Luke 17:11-19
Presented October 14th, 2007, by J.D. Kline
The 20th Sunday after Pentecost
Stewardship Theme: Celebrate Abundance—Nourish Life
My former congregation has a long-standing partnership with a church in Nicaragua, with periodic exchanges involving members from the North American church traveling to Nicaragua, and members of the Nicaraguan church traveling north. One summer, my daughter Jill, then a senior in high school, and I joined a group of seven others for a week’s visit with the members of the Nicaraguan congregation, located in one of the poorest areas of Managua. Each of us lived for the week with a different family, and Jill was assigned to the home of a young couple whose house was among the most basic. The home had no indoor plumbing, and the couple gave their only bed to Jill. As the week was nearing its end, the husband wanted to offer a gift of remembrance, and he took off his wedding ring and handed it to Jill. As you might suspect, she initially refused the gift, but the wife confirmed that, yes, they wanted to share this gift—the one possession of most value they had to offer.
Each of us who had traveled to Nicaragua had taken along token gifts of appreciation, but they seemed insignificant in comparison. Jill offered her pair of running shoes to the husband, shoes he had admired, and to the wife she gave several dresses. But nothing could match the gift Jill had been given. Now, some eight years later, Jill continues to wear the ring, a constant reminder of the power of lives lived generously and with gratitude.
Those of us who are parents frequently prompt our young children, when they are recipients of a gift or a kindness, to respond with gratitude. Say thank you, we urge them. And while there’s good reason to teach social graces, truth is, gratitude is something that cannot be readily imposed. Prior to Jill’s Nicaragua trip, she was a typical teenager immersed in a sea of materialism, with trips to the mall ranking high on her list of pleasures. But the experiences in Nicaragua played a critical role in leading her to reconsider her priorities in life, and that ring on her finger continues to serve as a powerful reminder that our possessions are not what are most important in life. Rather, it is our relationships that nourish and sustain us—relationships with God, with one another, with humanity, with all creation. It is the expression of compassion, our work for justice, our passion for peace, our thirst for genuine spirituality, our celebration of all of life as gift—it is all of this that holds priority in life.
I’ve traveled to Nicaragua twice, and both times have been struck—and humbled—by the joyful spirit I’ve encountered alongside the poverty and the high levels of unemployment. It is a joy unencumbered by all the “stuff” we in North American culture hold as dear. Yvonne Dilling, former member of this congregation, spent a significant amount of time in refugee camps in Central America during the 1980s, that period of time marked by civil strife and guerilla warfare. As soon as the refugees began a new camp, according to Yvonne, they would set up three committees to provide structure and organization: a committee of education, a committee of construction, and a committee of joy. Celebration was every bit as basic to the life of the refugees as was education for their children and the construction of basic shelter for sustenance. One refugee woman once asked Yvonne why she was so serious all the time, why she walked around looking so heavily burdened. Yvonne spoke, as you might expect, of the tremendous suffering all around her, of her intention to enter into the grief and the struggles of the refugees. But the woman responded, “You’re not serious about our struggle. Only people who expect to go back to North America in a year work the way you do. You cannot be serious about the struggle unless you play and celebrate and do those things that make it possible to give a lifetime to it.”
Truth is, few of us are adept at truly celebrating life in all its abundance. In North American culture, we are prone to define abundance merely in terms of how much we own, how much we can grasp hold of. As a result, we live as if joy is always one more experience beyond our reach, one more purchase beyond our grasp. Quaker author Philip Gulley, in his book Porch Talk, laments our compulsion to own life rather than simply to enjoy life. In the midst of a family trip in a rented RV, Philip told his wife Joan, “This is the way to go. We ought to buy one.” Joan’s response: “Why do we have to own one? Why not just rent? It’s a lot cheaper.” And then, quietly eating a dish of ice cream, Joan added, “It seems good to be able to enjoy something without having to own it.” Writes Philip Gulley in response,
Maybe Joan has a point. Maybe it’s enough to enjoy something without having to possess it.
To enjoy a forest without having to own the trees.
To appreciate a fine chair without having to buy it.
To savor an experience with God without insisting others must encounter God the same way.
In another section of Philip Gulley’s book he speaks of a great irony, that so many of the people who seemingly have every reason to be content seldom are. Writes Gulley,
Though happiness is their aim, it seems always out of their reach. I wonder if gratefulness is the bridge from sorrow to joy, spanning the chasm of our anxious striving. Freed from the burden of unbridled desires, we can enjoy what we have, celebrate what we’ve attained, and appreciate the familiar. For if we can’t be happy now, we’ll likely not be happy then.
This morning’s Gospel lesson from Luke, chapter seventeen, tells the story of one who allows gratitude to serve as the bridge from sorrow to joy, one who senses that that the key to a life of connectedness with our God is the ability to express thanksgiving, appreciation, and joy. The story appears only in Luke’s Gospel, a Gospel defined by Presbyterian pastor John Killinger in his Devotional Guide to Luke as The Gospel of Contagious Joy. Ten lepers of differing nationalities, brought together by their common affliction of leprosy, beseech Jesus, “Master, have mercy on us!” (Luke 17:13). The ten are properly standing at a distance, for the law of that day required lepers to maintain their distance from healthy society. According to the book of Leviticus, “the person who has the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp” (13:45-46). Not only did lepers, therefore, suffer the pain and disfigurement of the dreaded disease; in addition, they were outcast from society, compelled to live outside the city gates, apart from family and community.
Most people in that day soon became hardened to the sight of lepers at a distance, but not Jesus, who responds to the plea of the ten for mercy and compassion by telling them, “Go and show yourselves to the priest” (Luke 17:14). Again, according to the book of Leviticus, a priest must first pronounce a healed leper clean, before he or she can be received back into society. The ten take off, following the instructions of Jesus to the T, and along the way apparently are cleansed. The scabs fall away, color returns to their flesh, feeling comes back into limbs that have been numb for years.
Nine lepers continue on to the priest, but one does not do as he is told. Instead, he returns, prostrating himself at the feet of Jesus, loudly praising God and expressing gratitude to Jesus for the healing. In a sermon based on this text, Episcopal preacher Barbara Brown Taylor writes,
He made a spectacle of himself, all the more so once he was recognized as a Samaritan … He was, in other words, a double outsider—once by virtue of his leprosy and twice by virtue of his non-Jewish blood—a double loser lying at the feet of Jesus and thanking God as if God were somehow present in a man, and somehow revealed in the presence of that man. He was one of the unclean who saw what the clean could not see, and who refused to be separated from what gave him life.
Intriguing, isn’t it, that obedience may not be a fully adequate response. For obedience can be done in a calculating manner—doing what we need to do merely to make things better for one’s self. But the Christian life involves so much more; it is a matter of the heart; it is a life that flows forth in gratitude. Much like the Central American refugees with whom Yvonne Dilling worked, the tenth leper understood that celebration, gratitude and joy are central elements of faithful living. The tenth leper, in the words of Barbara Brown Taylor, “followed his heart instead of his instructions, [and] accepted his life as a gift and gave it back again.” Gratitude “rose up from somewhere so deep inside him that it turned him around, changed his direction, led him to Jesus, [and] made his well.”
There have been times in my life and ministry when I have found myself busy, yet vaguely unsatisfied. Times when I have convinced myself that everything depends upon me, along the way losing sight of the power of gratitude, celebration, and joy. Annually I spend a week in silence at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, and a number of years ago, at a particularly pressured time in my ministry at my former congregation, I found myself questioning if I had anything left to offer to others. I spent some time in a garden on the grounds of Gethsemani where there is a statue of Jesus praying, while off at a distance is a second statue of the three disciples who cannot stay awake and pray with Jesus. Sitting with those statues and with my thoughts, I penned these words:
It’s no easy road—
knowing and loving and serving and following you, Jesus.
So easy to get sidetracked,
pursuing our own ways,
blinded to yours.
Despite the best of intentions,
still it happens:
Meetings upon meetings—
services to plan,
events to organize,
people to appease,
divisions to amend.
Subtly, quietly, almost unforeseen—
the focus is lost,
the Center ignored.
My way, not Thine, be done.
Who knows best—
I’m the one who’s here each day,
the one to stay the course,
the one to hold it together.
And you, O living Christ,
when did I lose sight of you?
Not like the disciples who fell asleep.
Oh no, I kept busy—
busy with all the right things,
or so I supposed.
Come, follow me, you said—
and I will give you responsibilities that never end,
pressures and tasks and demands,
your energy to spend.
Something’s gone awry.
What’s that, you say?
Come to me; I will give you rest.
Rest?
Why can’t I feel the rest?
Forgive me, Lord.
The church is yours, not mine.
You are the Redeemer; I am the servant.
Restore my vision, Lord.
Become once again the center of my life.
With the tenth leper, perhaps our desire to live with and for God is most nourished, not only as we seek God’s vision, but even more, as we allow gratitude to well up within us. Nourishing gratitude within and among us—is this not a key element in our call to Celebrate Abundance—Nourish Life?