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Oct 14, 2007
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Luke 17:11-19
“There is a time for every purpose” sings the Byrds, “A time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, a time to reap, a time to kill, and time to heal, a time to laugh, and a time to reap.” —turn turn turn.
That’s easy enough. Everything under heaven is to be expected. The surge of pain will give way to the relief of healing; victory will not come without some future surrender; war will always pave the way to peace; and every season will have its turn.
However, there is perhaps something missing from this picture. The sensational order of everything represented in the hymn sung by this late sixties hit rock group leaves out something we might consider to be quite important. The one thing, the only season, that doesn’t get its turn in this song is praise: a time to give thanks, a time of gratitude.
Now of course the song was not meant to be exhaustive, and it means to imply that everything will naturally work its way into life. But I wonder if we should assume that praise and giving thanks to God is so natural and mundane. Is praise something that just comes around and receives its turn?
On the way to Jerusalem, Jesus passed along between Samaria and Galilee. Now Jesus was known to be a healer and a prophet throughout the region, according to Luke, so it should be of little surprise that as he was journeying along ten lepers ran up to him pleading for mercy.
“Lepers” or “leper”, in the Bible designates a diseased and unclean person and who was therefore marginalized in both social and religious spheres.
Healing of such an ailment meant the ability to be recast into the social and religious world. Healing therefore meant that on the one hand the leper’s body no longer suffered from the torments of disease, but it also meant the end of social isolation.
So upon turning to Jesus and asking for mercy, Jesus responds by commanding the lepers to go and show themselves to the priests. Now they are not told to go to the priests so that they may be healed. The function of the priest in the case of the leper is to decide whether or not the unfortunate person is still unclean. After being declared clean then ritual actions will indeed take place; but ritual actions will not make the leper clean.
So the command that Jesus gives the ten lepers is at first strange. Why go to the priests as unclean lepers? It is almost as if this teacher, who has taught with “authority” who has “amazed the crowds” with both miracles and words was now resigning to the authority of the priests, who will either say they are clean or unclean.
Nevertheless, without questioning, the ten lepers obey the command of Jesus. And as they go down the road towards the priests they find themselves miraculously healed. All of the sudden and without warning, they can now simply return to the world without physical deterioration, leaving behind the lonely prospect of isolation that they had known for so long.
On the way to the priests the lepers were cleansed. Then Luke tells us that one of them, the outcast of outcasts (the Samaritan Leper) does something strange. He turns back. He turns back to Jesus praising God with a loud voice.
The Samaritans were Israelites already designated as unclean by the Jews because of the intermixing with Assyrians during the fall of the Northern Kingdom in the 8th century BC. Since they did not identify themselves with the Davidic Kingdom of Judea, they were not considered to be Jews, but foreigners.
So, the “foreigner” as Jesus calls him, is the only one to turn back to Jesus in praise of God. The one who should not know any better, the one who is seen to be outside of the Judaic promises, after receiving what he had asked for, he feels compelled to return to Jesus in gratitude.
But the story still does not end there. In this turn to praise this Samaritan receives even more. The conclusion is not simply that the unlikely outcast of outcasts returns in praise. The story ends when Jesus heals this man again, only this time in his presence, as he says: “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well”.
Now, the Samaritan is commanded to go his way, to go out into the world with the knowledge that his faith, that knows no ethnic boundaries, has made him well.
The Samaritan in turning first to praise of God gets something even more: He is able to rise in a new light; he is recognized and named by Jesus. He indeed goes his way, but only because his way has now really been identified—his will be a way of faith; the Samaritan’s way will be a way of covenant and peace with God into the world.
This story that Luke tells truly has the power to speak to us in the church. Indeed, we are “healed” and we believe in the power of Christ who heals not only us but also the world, something we know to be true in the depths of our hearts. This, of course, does not mean that we no longer struggle or worry or doubt or suffer. But what we are constantly confronted with in the gospel is the ever present and intruding hope we find in the message of grace and transformation taught by Jesus. We too might find ourselves cleansed by it, unexpectedly and at just the right times.
Often times, because of our belief in the healing power of Jesus we continually try to find out how we should participate in this powerful healing work. We constantly busy ourselves and each other, trying to find things to do for the Kingdom of God—And this is indeed good, it is important to busy ourselves with the work God calls us to. But this particular story does not focus on the work of disciples. The healing of the lepers that Luke tells focuses on the center of discipleship—the grace of God that leads us to gratitude and praise, to worship.
This is not work. It is not the planning of how to transform a community or of feeding the hungry—all very important parts of the Christian life. But this story tells of the fount of those actions, the base of the Christian life which turns to God in praise and worship, and that sings out loud to the Lord, shouting for joy in the name of God. And this is no ordinary occurrence. There is something very audacious about this turning to and praising of God, because in so doing the one who does this sets the tone for the work that is to come.
We who sing our praise to God at the same time announce that no being or idea or person can do as God does, and that above all distinctions and systems God stands above them as the one to be praised and worshiped uniquely, and it is in God’s name that we go out into the world.
There is a time for everything, and everything gets its turn. But the gift that God gives, the foundation for renewal, the everlasting hope that breaks through, the healing that only God can do—the divine gift is an interruption of everything. It doesn’t simply get its turn; rather it turns us. We turn back to God and we do it in the joy of having found once again the capability to sing praises to a God who has never left us, even though we have left this God. Even more, we might find new strength and energy because we know that God is not only here in the place where we worship, but out in the world ahead of us. The path that we are to take does not begin with our steps, but only with God paving the way, and we sing praises because we know when we step out into the world as disciples, we will find God already there. We will never make space for this God. We will only go out giving witness in actions and words that all spaces are already full of the divine. This we recognize as we worship.
There is a time for praise. And praise and worship embarks the life lived in gratitude, one that sends us out on a way that can truly be our own—that way given to us by God. Thanks be to God. Amen
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