Have You Not Seen? Luke 17:11-19 A sermon delivered by the Rev. Joseph A. Novak on November 20, 2012, at the annual Ithaca Ecumenical Service of Thanksgiving, held at the First Presbyterian Church. For those who paid attention in English class when you were in high school, you ll undoubtedly recall that iconic passage from Shakespeare s Hamlet, Act Three, Scene One: To be or not to be, that is the question for Hamlet as he contemplates whether living or dying is a better choice. To be or not to be. The great 20th century Swiss theologian Karl Barth was fond of saying that the basic human response to God is not fear and trembling, not guilt and dread, but gratitude. He once wrote, What else can we say to what God gives us but stammering praise of the gift and its Giver? To be or not to be? is life s ultimate question according to Hamlet, but for Christians, the main question is, to give thanks or not to give thanks? In our relationship to the Holy God, we as humans have one posture, one job, one vocation to live into: thanksgiving. Thanksgiving. You ll recall the iconic story we heard from the third Gospel. From chapter 9 through chapter 19 in Luke s account, Jesus, his disciples and a substantial crowd are traveling from Galilee in the north to Jerusalem in the south. And as they travel, as they walk the roads which, for Jesus, will ultimately become the road up the hill behind the city to be crucified, as they walk along together, Jesus is teaching them, mostly through parables: stories which make a theological point. The journey to Jerusalem has been filled with these parables, parables which are iconic, which are burned into the consciousness of the Christian church, all uniquely from Luke s gospel: The Good Samaritan The rich fool who stored up his wealth, The lost sheep, The lost coin, The lost, prodigal Son, The rich man and Lazarus, The shrewd manager. All concentrated in these ten chapters in Luke s gospel.
And between the telling of these parables, Jesus has some interesting encounters with folks he meets as they are traveling. Consider today s account. On the way to Jerusalem, Jesus was traveling through the area between Samaria and Galilee. This is already an odd story, since Samaritans and Jews got along about as well as Protestants and Catholics in Ireland. Jews thought that Samaritans were liturgical heretics with an errant bloodline and a wrong religion. To say Jews shunned Samaritans is an understatement on par with Bill Gates saying, Yeah, I think I can pay for dinner. A good Jewish rabbi didn t travel near Samaria. They went around Samaria. They went as far out of the way so they didn t have to run into a Samaritan. But here we are, Jesus walking the no-man s land between Samaria and Galilee. And he enters a village for some unnamed reason. And as he does so, a small leper community, living on the outskirts of the town, away from the clean villagers, sees him with his disciples. And, keeping their distance, they call out to him: Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. The text doesn t say how they know that Jesus can help them, or how they even know who Jesus was at this point. Luke s not that interested in those details. All we see so far is a group of folks with various skin diseases, all excommunicated from their family and friends, living together outside the city until their diseases are cured. I mean how long were these lepers living together? Weeks? Months? Years? Now, in the ancient world, leprosy was a loose term used to talk about lots of different skin conditions. The book of Leviticus in the Old Testament has lots to say about these sort of diseases. Popular opinion was that these diseases were spread by human contact so as long as the person had the disease, they needed to get away from the healthy people. So they were sent to live outside the cities. Often, they d live together with others who have similar conditions. So this small group of ten lepers was living together and they see a person who perhaps they heard could heal the sick. Jesus, Master, have mercy on us! They cried from a distance, not getting too close. And Jesus, seeing them, calls back: Go show yourselves to the priest. Now, sometimes, in these communities, the skin conditions might be healed, perhaps through a salve or ointment, or over time, and the person could return to their normal life. But before they could do so legally, they had to go show themselves to a priest, someone authorized to say: Yes, you are healed! They couldn t rejoin their families, see their kids, or go back to their work until they saw the priest. And Jesus just told them to go see the priest.
And so they go, perhaps slowly, perhaps grudgingly, perhaps reluctantly, for they were already outcasts, I mean, they could feel their itchy skin, they saw the white patterns on their arms and legs, they knew that they were still infected. But they asked Jesus to show mercy, and he said go, so they go. And as they go, the text says, they were made clean. Notice that Jesus didn t say, Be healed, he didn t touch them and say, You are clean. Instead, he said, Go show yourselves to the priests. Now, if you ve got an itchy, visible, pus-covered skin condition that has kept you from your family and your friends, and suddenly the disease disappears, I m imagining that your pace probably picks up as you hurry to the priest to get authorized to go embrace your two-year-old son and your wife and your parents. And so the group of excited, ex-lepers continue to the priest. Because isn t that the way it is? Excited about receiving an answer to our prayers, we are often guilty of grabbing the blessing and running. We asked God for help to pay our bills, we asked for a job, for help getting pregnant, for a restored relationship with our son or daughter, or for some of us, we asked just to make it through another day. And just as soon as the answer was in hand, just as soon as that check came in the mail, or when the phone rang and the voice said, you ve got the job or when that test showed a blue circle, or when the knock at the door on Christmas Eve was your estranged son, just as soon as the next day dawns, as soon as it happens: We just rush onto the next thing. It s as if we say, Well, I guess that prayer-thing works or Well, I deserved it, anyway and we move on. And these healed lepers rush toward the priest. All but one. One of them, noticing his clean skin, turns back, and heads in the opposite direction. Heads away from the priest, away from his triumphant return to society, away from his reunion with family and friends, away from a feast at his father s home, and instead he goes to Christ, praising God in a loud voice. Perhaps his eyes are tear-filled, his throat open and singing those words from the thirtieth psalm: You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, so that my soul may praise you and not be silent! O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever! In any case, he gets to Christ and he falls at his feet, laying down on his belly, extending his arms toward him and the text says, he thanked him. And the text goes on to say rather pointedly, And he was a Samaritan.
The suspicious immigrant heretic saw his healing as a direct result of this man called Jesus and returned to give thanks. He prioritized giving thanks. Made it the first thing he did. He may have had a family too, he was part of a community too, he probably had a job, too. But before all of those things: He said thanks. The word used here by Luke is the same word we get Eucharist from: Communion, Mass, whatever your church calls it, this celebration was codenamed by the Church as giving thanks. And so the Samaritan gave thanks. And Jesus is taken aback by this. Weren t 10 of you healed? Where are the other 9? No one else came back to give praise to God except this foreigner? The other 9, presumably Jewish, part of the covenant family of God, part of the people God chose to bless the world; they didn t see this healing as something that should prompt their thanksgiving? But the foreigner, the heretic, the one who believed divergently, the one who looked differently, the one who worshiped strangely: this one worshiped and praised God first. This one knew that God grace was at work, and God s grace always provokes and instigates thanksgiving. As one theologian has said: Gratitude follows grace like thunder follows lightning. And Jesus says to him: Get up, your faith has made you well. To have faith is to live it, and for Christians, to live out our faith is to give thanks. Faith is something we do, something we live, otherwise, it s worthless and pointless. It s almost like Jesus says: Your acted-out, gratitude-giving-praise-giving-thanks-oriented faith has made you well. As Christians, we have one job: to give thanks. And every aspect of our life is prodded by this reality. Whether you ve been healed or are still sick, whether you ve got a good job or if you re still looking for a job, our collective vocation as Christians is to give thanks. We give thanks to God for the mercy of another day, as troubled as it might be. We give thanks to God for the companionship of our friends and families; We give thanks to God for the material goods we have in our life: whether in abundance or in scarcity. But more than that: As Christians, we give thanks for the Lord Jesus Christ: For in Christ, the everlasting God, who towers over the cosmos, utterly beyond the scope of human imagination or comprehension; the Holy God, who fashions the fabric of Time at the loom of his Providence; this God, whose Voice reaches into the fires of
Chaos and beckons forth order and peace; this God, at whose Word the mountains melt, the earth shakes, and the seas dissolve into steam, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God of Sarah, of Ruth, of Hannah. this God, in Jesus Christ, knows us, cares for us, heals us, leads us, loves us. And for the past one hundred thousand Sundays, Christians have gathered together on the Lord s day to say thank you to God. Through its songs and hymns, its praise and prayers, its liturgies and sacred rituals, the Christian church s entire existence is lived in perpetual thanksgiving for God s mighty and powerful actions. Everything we do, everything we say in our worship together is a response to what God has done for our sake. At our fonts and baptistries we respond to a God who loved us first and rescued us before we knew anything of it; from our pulpits we preach good news in response to God s ear-shattering proclamation of grace, his Son our Lord Jesus Christ; and at our tables and altars, we lift bread and cup and offer our Eucharist, our thanksgiving to God for claiming us as his holy Church through the broken body and shed blood of Jesus Christ. Consider those ancient words early Christians prayed before they sat at table together: Let us give thanks to the Lord, for it is fitting and right. We give thanks to you, O God, for your beloved son Jesus Christ. And so we give thanks. Our community food pantry is one way in which we Christians in Ithaca practice saying thank you. Our churches contribute money and food and volunteers, the pantry committee contributes hours of planning and food ordering, the intake team gives up their Wednesday mornings to be a beacon of hope to the family whose children are hungry. Countless folks come unload trucks, organize shelves, and sponsor food drives. And all of this, we do all of this not for a pat on our back, not to feel good or say we re great. We do all of this to say thank you to God. We do all of this because we want to be like the tenth leper, we want to have praise and thanksgiving always on our lips. So, come, join us in this holy experiment of a thankful life. Come and be a part of the church, bought, sealed, and kept safe by Christ s sacrifice for us; Come, let us give thanks to God, joining our voices with the whole company of heaven who sing forever: Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God, forever and ever. Amen!