Deuteronomy 8:7-18 For God brings you to a good land, with flowing streams, waters in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, olive trees and honey; you eat bread whenever you wish, where you lack nothing. You shall eat and bless for the good land. Take care that you do not forget God, or fail to keep God’s laws. When you have eaten, built your homes to live in, and you have all that you need each day, do not exalt yourself, forgetting God, who brought you out from Egypt, from slavery, led you through the terrible wilderness, made water flow, and fed you with manna that your ancestors did not know, to test you, and to do you good. Do not say to yourself, "My own power has got this for me.”
Luke 17:11-19 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus went through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" When he saw them, he said, "Go, show yourselves to the priests." As they went, they were made clean. One of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He bowed at Jesus' feet and thanked him. This one was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, "Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" Then he said, "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well."
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The Feast of Shavuot in the Jewish calendar follows Passover, but comes before Pentecost. On the day after Passover, a sheaf of new wheat or corn is waved over the altar, as a sign of gratitude to God for bestowing blessings. At Pentecost two loaves of leavened bread made from the new wheat are waved over the altar. All the first fruits are to be offered to God. “You shall bring the first fruits of your land to the house of Hashem, your God.”
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Autumn is my favorite season of the year--especially with the kind of autumn weather we’ve been having recently. All of the seasons have their charm, of course: I love the spring, watching all the new things come up once again, the pale lacy trees as the leaves just begin to come; I love summer, even if I spend some of the time grousing about the heat; and the winter, if there is enough snow. But autumn is my favourite - the lighter air, the clear blue skies, bright colours, a difference to the quality of the sunshine. There is an explosion of colors.
Thinking about our autumn, consider what a contrast it is to the treeless desert in which we find Jesus and the group on their journey in today’s story.
Luke’s text takes place in a "liminal space". The word liminal comes from the Latin for limnus, meaning "doorway". Jesus and the followers met the lepers in a region between Samaria and Galilee - they were neither in one place or the other. So they were in a place that was neither here not there, a place of transition, in a place of possible danger, but also a place of incredible opportunity.
Most of the time there isn't a soul seen for miles. Jesus and the twelve and all the various family members have been on the road for weeks. The kids are cranky, the women beginning to despair, the men no longer even talking to each other. Nothing left to talk about. Just more heat, dust, and desert.
On the horizon, they see a collection of mud- baked, one-room hovels clumped around a small watering hole. Still in the distance, Jesus thinks he can make out the shapes of moving figures. But you know how eyes play tricks when overexposed to intense light, and the heat which rises off the hot land. Mirages. At first, it almost looks like a herd of animals, maybe desert jackals. But the shape and the pace are strange. Some hobble. Others limp.
It turns out that the figures are ten human beings, all in thick, black wool tunics. They hang around just outside the village walls, and Jesus knows instinctively that they are lepers. Despised by everyone, cast out by everyone. You know them too - the ones who panhandle on streets corners that we make judgments about without even knowing them;, the ones who are passed out on the floor of busy subway terminals, whose clothing reeks of old food, sweat, alcohol and urine. Can't miss lepers. They're easy to pick out.
Not all those who were called lepers actually had leprosy - what we now call Hanson's Disease. Any skin condition - psoriasis, lupus, ringworm, anything - was enough to remove people from the community for life. What did they feel like, being pushed outside the community by their own tradition. Humiliated, sneered at, no reason to go on. Used as object lessons about sin. Charity cases. Hopeless. Subhuman. Proof that God elects some for higher purposes and others for destruction. Sinners, outsiders, worthless.
What would it be like to be avoided as one who spread a dread disease, to live with the fact that no one in the community will be willing to come close, no home of their own, no chance at employment, reduced by circumstances often outside their control, to the life of a beggar on the streets. What would it be like to be judged all the time, to have assumptions made about you, to be treated as less than human?
Jewish law said that these lepers were never to enter the villages, they must coverr their face and shout out "Unclean, Unclean." They were forced to walk around with hair disheveled and clothes ripped. The law said they must live alone, outside the community. Even if they were to recover, the law prescribed a specific cleansing ritual that had to be obeyed to the "T."
The ten knew exactly how far away to stand, so they stood just within hearing distance and yelled, " Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" Who told these outcasts about Jesus? Maybe they had caught wind of another leper that Jesus had healed. However it happened, they knew, and there they were asking Jesus for help - meaning they needed money and food. But they also needed some kind of deliverance for the hand they had been dealt by life.
"Go show yourselves to the priests," Jesus yells back. Now, note that both Jesus and the lepers are performing according to the laws of their tradition. Lepers were supposed to beg for mercy, and Jesus instructs them to follow tradition's procedures for lepers who received cures. "Go and show yourselves to the priests." The announcement could only mean one thing - they were healed.
So they went to find the local priest, as they discovered that they were healed, and hurry to begin the purification ritual. Except one. In the midst of dashing back to the town, he screeches to a halt. He realizes that right out there in the dusty back roads of eastern Palestine, he's been cured. He looks at the other lepers as they hobble over the hill, then at the man who did the healing.
Now, this one man is a foreigner, not of the same faith as the others. As he realises he is healed, he turns back, to thank Jesus for the incredible gift of healing. Jesus asks, "Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" And then he says , "Your faith has made you well." Only one recognised that his body had been healed, but more importantly, his spirit had been healed of its disease.
We get sentimental at Thanksgiving, and I think we confuse sentimentality with gratitude. We single out this one part of the year - a long weekend - to cram in food, family, and a side=helping of gratitude for life - if we remember. In all the hurrying, and the consigning of gratitude to one weekend a year, we’ve lost the meaning of the word “holiday”. ‘Holiday’ doesn’t mean a day off from life, it doesn’t mean time to do all the things we want and maybe remember blessings - in a fleeting sort of way. The word “holiday” literally means Holy Day, a day to remember and give thanks, *precisely* for all the blessings we have.
Virtually every culture celebrates thanksgiving and gratitude in some way - and the thanks is also connected to sharing of the blessings with others. In those ‘thanksgivings’, it is recognised that the fruits of creation are there not only to be used, but to be shared with those who may be considered outcast - the lepers who stand at a distance and are denied life. The fruits of creation are everything we have, and they do not belong to us. They have been given to us through the generosity of God, to be shared with the rest of creation. When we celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday, we are literally celebrating a Holy Day, the giving of thanks to a generous God, who asks us to be generous as well.
But this story also raises questions about worship and tradition. Traditions tell us who we are, give us identity, shape our values. Thanksgiving is a tradition for us. Family gathers around the table, or the barbecue or whatever, and family stories are told and retold. The stories live on, and tradition is passed on.
But we can be so locked into tradition - in fact, I’d call it nostalgia rather than tradition - that we miss the time of our lives now. Traditions prevent us sometimes, from seeing new needs and challenges. The problem with the nine lepers was not that they followed their tradition. Jesus told them to obey what their tradition required, and they did it. The problem was that they were so engrossed in keeping that tradition, that they missed the most important thing that ever happened to them, the most important opportunity in their lives. In order to carry on doing things the way they always had been, they missed altogether the very different thing, the person who gave them the reason to be celebrating.
Did you happen to catch what Jesus said to the one who returned to give thanks? Jesus said he was well, but didn't they all get well? They did. But in this passage the Greek word “sozo” or “salvation.” is used. They all got healed, but Luke implies that this one person experienced something the others missed or ignored..
Gratitude for life is not something we can pay attention to one a year and forget about the rest of the time. Gratitude is more than that; we are called into healing - and from the healing we are called OUT from the sidelines, and IN to life. We can’t stay in one place, hold things the way they are, and not participate fully. If we refuse to participate, we dismiss the gifts given - and that means we are not grateful. Life calls us back out, God calls us back out....and we have only one choice, and that is to risk being changed, to risk being made new, to risk something totally unknown, and to give thanks for it.
Sources:
1. “First Fruits”, a sermon by Rev. Fran Ota, Thanksgiving 2005.
2. “Grace and Gratitude”, a sermon by Rev. Thomas N. Hall.
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