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A Sermon Prepared by |
For the
congregation of |
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To Be
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On the Occasion of the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 23 C |
Text: Luke 17:11-19 The healing of the ten lepers
Where's Jesus?
Did you ever play the children’s game “Where’s Waldo?” There is a very busy picture with lots of people and things depicted and somewhere in the mess of color and shape is the character Waldo. All you have to do is find him with his trademark red and white striped shirt and stocking cap, and you guessed it the picture is full of things with red and white stripes. It’s a fun game to play with toddlers or preschoolers.
As we read through Luke’s Gospel we seem to be playing (along with the people in the stories) a similar game. I would call it “Where’s Jesus?” The ten lepers play the game in our Gospel lesson today, and only one of them wins.
The ten lepers
approached Jesus. They didn’t approach too
closely because, being lepers, they were considered unclean so they were
expected to live outside of society, and they were not allowed to have physical
contact with anyone. The issue was not
the contagious nature of their disease.
They did not understand that at the time. The issue was that their disease, which
marred and disfigured them horribly, was seen as a judgment from God. It was punishment for some sin, or perhaps
even the sin of one of their ancestors. If
one had contact with a leper, one would be considered defiled and would require
rituals of cleansing before entering the holy
They called out to
Jesus for mercy. So they obviously
recognized him as someone who could heal them.
Jesus’ response may seem a bit odd at first. He told them to go and show themselves to the
priests. The point was that, according
to the law of Moses, if one believed that he had been
miraculously healed, one would be required to present one’s self to the
As they went along they discovered that they had been made clean, healed of their leprosy. Good news. This healing story is different from others that we read about in the New Testament in that there was no contact, no laying on of hands, no mud made from spittle, no dramatic act at all. Jesus wasn’t even present when they were healed. The ten were simply doing what they had been told to do by Jesus. But one of them did something different. He turned back, found Jesus again, laid himself on the ground before him, and thanked him.
That one recognized that Jesus was the source of his healing. That one broke off his trip to see the priests to come into Jesus’ presence and say, “thank you”. Jesus seems to fault the other nine for not doing the same. But that hardly seems fair since they were simply doing what he himself, and the Law, told them to do. They were going to present themselves to the priests to have their healing certified. Only the one returned, and he was a Samaritan –one who was despised by the Jews, a foreigner.
The nine who continued on their way to the priests were following the letter of the Law while utterly missing the point of the Law. The Law was to show us the way to God. Only the one who turned back recognized the true way. He said, “Thank you,” to the one responsible for his healing, and Jesus told him that his faith had made him well. The other ten were healed, but apparently they had not been made ‘well’, at least not in the complete way that the one Samaritan was.
Jesus seems to challenge both the strict, literal interpretation of the Law and the strict adherence to the power structure of their faith, the priests being the ones yielding that power. There has to be a middle way between the understanding of faith as a moralistic set of rules and an over-commitment to tradition that amounts to traditionalism. Of course to find that middle way we must answer the question, “Where’s Jesus?”
In Luke’s Gospel especially the answer to that question is consistent throughout. Where’s Jesus? He’s with the poor. Where’s Jesus? He’s with the sick. Where’s Jesus? He’s with the outcasts: the unclean, the despised foreigner. Jesus is always at the margins of society with those who are forced to live their lives there. He eats with sinners and tax collectors. He heals the slave of a Roman centurion. He allows a sinful woman to wash and anoint his feet. Jesus consistently identifies himself with the lowly, the downtrodden, the neglected, the oppressed, the poor.
For the first
couple of centuries the Christian Church was comfortable in the margins, as
their Lord was. They were oppressed
themselves, and sometimes persecuted for their faith. Then when, in the fourth century,
Christianity became the official state religion of the so called
The question for us in our faith journey is: do we recognize Jesus when he presents himself in our lives? Do we “see his hand at work in the world about us”? And when we do, do we turn aside to help? The question for us is: who are the despised and marginalized of today in our society? Who are they and how are we called to stand with them and to love them as Jesus would? Only one of the ten lepers healed by Jesus fully recognized the gift that he had been given and from whom he received it. Only one of the ten offered thanks to Jesus. Only one of the ten who was healed was made well by his faith. Are we to be the one or the other nine? Have we seen God’s healing in our own life? If so, have we turned to say, “thank you,” to the one responsible? When we need him are we able to figure out, “Where’s Jesus?”
AMEN