More Than You Know 1 Rev. Michael Blackwood United Church of Broomfield November 19, 2017

Transcription

1 More Than You Know 1 Rev. Michael Blackwood United Church of Broomfield November 19, 2017 Luke 17: On the way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he entered a village, ten men with skin diseases approached him. Keeping their distance from him, 13 they raised their voices and said, Jesus, Master, show us mercy! 14 When Jesus saw them, he said, Go, show yourselves to the priests. As they left, they were cleansed. 15 One of them, when he saw that he had been healed, returned and praised God with a loud voice. 16 He fell on his face at Jesus feet and thanked him. He was a Samaritan. 17 Jesus replied, Weren t ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? 18 No one returned to praise God except this foreigner? 19 Then Jesus said to him, Get up and go. Your faith has healed you. A while back I was surfing Facebook, reading people s updates and statuses, when I came across a story that one of my clergy friends had posted. It was a story about road rage titled, Had I known. Isn t it amazing that one of the places or moments where we always seem to find God is in the midst of road rage? Or it s impending possibility? Anyway, I came across the story and was intrigued. I don t get road rage. No seriously, I don t get road rage, but I get road angry; annoyed with bad drivers or at least what I consider to be bad drivers. After reading the story, it has stuck with me over the years. Sarah was driving home from work on a Friday evening. It was nearing 7:30 pm and she was tired. It d been a long day. Actually, it had been a long week. She d been working hour days at a grueling job that was high profile, had a lot of responsibility and therefore was very stressful. In addition to work, she was slowly chipping away at her getting her MBA, taking one on-line class at a time, and she d been staying up late each night this past week finishing her part of a group project. She had a loving husband, Aaron, and a beautiful ten-year-old daughter, Anna, who were so supportive of her, but she still worried that she wasn t spending enough time with them. Her mind, as well as her life, were pre-occupied. As she drove down the highway, eager to just get home, she noticed in her rear view mirror a white sedan, moving in and out of traffic. The driver was switching from lane to lane, very impatient, not using his signals and honking his horn each time he d get stuck behind a car. Eventually he got behind Sarah, much too close for her comfort. Who was 1 PHC UCC, Denver, CO 10/13/2013

2 this nut job? This kind of road rage driver really bugged Sarah. He d never use his turn signals, drove erratically, cut people off and paid no attention to speed limits. Where were the cops when you needed them? Sarah put on her blinker and moved over. And the crazy driver sped on, continuing to zip in and out of traffic until eventually he was out of her sight. Sarah muttered to herself, You re welcome! What a jerk. So today s scripture tells the story of the ten lepers. Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village he s approached by ten lepers, but the lepers kept their distance. They didn t get too close because they understood their place. They call out, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us! Jesus sees them and says, Go show yourselves to the priest, to which they proceeded to go to the priest. On the way they were made clean. One leper however, turned back to thank Jesus and praise God. Jesus then asks, weren t there ten of you? Where are the other nine? Is it only the Samarian who came back? So, Jesus sends the Samaritan on his way, telling him, your faith has made you whole. A common approach for this scripture is to focus on the one leper s actions as good and the other nine s actions as bad. The one is polite, conscientious and faithful. Be like him. The other nine were rude, unconscionable, and faithless. Don t be like them. And of course, we don t need to be reminded of the importance and irony that this one GOOD leper is a foreigner, an immigrant, a Samaritan. Just like the Good Samaritan parable that happened about seven chapters ago in Luke chapter 10, goodness and doing the right thing comes from an oppressed and despised outcast in Jewish society. Since Jesus asks about the nine, we naturally fall in line with Jesus and focus on that as well, Yeah, where are they? Why didn t they come back to give thanks and praise God? After what Jesus did for them, you d think they have the decency to at least say thank you? So let s focus on the nine. They were suffering from leprosy or some form of skin disease or infection, like leprosy. If it was in fact leprosy it would affect your entire body. Initially you d feel fatigue and joint pain. Scaly spots would develop on your skin and as the disease progressed your body would be covered with puss filled nodules. Your face would begin to change. Nodules would grow on your vocal chords so that you spoke with a raspy voice. Your body would be in a state of living decomposition; thus, a terrible stench would surround you constantly. Leprosy would attack your nervous system, compromising your body s ability to feel pain. It acted as an anesthetic, numbing your body. This inability to feel pain could have tragic repercussions; you might cut, scald or burn yourself and the resulting infections would be lethal. Secondary infections could result in tissue loss causing fingers and toes to become shortened and deformed, as cartilage is absorbed into the body. Leprosy often led to blindness.

3 This is what the lepers were dealing with physically. What about socially? Leviticus goes into great and I mean great detail about leprosy, skin conditions and infections, devoting two entire chapters (13 & 14), specially detailing the disease and how to diagnose it, which was a two-week process of isolation and examinations by a priest. At the beginning of this diagnosing process, regardless of whether leprosy was confirmed or not, you are pronounced as ceremoniously unclean. There is no confirmation that you have leprosy, but just the mere thought of it creates a panic. Did you hear about Joseph? Yeah, they say he has leprosy. I just visited his wife, Alexandra the other day; you don t suppose she has it also? I sat at her table, on a chair that he s sat on. Do you think that I? The rumors begin and so does the marginalization. During this process of confinement nothing happens except you will wait; alone, scared, terrified of what your future might hold. If you re lucky enough to get through this fearful quarantine period and be certified as clean you can wash your clothes, be pronounced clean and return to society - but there has already been damage to you. If leprosy was confirmed however, Levitical laws were very specific as to how to proceed. You were to wear torn clothes, have disheveled hair and cover your upper lip. These actions were typical of how people behaved during mourning. So, you have this disease now and while suffering from the physical pain - instead of being cared for, you must literally behave like a zombie, the walking dead; mourning life as you once knew it, for you might as well be dead. If this wasn t bad enough, Levitical laws indicated that you must be banished from your village. You have to keep a certain distance from anyone and everyone because you are highly contagious and if it s a windy day the required distance became greater. You must leave your family, your friends. You re not allowed to touch your spouse or your children. You can t hug them, hold their hand or caress their cheek. For you see, you are a disease. You are unclean. You are no longer human. If this weren t bad enough you had to announce your presence by crying out unclean, unclean as you walked around so that in case someone s back was to you and they didn t see you, they d hear you coming and would have time to get away from you. You are an outcast. The best hope you have in life is that you might share the company of other lepers. Whether alone or with other lepers, what quality of life will you have? Leviticus says that should a leper become healed you are to go to the priest and present yourself. The priest will then conduct a series of examinations and rituals to verify you are healed and then, only then, will you be certified as clean and be allowed to return to society.which is an 8-day process in itself.

4 So...back to the nine lepers. We have no idea how long they have been removed from society. When was the last time they saw their family? When was the last time they simply felt the comfort of another person s touch? The story doesn t tell us, so it could be months, years or even decades. And if it has been years, how must they be feeling physically? Remember, leprosy progressively gets worse and worse. It doesn t get better. They re in unimaginable pain and agony. It hurts to exist. Then consider their psychological and emotional well-being. They have a horrible disease. They are ripped apart from family, everyone they know and love; exiled away from life. I tell you, if it were me I d probably be insane. Now, they ve heard about this Jesus guy, for they call him Master. They know that he has the ability to heal them. He is the only hope, the only miracle that they will ever have. For you see, in those days, there was no known cure. So when they finally come across Jesus and he says, Go and show yourselves to the priest, you better believe that if I were one of those lepers, I probably wouldn t have hesitated one second with mincing words before I started moving running, crawling, dragging my corpse of a body, as fast as I could to get to that priest. So let s go back to my introductory story about Sarah.because, as you know, there s always more to the story. Sarah arrived home about 30 minutes after the white sedan sped past her. She could finally begin to relax. She shared a wonderful dinner with her husband and daughter. She tucked her little girl into bed and then joined her husband on the sofa to watch the 10:00 news. The newscaster began with a breaking report about a local car accident. As she spoke, video footage began to play and suddenly Sarah recognized one of the cars in the accident. It was the white sedan. The report indicated that the man in the white sedan had been rushing to the hospital with his pregnant wife in the back seat about to give birth, but before they made it their car was struck by another vehicle. The mother and child died at the scene. Sarah was dumbfounded and thought to herself, Had I known. Sometimes we become so caught up in our lives and how we want the world to revolve around us that we forget to say thank you we forget that other people and their lives are also happening simultaneously around us.we forget to give credit where it is due. We simply make errors we re humans after all. Outcasts or not we re still human. Do we really need to focus on bad driving etiquette or instead focus on the fact that we re fortunate enough to get to our destination safely? Do we really need to focus on the lepers not saying thank you (or the one that did) or instead focus on the fact that Jesus healed extravagantly, randomly and without question or hesitation?

5 I honestly don t think that Jesus personally cared that the lepers didn t thank him in that moment. They may not have thanked him with words, but I guarantee you they were grateful. So.for what do you have to be grateful? Trust me, it s more than you probably know. Amen.