Denver

 

Luke 17:11-19 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, 13 they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” 14 When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. 15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. 16 He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. 17 Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? 18 Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” 19 Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

 

There is a lot of talk about distance in this story about the lepers.  Jesus is cutting through the region of Samaria and Galilee on his way to Jerusalem.  Jerusalem is code language in Luke for his death on the cross.  But he’s not there yet.  He makes a detour on the way to the cross.  The ten people with leprosy, the Bible’s catch-all label for a range of skin diseases, are also distant.  They are “keeping their distance” as they call out to Jesus.  The story is silent about whether or not Jesus moves toward the lepers.  He simply tells them what to do and the lepers go away to do what he tells them to do, putting even more distance between the Jesus and the lepers.

We are left with the impression that this initial encounter between Jesus and the lepers happens pretty quickly.  Jesus walking along, lepers yell, Jesus yells back, lepers gone.  All the while there is no contact, no laying on of hands mentioned as the lepers are made clean.  Another way to translate being “made clean” out of the Greek is to be “made whole”.[1]

There is no physical contact until after the man is made clean, made whole.  Noticing his cleanness, his wholeness, the leper turns back and drops at Jesus’ feet.  Picture this, the man lays flat on his belly on the ground. The now former-leper is also a Samaritan which is a double-whammy.  Samaritans, being the outcasts of the day, had no business being near any Jewish man.  This was not their place in the social network.  But there he is, flat out, collapsing at Jesus’ feet, collapsing the distance between them.

Also collapsing as the man drops to the ground are the distinctions between faith, gratitude, and wholeness.  It’s difficult to tease apart the mash-up as the man lays there in the dirt at Jesus’ feet.

A few weeks ago, knowing I was going to be preaching on Thanksgiving Eve, I e-mailed the Prayer Chain of people who pray over the weekly prayer requests.[2]  In that e-mail I told the people on the Prayer Chain that I’d love to hear from them about a practice or behavior of gratitude that works for them or something for which they are grateful.  People e-mailed back specifics but one common theme seems to be something about acknowledging God in the mix of life’s ups and downs regardless of outcome.

More specifically, I have permission to share with you this story from last week’s Congregation’s Council meeting.  Council members take turns each month talking about something related to their experience of faith.  This time at the beginning of each meeting is called “the devotion.”   Our Council Treasurer volunteered to open this latest meeting.  He talked about Thanksgiving coming up and the topic of gratitude.  And then he told us that in the middle of thinking about his gratitude for certain things in his life, it occurred to him that he had not been directly thanking God.  He talked about his awareness without judging it and then read Psalm 145 to us.  When he was done, I suggested that perhaps he could the preacher on Thanksgiving Eve.  Clearly that suggestion didn’t pan out.

The point is that Psalm 145 is a prayer of praise and thanksgiving to God for who God is and what God has done.  Prayers such as this Psalm drop us at the feet of God.  Prayer such as this Psalm collapse the imaginary distance we put between us and God.  Jesus on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus’ death on a cross, collapses this imaginary distance for us.  It is already done whether we take notice of it or not.  The question is, “What happens when we notice that there is not distance between ourselves and God?”  What happens is that we get to see things differently, we get to participate in this life differently.

Notice that man who is made whole isn’t made whole by erasing his Samaritan-ness.  The distinction of his ethnicity remains a part of him in his wholeness.  Differences remain.  This is an important part of the good news in this story for us here today.  Across the differences we set up as barriers, Jesus acts to make us whole.  Making us whole individually.  Making us whole collectively.  Seeing our differences within the container of our common humanity.  Celebrating our differences across infinite shades of brown even as we all bleed red.

We live in a world that would have us believe that we need to choose one over the other.  Either I choose to see only that you are different and need to keep you at a distance or I choose to negate our difference by wondering why you can just be more like me because clearly that’s the best way to go.  Jesus making the Samaritan man whole reveals this as a false choice.  These days we face hard questions about the flaws and strengths of our country’s slow crawl out of historical, yet still devastating, racism and classism.

I was sitting with some friends recently, all four of us in our various shades of skin from the palest tan to warm chocolate.  The subject of race came up and one friend said to the other, “When I look at you I don’t see your color.”  After a long pause, my other friend said, “When I hear you say that, I hear that you don’t see me.”  Both of my friends are sincere, earnest people who care deeply about each other and who have been friends long enough to say what’s on their minds.  It is a tough conversation that isn’t over.  This kind conversation is where we can take the wholeness of Christ out for a spin.  Where we encounter each other as foreigners, different from each other.  And as humans, the same as each other.  Both are true.

Like the 10 lepers, we too are made whole by Jesus.  We are given this wholeness regardless of whether we turn back and thank Jesus for it.  This Thanksgiving Eve, may I humbly suggest that we turn first to God and give thanks and praise to God for all that God is doing through Jesus.  And second, may we say a prayer or two this week thanking God for our differences and ask for the humility to offer ourselves in real relationship across those differences to share in our common humanity.

Jesus makes us whole.  Through the power of the Holy Spirit may we be given eyes that see, ears that listen, minds that think, hearts that connect, and hands that give as well as receive.  And may we at all times and in all places say, “Thanks be to God!”


[1] David Lose, Commentary: Luke 17:11-19 https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=783

[2] Prayer requests may be made online on the AugustanaDenver.org homepage, right-hand column, second option.