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Thanksgiving Holiday, 11/24/2011
Sermon on Luke 17:11-19 , by Paula Murray
11On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. 12As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, 13they called out, saying, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" 14When he saw them, he said to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were made clean. 15Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. 16He prostrated himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. 17Then Jesus asked, "Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? 18Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" 19Then he said to him, "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well."
THE ORDER OF THINGS: FAITH FAMILY, FEAST, AND FOOTBALL
The three "F's" of an American Thanksgiving are family, feast, and football, though not necessarily in that order. The three "F's" might be more realistically ordered as feast, family, and football for those for whom the meal is the star of the day. And then there are the football fanatics among us, for whom family is a frustrating distraction and the meal is just what one does during half time when there is no football to be watched. However ordered, many a person stands up with pride to declare that Thanksgiving Day is their favorite holiday. When asked why they answer, "Because there is less fuss to it." Which tells you that the respondents are by and large men, whose involvement in the meal is generally limited to taking the carving implements handed to them by the wife and carving the big bird a few minutes after its come out of the oven. For that measly six minutes of work, the man of the house receives the grateful praise of the assembled guests at table. Meanwhile, the woman who spent a total of six hours getting that bird together is back in the kitchen trying to get the potatoes mashed and to the table while still hot.
No one said life is fair.
Indeed, it is not; the element of risk and the tyranny of accident are both acknowledged to be at play in our lives by most of us past the age of our majority. We have no control over our genetic heritage, brought into the world unasked, as we are, by our parents. We may, if those same parents allow it, exercise a little control over our early environment. And, while we may have the illusion of control over our everyday lives as adults, that illusion is easily ripped from us when the economy steals our livelihood, a major storm shoots an uprooted tree through the living room wall, or some freak disease robs us of a husband or wife long years before old age would do the same. Life is chancy; it is true, and when we look forthrightly at that truth, we must conclude that it is a wonder that so many of us enjoy life so long.
The miracle of our existence is why humanity will never finally conclude that God does not exist. Too often we find a certain kind of question posed and thrown like a missile at an unprepared Christian. Perhaps the all time favorite example of the type is this one, "Why does God let children starve?" Hearing the question the believer is supposed to melt into a state of utter consternation, unable to deal with dueling notions of the person of God; that he is an uncaring monster who lets babies die of hunger, or a powerless chimera able to do nothing more than wring his hands with horror at the abuse of the helpless. Look honestly at the world around us, full of both beauty and terror. Look again at the people who dwell on the earth, sinners all, lazy, often uncaring, greedy, and self absorbed. Is it not a wonder that so many of the world's helpless innocents not only grow up but thrive? That wonder is not a clueless naiveté, but a holy intimation of the existence and life-sustaining power of God.
And this brings us to the fourth "F" of the American Thanksgiving, faith. While acknowledged by most of us, though grumpily at times, this fourth "F" is readily obscured by the logistics of the day, getting to Grandma's house, preparing the dining room, cooking the meal. And there is the secular wave washing over us now that would have us believe that the human impulse to give thanks for what we have received is an unwelcome remnant of our barbaric past. The question before us is this: does that fourth "F" still provide the foundations for the day we call Thanksgiving? Let us look at the origins of this very American day, Thanksgiving Day.
Scholars and others argue about the origin of the holiday, but it is clear that it is a "holy day" in that whenever we pinpoint that origin it marks the giving of thanks for God's gifts, often in the face of great adversity. The Pilgrim celebration of 1621 as described by contemporaries did not look much like Thanksgiving as we observe it now. But to the surviving remnant of the original band of Pilgrims, whittled to half its size by hunger, disease, and exposure that first year, it was right to meet and give thanks to God who had preserved even so small a number, given them aid in the form of the local Indian community, and allowed them, weak and starved as they were, to sow and then gather a good crop to sustain them over the second winter in their new homeland. While individual communities celebrated days of thanksgiving for years to come, a national Thanksgiving Day was not declared until 1789, when George Washington proclaimed the fourth Thursday in the month of November to be a day of giving thanks countrywide for the successful conclusion of the American Revolution and the adoption of the Constitution. At the height of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln instituted an annual celebration on the fourth Thursday of each November to ask God to "heal the wounds of the nation." Finally, in 1941, as America was becoming increasingly involved in World War II, Congress established formally the annual celebration of Thanksgiving Day. None of these early Thanksgiving Days were proclaimed when life was easy. Rather, they were established at times when the people had escaped danger or were standing on the precipice looking at it.
It is easier to give thanks when we are aware of how close we are now, or have been in the past, to losing that for which we give thanks. Hard times clarify things for us, bring life into focus. We do not attend so readily then to the fluff of life, the inconsequential details, or our own deeply ingrained sense of self importance. Instead, we feel the wonder, the joy tinged awe that arises when we realize that there is life and hope when circumstances indicate that there should not be.
It is this simple fact of human life that makes the behavior of nine of the ten lepers Jesus healed in the story from the Gospel of Luke all the more unbelievable. While it is true that the word leprosy covers a number of possible skin conditions from the life threatening to the merely cosmetic, the outcome of the diagnosis was the same. A newly declared leper was hounded from house and home, driven out of a community for fear of contagion, forced to beg for scraps of food, and shunned by loved ones. They were living ghosts, wearing alarm bells on their ragged clothing to warn the living to avoid them. They banded together, seeking safety in numbers and consolation also, as, too often, bits and pieces of their bodies were consumed by disease until, finally, death came as a welcome release from their sufferings. Those whose skin did heal were still banned from their own homes and communities until a priest had examined them, and declared them clean.
Ten lepers descended upon Jesus as he prepared to enter a new town to preach the coming kingdom of God. They were a mixed lot; the differences between Samaritans and Jews did not seem as divisive when all were exiles from their communities battling a common foe. Respecting the prohibition against coming close to Jesus, they kept their distance from him and begged for mercy. Note, they did not ask to be healed, instead they asked specifically for mercy. Many afflicted in this awful way would have thought the sickness payment for some sin. Jesus did not answer them directly, but instead told them to show themselves to the priests. Now, these are men who knew what the Law says regarding leprosy as well as Jesus did. They knew they were forbidden to enter into the company of the priests because of their skin condition. The clear implication of Jesus' command was that they were to go to the priests because they would be healed. The lepers turned and left in what haste their various states of disability would allow. And, imagine this now, as they headed towards home, gaits hobbled by missing toes and diseased joints smoothed out and their pace picked up, as with newly healthy lungs they shouted their joy to the heavens.
One turned, in the midst of this miracle, no longer a leper, but not quite free either. He turned, and walked, I think, back to the One who had made him whole. He praised God on his way back, acknowledging this gift of new life, and then went face down in the dirt at Jesus' feet, and thanked him. This one, the only one of the ten to do so, a Samaritan, gave credit where credit was due. While all were blessed with the healing mercy of God's grace, it was only the one who was twice over an exile from home that understood that the One who gave new life with a command was also the One through whom life was given at the beginning. Here was a healing that encompassed more than just a disease, dreadful though it was. "Your faith," said Jesus, "has made you whole."
Faith is what makes Thanksgiving Day the holy day that it is for us. Underneath the concerns about the moistness of the turkey, whether Uncles Jack and Jason can get along with one another long enough to finish the pumpkin pie, or even the status of our favorite teams, there is the need to praise God with a loud voice for the gift of life and the gifts that sustain life. The sense of wonder, that there should be something rather than nothing, and that the something should be so wonderful, must express itself in a bent knee and the giving of thanks to the Holy One.