The Church of St.
Paul & Incarnation, Jersey City NJ
October 13, 2019
Year C, Proper 23:
The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Psalm 66:1-11
2 Timothy 2:8-15
Luke 17:11-19
In This Together
As
you know, a big part of my job is visiting the sick and since right now we have
several ill parishioners, I’ve been spending even more time than usual in
hospitals.
I don’t know how
often you’ve been in hospitals but if you go a lot and keep your eyes open one
of the things you notice is that illness is one of the great equalizers of
life.
I’m not saying
everybody receives the same quality of care. That’s definitely not true,
especially in our country.
But, it is true
that if you go to the hospital and walk through the waiting room filled with
anxious family and friends, or if you walk the halls and glance into the rooms,
you see all different kinds of people, united by illness and the hope for
healing and health.
In our daily lives
we are often split up into our different ethnic, religious, and economic
groups, but in the hospital, we are reminded that we are all in this together.
At first glance, today’s gospel lesson seems
straightforward enough, but, as usual, when we dig deeper into Scripture we
discover there is a lot going on here.
So,
here’s the story: we’re told that Jesus is making his way to Jerusalem, passing
through an in-between place – a place that’s neither Jesus’ homeland of Galilee
nor the homeland of the usually despised Samaritans.
Jesus is in this
in-between place where he encounters ten men with leprosy who beg him for
mercy.
Jesus
doesn’t lay hands on them and doesn’t say any words of healing.
Instead, Jesus tells
them to go present themselves to the priests.
In an act of
faith, they don’t argue with Jesus that, uh, he seems to have forgotten to heal
them. They just go.
And,
sure enough, as they make their way to the priests they were “made clean.”
But,
only one of the now ex-lepers returned to personally thank Jesus.
And,
as a little kicker, we’re told that the one ex-leper who returned was a
Samaritan.
That
doesn’t surprise us too much because thanks to the famous parable we’ve
been conditioned to think of Samaritans as “good” but a Jewish audience would
have found the goodness or the thankfulness of a Samaritan to be a pretty big
surprise.
(And,
since presumably the other nine lepers were Jews, there would have been the
surprise that they did not thank Jesus, at least not yet. After all, let’s not
get judgmental. The other nine may have been simply off following Jesus’
instruction to go to the priests.)
Anyway,
the obvious lesson to draw from this story is the importance of thankfulness,
right?
And,
who could argue with that, right?
Especially us here
today who have so much to be thankful for – for our lives and for each other - our
lives together here as church, as this beautiful expression of the Body of
Christ.
But, while not
denying the importance of thankfulness, I want to back up to the start of the
story and the ten men with leprosy.
Just like people
in hospitals today, the very real differences among the ten men with leprosy –
nine Jews and one Samaritan – those differences that would have been very real
among the “healthy,” well, they didn’t matter so much anymore, did they?
No, the in-between
places of illness and misfortune don’t respect our nationalities or
ethnicities, how much money we have in the bank, our politics, or even our
religion.
Illness and
misfortune remind us of the great truth that we are in this together.
But, we often
choose to ignore or forget this truth, don’t we?
In fact,
unfortunately there are powerful forces at work in the world and in our country
and even in our own community – powerful forces that seek to divide us in all
sorts of ways – powerful forces that insist that it’s us versus them, when the
truth is that there is no “them,” only “us.”
There’s no “them,”
only “us.”
We are in this
together.
One of the things
I find a little frustrating about Scripture is very often we don’t know what
happened next – we don’t know what happened to the people we meet so briefly,
people who were touched by the power of God and then went on with their lives.
So, I would love
to know what happened next to the ten men cured of leprosy.
Did the nine
others ever seek out Jesus to thank him?
How did their
families respond when they returned home, no longer disfigured by disease?
Did they go on and
live their lives more faithfully, with greater compassion for the suffering,
because they had received so much mercy from Jesus?
Did they become
disciples of Jesus, telling and retelling their story of healing?
We don’t know,
though we’re always free to imagine.
But,
unfortunately, I think we can be sure that after their healing the one
Samaritan and the nine Jews went their separate ways – they left the in-between
place of illness and returned to their homelands, back to a sense of “us” and
“them.”
Happens all the
time.
In some ways, it’s
kind of like church, isn’t it?
As you’ve heard me
say a million times, one of the glories of our congregation is our diversity.
It’s a cliché but
we really are a beautiful mosaic of all different kinds of people bringing so
many different experiences and gifts and, yes, burdens, each time we gather
together here to pray and to celebrate, each time we gather at the Lord’s Table.
There is no “us”
and “them” in here.
But, that often
changes once we leave this room – sometimes as soon as we get to coffee hour
and quickly divide up into our “territories.”
Today we begin to
focus more intentionally on our stewardship, how we use the gifts and blessings
we have received from God.
Many of us still
think of stewardship as church fundraising. And, while it’s true that we do
need quite a bit of money to keep this old place running, stewardship is about
much more than paying the bills – it’s about expressing our thankfulness to God
– it’s about using the good gifts God has given us.
Although we are
not quite there legally, over the past year and a half or so we have come a
long way in uniting St. Paul’s and Incarnation.
I could be wrong,
but my feeling is that most of us really do think of us as one church now –
that, in that sense, there is no “us” and “them.”
Amen to that.
But, this year my
prayer is that, with God’s help we deepen that unity, to recognize that we really
are in this together – that there is no “them” to do what we are unwilling to
do – there is no “them” to write a check and cover our expenses, no “them” to
host Family Promise, no “them” to straighten up the kitchen, no “them” to raise
our kids in the faith, no “them” to welcome newcomers, no “them” to fill up the
food donation bins, no “them” to fight the good fight with Jersey City Together,
no “them” to pray for the many people on our prayer list...
There is no “them”
only “us.”
And, so as we
focus on stewardship, as we move forward as a beautiful mosaic church, let’s be
like the ten with leprosy at the start of today’s gospel lesson, in the
in-between place, begging for the mercy of Jesus, and aware that we are most
definitely in this together.
And, for that, I
am truly thankful.
Amen.
Posts
