October 9, 2016 Pentecost
21 Luke 17:11-19
In my basement I
have a large cabinet with a lot of little wooden draws. It’s great for sorting and organizing
things. In one row of draws I’ve put
different kinds of nails. In another row
of draws there are different kinds of bolts.
One drawer has electrical equipment.
A couple draws have plumbing supplies.
One draw is set aside for tire repairs because I get so many flat tires
on my bicycle. Now my organizational
strategy is not rigid. Some draws are
just a hodge-podge. In one drawer I have
and old set of calipers, an insulated liner for a hard hat, a mechanical
tachometer and two worn out old baseballs that my dad had as a kid. I have no idea why that collection of items
have landed in that drawer, but obviously I know what’s in there!
Whether we consider ourselves to be
neat-nicks or slobs I think we all like to have some order to life. Putting nails together in one place and bolts
together in another place makes it easy to find one when you need one. It would take forever to find a small nut or
washer if I just dumped them all into a bucket with my nails.
Actually we humans like to organize
everything. Scientifically we organize
nature into species and sub-species.
Within species we categorize breeds.
As humans we make distinctions about race. We live in houses that clearly define inside
and outside. If you own property you
have a deed which says exactly what you own and where it is. There are probably steel pins or concrete
markers at the corners that say precisely what is yours and what is your
neighbor’s.
This can all be good and suit us
well. Good boundaries and good
organization make a civilization run smoothly and with good order. But it can also be bad if we think our ideas of
order and boundaries are the same as God’s.
If the natural order of things is any indication we see that God loves
bounty and diversity but God isn’t overly interested in clear distinctions and
crisp boundaries.
Take Canandaigua Lake as an
example. We humans have clearly defined
the north end of the lake. You can walk
through the park on a path or on grass and you can clearly see the distinction
between land and water. There are heavy
boulders keeping the end of the lake crisp and clear. Then go down to the south end of the lake in
Naples. There are no definitions to be
found. The water gets shallower and
shallower. Then there are cattails and
water plants. It slowly transitions to
silt and organic matter. Farther away
there is stuff that could be called dirt but it’s still swampy. And slowly and only eventually do you get to
anything that could actually be called land that has trees or could be built
upon.
Now I’m not intending to be critical
of our human tendencies to want to push back the chaos of nature and create
order for ourselves, but we do make a mistake if we think God plays by the same
order.
We see that in our gospel reading for
today. Jesus is traveling in the border
region between Samaria and Galilee.
Samaria was generally populated by Samaritans and Galilee populated by
Jews. You’ll remember that Jews hated
Samaritans and Samaritans hated Jews.
However there really wasn’t much of a distinction between them. They were basically the same race. They both hated Roman rule. They believed in the same God and had
virtually the same beliefs and even scriptures.
But they had created serious distinctions. One of the biggest distinctions was where to
worship God. Jews said God was properly
worshiped on Mt. Zion in Jerusalem.
Samaritans said God was properly worshipped on Mt. Gerizim; about 30
miles north of Jerusalem in Samarian territory.
And so their feud went down through the centuries.
Commentator Joel Green makes an
interesting point about these ten lepers and it is one that we easily
miss. Ten lepers approach Jesus keeping
their distance. They knew that had to
keep their distance because true leprosy was a contagious and deadly
disease. There was no treatment in those
days and so if you contracted it you had to go to a priest to be examined. If the priest determined that it was indeed
leprosy then you had to leave your village and go out and live by yourself;
until you died from the disease. Enough
people had leprosy that leper colonies would form.
Now just about any skin condition was
called leprosy so if it cleared up on its own or if by some miracle you
actually recovered you had to go back to a priest and be re-examined. If the priest decided that you were indeed
well then you could return to your home.
So Jesus tells these ten lepers, “Go
and show yourselves to the priests.” But
this is in-between territory. Are these
lepers Jews or Samaritans. Without
thinking we assume they are all Jews, but in fact they aren’t. Notice that Jesus does not say which priests
they should go see and to which temple.
Should they go to Jerusalem or to Mt. Gerizim?
As Luke tells the story only when the
Samaritan comes to give thanks do we realize this is a mixed crowd. And before we think this is about a foreigner
being grateful while the citizens were not grateful to God, remember that we
should think the way they thought. For a
devout Jew or a devout Samaritan the place you wanted to go to in order to be
thankful to God for something was the temple.
It would be fitting and appropriate for a Jew who experienced a miracle
to travel to the temple to give thanks to God there. While they believed that God could be
everywhere the temple is where you found God most clearly and powerfully.
Perhaps the Jews who did not return to
Jesus were selfish and ungrateful for what God had done. Or perhaps they were going to the temple to
show God their gratitude there. We don’t
know. We do know, however, that along
the way some revelation of faith came to the Samaritan. He realized faith was not about a place it
was about a person – Jesus. The center
of his faith is now Jesus, not Mt. Gerizim, nor Jerusalem.
I think that takes us back to where we
began. God is not a God of crisp
boundaries and clear definitions. To the
Jews God wanted worship in Jerusalem and not Mt. Gerizim. To the Samaritans God wanted worship on Mt.
Gerizim and not Jerusalem. We discover
in reality that the whole distinction these religions had created amongst
themselves was completely artificial and not at all what God had in mind.
We have to be very careful lest we
place our definitions upon God. Quite
likely they are our rules, not God’s.
While God certainly wants good and constructive things from us God is
not therefore bound by every definition we use to create good order to our
lives.
We want to have the faith realization
of the Samaritan. God had acted. God had done something miraculous and amazing
for his life. He discovered that
gratitude to God was more important than human order, and that gratitude may
actually be the center of faith.
When we talk about faith people often
think of your belief system. I like to
say that faith is about trust and a relationship more than intellectual
beliefs. But perhaps this experience of
the Samaritan should cause us to shift these ideas. Perhaps faith and gratitude are what go hand
in hand.
In reflecting on this story R. Alan
Culpepper has noted, “Gratitude may be the purest measure of one’s character
and spiritual condition.” (New
Interpreter’s Bible, Volume 9, Pg. 327)
He makes a good argument. Life
itself is a precious gift. Health is a
gift. Friendship with others and family
connections are an incredible grace to be treasured and held in gratitude.
Gratitude reveals a humility of spirit
and an awareness of God’s work. We are
not self-made individuals beholden to no one and in a place to make demands of
God. Our creation was the work of our
parents, not our own. A community reared
us. Our society gives us a place and a
sense of value. Even if we are the most
productive and upright of citizens we still receive generously from those
around us and our God. We are blessed
daily in ways we seldom perceive and cannot repay. To be ungrateful is to blind. To be grateful is to have faith.
May God give you sight of your
blessings and sense of gratitude for them.
And may you rejoice in those blessings and celebrate them so that you
can see beyond human boundaries and into the kingdom of God.
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