21st Sunday after Pentecost, 10/13/2013

Sermon on Luke 17:11-19, by Luke Bouman

Luke 17:11 On the way to Jerusalem
Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As
he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their
distance, 13 they called out, saying, "Jesus, Master, have mercy
on us!" 14 When he saw them, he said to them, "Go and show
yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were made
clean. 15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned
back, praising God with a loud voice. 16 He prostrated himself at
Jesus' feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. 17 Then Jesus
asked, "Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are
they? 18 Was none of them found to return and give praise to God
except this foreigner?" 19 Then he said to him, "Get up and
go on your way; your faith has made you well."

Healed and Empty

Rick was something of a celebrity in
his congregation. He had suffered from a rare disease and the good
people of his church had prayed for him, visited him, brought him
food, even raised money to help pay for expensive treatments. They
had done all of this even though the odds of his surviving the
disease were not that great. But Rick had beaten the odds. He had
survived. People pointed at him and talked about him in glowing
terms. "There goes walking proof that God answers prayer," one
person might say. Another would answer, "That man is a walking
miracle, that's for sure." Everyone looked at Rick and felt more
confident in a God who cares and a God who heals. Everyone, that is,
except Rick himself.

Early on, he voiced his concerns to
Pastor Jan. "Why me?" That was always his first question.
There were more. Why didn't God heal everyone with this disease?
What about those people who were younger, had more of their lives
ahead of them? What did he have that merited such healing? He
concluded that there weren't answers to many of those questions.
The last question in particular seemed to be about God's grace. At
least that's what Pastor Jan said. "It isn't what you did to
deserve the healing, that was God's gift to you. It is what you do
with your gift. That's what you have to figure out." But these
questions had given way to a new question for Rick lately. He
stopped by Pastor Jan's office after worship one Sunday to talk
about it.

"Why do I feel so empty?" He asked.
"I've thanked God every day for being healed, but it just
doesn't seem to be enough. I've read everything there is to read
about survivor's guilt, and I suppose there's a bit of that in
me, but that's not the main thing. I don't really even know what
the main thing is. I just feel blank. It is like a part of me just
isn't there. I know that doesn't make any sense. I mean, I'm
healed. I'm cured. I'm 100% better. I'm supposed to feel good
about that, right? So my question is, why don't I? Why don't I
feel, you know, whole?

Beyond Healing

There are several words that describe
the ten men that encounter Jesus in the story for today. The first
is that they are lepers. This means that they had a disease that did
more than destroy their bodies. It also destroyed their lives. They
were "unclean," which in that day and place meant they couldn't
live in town, with people, not even with their families. If they
were lucky they could band together with others and shout or beg from
people, always from a long way off. Maybe they lived in a colony.
But it wasn't really living. It was waiting to die, cut off from
loved ones, cut off from any means of work or pride. It also meant
they were cut off from God. They couldn't worship, being unclean.
They couldn't assemble in synagogue or for Sabbath in someone's
home. They couldn't make offerings at the temple. They were not
people.

Until they meet Jesus, whose reputation
as a healer had reached even their unclean ears. They beg him to
heal them. He does nothing but send them to the priests, and on the
way they discover something astounding. Here we encounter the second
word that is used to describe them. They are made clean. They are
healed of their disease. They are made human again. They can once
again work, live, love, and yes worship among the people. Nine of
the ten continue on their way. They continue to follow Jesus'
instruction that they present themselves to the priests, who alone
can declare them clean. Doubtless each of them was anxious to rejoin
their families. There is no surprise here. They are doing what they
were told to do, and what they deeply desired.

All except one. We know this one. He
returns. He's the one we are supposed to be like. He comes back
to give thanks. At this point it gets strange. Jesus asks where the
other nine are. (The answer is OFF DOING AS THEY WERE TOLD!) Only
this one returned? And he is a Samaritan! (Read: He is a half breed
traitor to all that is good and decent in Jerusalem!) What should
happen then? Should Jesus revoke the cleanliness of the other nine?
(He doesn't!) Should he invite this 10^th leper to join
his group of disciples? (We aren't told.) What Jesus does is
commend this one, this foreigner, half breed, traitor! He says to
him, "Get up and go, your faith has made you well." Only now the
word he uses to describe him is not clean. It is well. It is a word
that means many things, as it was written in Greek. It means well,
or saved, or maybe best, whole, restored.

This man is beyond healed. He is
restored to community, not only beyond his leprosy, but beyond the
hate and the prejudice that kept Samaritans and Jews apart. He is
restored to himself, yes, but also to God. He returned to give
thanks to Jesus, not even knowing that his thanks are part of a
larger healing movement. Jesus, in this story, is pointing toward
even greater things. This Samaritan is just one of many that are
restored not only to humanity, but to relationship with God. Jesus
is on a mission to make broken things whole.

On the Way to Jerusalem

The Gospel writer Luke goes out of his
way at the start of this story to tell us Jesus is on a journey to
Jerusalem. That might not mean much, at first glance. Except that
in Luke's Gospel, everything is leading us to a climax on the
cross. There Jesus will do for all humanity what he did for these
Lepers. He will take what is cut off from God and others by Sin and
will begin the process of bring everything back into harmony, into
wholeness. We call what Jesus accomplished for all people on that
cross "salvation." What we forget is that at its root this means
the same thing as it did for the Samaritan leper. It means being
made whole. It means that we, who are broken, are being restored to
wholeness: with each other, with God, with the broken but now being
restored universe, with everything and everyone.

The difficulty, of course, is that most
people do not stop to see what has happened. Or else most people are
too busy getting on with their lives to think about the consequences
of God's action in Christ. They are healed, but made whole, at
least not yet. Truth be known, this is all of us, at least at some
point in time. Our brokenness is too deep. Our wholeness will come,
but only after we have died and risen again. That's when the true
wholeness will start. In the meantime, we might get a taste, a
glimpse, a moment of clarity. For the final wholeness, we simply
must trust that following Jesus, even to death and the grave, will be
our only hope of the wholeness we so desperately crave.

But there are places where we can
practice this wholeness in the here and now. First, we encounter the
announcement of it week after week in worship. It is first announced
in words, as the sweet news of a self-giving God comes to us in
readings and commentary. It is then announced to us in action, as we
live out the healing AND the wholeness in the meal of communion. It
is a meal where all the boundaries and prejudices come crashing down
and there is only oneness in Christ. The it is announced as we are
sent into the world. The final stage of our healing is when we
ourselves become agents of healing for a broken and disparate world.
"Go in Peace, Serve the Lord!" proclaims the liturgist. "Thanks
Be to God!" we shout in return. We are not thankful that the
worship service is over, but rather that we, now healed, are taking
the worship service with us into the world, where we are made whole
as we become healers of others, for Christ's sake and by Christ's
command.

Wounded Healers

Rick looked to Pastor Jan for some kind
of answer to his longing question. But Pastor Jan had no new
suggestions, just new ways of looking at some old ones. "The
people of this congregation don't know the power of their own
actions," she said. "They lived out their healing thanks by
giving you their prayers and meals and even their wondrous looks and
talk of miracles. They didn't realize that for all of us the real
miracle is both behind us and ahead of us. It is behind us in the
death and resurrection of Jesus. That's where healing is: both
now, in this life, and ahead of us as we die and rise again in the
Lord. We all will die someday, but death isn't the enemy it once
was. Jesus' resurrection took care of that. So we who live and
love do so in relationship to one another. We do so showing our
thanks to God in how we treat and love and give to one another. The
people of this congregation maybe didn't realize that's what they
were doing when they cared and prayed for you, Rick. And some of
them don't understand that being cured of disease isn't the
biggest miracle. That is reserved for resurrection, at the end of
time. You are right to question some of the things they say. And
your other questions, including the question of the feeling of
emptiness are very important and real things for you to wrestle with.
I can't and won't say anything to keep you from wrestling. What
I will say is that God has given you more time now, and my question
for you is the same as always. What are you going to do with this
precious time? You have been healed, but you are still wounded. God
is making you whole and new every day. So how do you give thanks, now
with words, but with your life every day?"

It took a while for this conversation
to sink in for Rick. He never stopped asking some of those hard
questions, especially the questions he had for God. But what Rick
was able to do was realize that even those questions meant that he
was in a relationship with God. He wasn't cut off. Just like when
he was sick and he realized, through the caring of his church family,
that he wasn't cut off then either. So he continued to wrestle,
and even give thanks for the wrestling. But he also continued to
return thanks for his crazy, sometimes misguided, but always eager
church family. Sometimes he thanked them in prayer. Other times he
thanked them by joining them in their craziness, praying for and
bringing food to those who were sick or troubled, as he had the
ability. In time, he learned that all of it, the whole mess, was
both wholeness itself, and the anticipation of that greater wholeness
that God would provide in the life to come. Rick realized that he
was, like everyone else, what Henri Nouwen called a "wounded
healer". And he probably would be until the day he died. And,
like most others who have come to that realization, he realized that
it was a pretty good thing to be.

Dr. Luke Bouman
Valparaiso, IN

E-Mail: luke.bouman@gmail.com

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