Twentieth Pentecost

             October 14, 2007

     A man appeared before St. Peter at the Pearly Gates.

     “Have you ever done anything of particular merit?” St. Peter asked.

     “Well, I can think of one thing,” the man said.  “Once, on a trip to the Black Hills of South Dakota, we found ourselves outside the town of Sturgis.  We had stopped for lunch and came upon a gang of bikers, who were harassing a young woman.  I gently suggested that they leave her alone, but they wouldn’t listen.  So, I approached the largest and most heavily tattooed biker and smacked him on his face, kicked his bike over, ripped out his nose ring, and threw it on the ground.  I yelled, “Now, back off!  Or I’ll pull out both of your earrings!”

     St. Peter was impressed.  “When did this happen?”

     “Just a couple of minutes ago,” the man said.

      It is not easy being a Good Samaritan.  Stepping forward, speaking out, standing between warring factions might cause personal injury.  Defending those whom society has labeled outcasts puts one in a position of becoming equally outcast.  The radical ethic of Christian love is not only demanding, it also requires a new definition of basic humanity and total inclusiveness.

     We are not told too much about the ten lepers who approached Jesus as he traveled to Jerusalem.  He entered a village somewhere between Galilee and Samaria and ten diseased humans call out to him.  Notice that the ten knew the social stigma attached to their illness.  They kept a respectable distance, knowing that any contact with a rabbi would make the rabbi unclean and might threaten his standing in the community.  They call out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”  There were ten of them.  Apparently nine of them were Jews and one was a Samaritan.  What God’s love could not put together, disease did.  The ten were equally stricken and their illness banished them to the outskirts of town.  Issues of discrimination and social ranking were kept on the back burner by the nature of the affliction.  Their need was the same; as one voice, they called out for healing.  The directive from Jesus was that they should go and show themselves to the priests serving at the temple at that time.  They obeyed and, Luke says, “As they went, they were made clean.”  Then one of them noticed that a healing had taken place and he returned to Jesus, gave praise to God, and fell at Jesus’ feet and thanked him.  That one was the Samaritan.  Then the question, “Where are the nine?” is asked.

     Perhaps one of two of them got lost in preoccupation.  Folks like that don’t mean to be ungrateful.  They are just so glad and so preoccupied with gladness that it drives the thoughts of giving thanks from their heads.  Children are particularly susceptible to this response.  Happiness, with a gift they really wanted in their hands, floods out other emotions.  You hand a child something and they take it, start away with it, until an adult grabs their arm and says, “Say thank you.”  Adults, too, need to watch being so preoccupied with the blessings of life that they forget to offer thankful praise.

     Maybe one or two of the nine who were healed got diverted by realism.  If children are most susceptible to preoccupation, adults are most prone to give in to realism.  Thankfulness is a spiritual matter and self-styled realists usually put spiritual matters as secondary, if at all.  They are self-styled, because genuine, bona fide realists recognize the spiritual dimension to life.  General Douglas MacArthur, a realist if there ever was one, said, “The world’s problems are spiritual problems.”

     These nine lepers in the story from Luke got that for which they yelled.  They asked for mercy and mercy and healing was granted.  That’s what counted, and there were so many practical things to be done.  If you will read the fascinating 14^th chapter of Leviticus you will see what all had to happen in order for a leper to reenter the normal life in the community.  Spiritual matters had to be shelved for a little while.  Matters of the spirit are secondary and the contemporary cousins of the nine who were healed, our modern-day, self-styled realists teach their children to read, write, do math, drive a car, get involved in way too many extra-curricular activities, but they don’t bother to teach them to pray, to be kind, to hope, to believe, to reach out a helping hand, to trust God, and be thankful.

     Perhaps two or three of the nine were distracted by business concerns.  Making a living had been way back on the last of the back burners.  Now, the decisions about restarting a business could be given the proper amount of attention.  Maybe one of the nine was behind on his pledge to the temple.  The treasurer had called about bringing things up to date.  The man had told him he owed a lot of other people money and besides, “The Lord isn’t pushing me like the rest of them.”  We can be that way with our time, too.  We are so used to being pushed along the road every day, doing mostly what needs to be done.  We can be so busy raising a family that we forget to be parents.  We can be so busing using our many blessings that we neglect to see them as blessings or acknowledge the source from whence they come.

     Martin Luther once said, “The busier my day is to be, the longer I must be at prayer at the beginning of it.”  It is a good way to start every day.

     Finally, a life of thankfulness leads to salvation.  Some New Testament scholars note that the word translated as “well” in the Gospel could rightfully be translated as “saved.”   When Jesus says, “Get up and go your way; your faith has made you well,” he is really saying, “Get up and go your way; your faith has saved you.” 

     A life centered on ourselves, our wants, our shortfalls, things done and left undone, wrongs we have committed and that others have committed against us, is self-centered and short-circuited.  A life centered in thankfulness to God leads to wholeness, and openness to God’s will for us, and a life that is eternally in God.

     It is living that kind of life that enables us to avoid that awful question, “Where are the nine?”  And even if we sometimes feel like an outcast Samaritan, if we acknowledge the source of all we are and all we have, we shall be saved.  Amen.

          ~The Rev. G. Thomas Mustard