The Tenth Leper
10-14-07
I grew up in a family which emphasized gratitude. Grace before meals, written thank you notes, hostess gifts, "please and thank you." We were to be thankful for the large and small gifts of everyday life. Gratitude is at the heart of both the gospel and good manners.
Out of ten lepers in this morning’s story only one returns to prostrate himself in gratitude before his savior. The lepers Jesus heals in our gospel lesson weren't likely always lepers. Many of them probably had meaningful jobs before they were forced to beg for their livelihood. One of them might have been a carpenter, building homes and workplaces in his community. One of them was probably a fisherman, working hard day after day to provide food for his family and neighbors. In a better time, they were able to provide for others.
But now, no one even cared to learn his name. The crowds avoided him. He had a dreaded and deadly skin disease. The hands that had once been instruments had become extremities with the power to inflict disease if he were to touch the skin of another. He may have once been a carpenter, but now he was just one of those feared lepers that lived outside the city walls.
I, for one, can not even imagine what it was like to be a leper in first-century Judea. Leprosy was a dreaded but common affliction in Jesus’ day. So common that the book of Leviticus spends two whole chapters teaching priests how to diagnose diseases of the skin, to pronounce lepers ritually unclean, how to perform rites of purification should they be healed. I don't know much about leprosy, but from what I've read and heard it is a disease where body parts rot away: you may loose fingers, toes, hands, feet, even parts of your face. And it is a disease that will eventually kill you. It is called Hanson's disease today, and the disease has been largely eliminated in the West due to modern medicine. But at that point in time, there was no cure for Hanson's disease. Not every leper had Hanson's disease. Persons who had any skin condition would be kept out of the community. Psoriasis, lupus, ringworm, or any unusual marks on the body, including unique birthmarks, was reason enough to send a person away from friends and family and to live in special places on the fringes of society.
Leprosy was not seen, however, as a punishment for sin. It was understood instead as a inexplicable act of God, which made it even more frightening. It meant there was nothing you could do to avoid contracting a skin disease. That is why lepers were shunned. Can you imagine what it must have been like to be pushed outside the community? Humiliated? The butt of jokes? What would it be like to never be touched? To be feared and avoided? No hugs, no kisses, no hand-shakes, no pats on the shoulder. I think people did not want to catch their disease, or their pain. People were afraid not only of the physicality of their disease, but also of their loneliness and longing, so the lepers were left to depend on the charity of society’s insiders for their survival and livelihood. The lepers dressed as they were told, spoke as they were told, and did not cross over the line that had been drawn to separate them from those with unblemished skin. They were obedient.
We see their obedience in more that one way in this morning’s passage. Even when Jesus, that renowned healer, came to town, it says that they stood at the proper distance and said the proper things like, "Jesus, Master," calling him by his formal messianic title, "have mercy upon us." They acted the proper way.
Jesus saw that these ten lepers could use healing. Yet he did not physically embrace them or put mud in their eyes, nothing so dramatic, except for some simple instructions…something these lepers were good at following, "go show yourselves to the priests." They did, disappearing obediently.
None of them asked Jesus why they should go see the priests. There was only one reason why a leper would do such a thing. The priests were the ones that diagnosed a person, gave a verdict, clean or unclean, insider or out, member of the community or beggar outside on the fringes. As these obedient lepers went to find the priests, their bodies began to heal, they were fit to be members of society once again; to return to loved ones, make a living, eat with friends in the marketplace!
The true blessing of this story is not in the healing power of Jesus, although one can never hear that good news enough. I think the amazing power of this story is that one of these obedient lepers did not do as he was told. He felt his feet and hands tingle, and he jumped up and down for joy. He ran back to Jesus and made a sloppy, embarrassingly genuine spectacle of himself as he fell at Jesus’ feet. He was a Samaritan, a foreigner, but his nationality did not matter. He had been transformed inside and out, and he was thankful.
It’s hard to say what effect the tenth leper’s response had on Jesus. Something happened, because, Jesus starts asking questions, "Hey weren’t there ten of you? Where are the other nine? Don’t they know how to say thank you?" He said, get up out of the dirt, and go your way, your faith has healed you, it has saved you.
As we consider this passage about the lepers, we need to take care not to assume that the other nine were ungrateful wretches. We don’t know that. There are many ways to express gratitude, joy, wholeness; and surely each leper experienced those feelings. Yet we know not the particular circumstances of each one healed. Jesus knows where they are and Jesus knows they are grateful, or confused, or preoccupied, or empty, or grieving, or doubtful. Jesus always knows these things about us; knows things large and small, dark and light, sure and unsure. Jesus, our healer, knows, and we are profoundly grateful to be so well known by the Holy. Nonetheless, expressing gratitude is often more complicated than it first appears; more complicated than "We thank you God for happy hearts."
After all, Jesus did give these lepers instructions. Weren’t they merely following them? Yes, ten were healed of their skin ailments, but only one was saved. Ten were declared clean, but only one was said to have faith. Ten set out for Jerusalem to claim their free gifts as they were told, but only one turned back and gave himself to the Giver instead. Ten behaved like good lepers, one behaved like a man in love. There is a lot going on here.
Barbara Brown Taylor, Episcopal Priest, and one of my favorite authors tells a story about a man that visited her church in Clarksville, GA. Her former church is located downtown surrounded by banks and businesses, and they keep the sanctuary open everyday from 9 to 5 like their corporate neighbors. They like to offer a quiet, cool oasis in the midst of busy city life. As you might expect, not everyone who enters has godly intentions, so the church is equipped with closed, circuit cameras to keep an eye on the place and make sure no one runs off with the candlesticks or, heaven forbid, sleeps in the pews.
The monitor sits beside the receptionist’s desk in the office, where the volunteer can keep watch over the altar. One day the receptionist on duty became concerned because there was a man lying face down on the altar steps. He laid there for several hours, every so often standing up and raising his hands toward the altar, before returning to his original position. There was a small meeting in the office and one of the staff members was elected to go check on the man. The rest of the staff huddled around the monitor to watch events unfold. The staff member appeared on the screen, approached the man, a few words were exchanged, and then he returned to the office. "He’s praying," was the news.
This went on for days. Everyday about 11 am there was this skinny man lying on his face, collecting dust balls from the floor. The cleaning staff worked around him, the altar guild tried not to disturb him, the florist stepped over him on her way to the altar.
Finally Sunday came, and it was Barbara’s turn to celebrate communion. He was there when she arrived, blocking her path to the altar, and she didn’t know quite what to do. Approaching him as if he were a land mine, she gently tapped him on the shoulder and explained that she was preparing for a service and he was going to have to move.
He lifted his forehead from the floor and spoke with a heavy accent, replying, "That’s okay." He dusted himself off, left and never came back. She reflects that the eight o’clock service began on time. The faithful took their places. They read all their parts well, spoke when they were supposed to speak, were silent when they were supposed to be silent. They performed their duties, offered their symbolic gifts, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with that at all. They were good servants, who had come for a ritual cleansing, but one of them was missing. The foreigner was no longer among them. 1
You know as I reflect on both of these stories, it is apparent to me that I know how to be obedient, but I don’t always know how to be thankful and in love. In some ways it may be the small stuff even more than the big stuff that makes us whole. The big stuff is just that, big, obvious, you’d be a fool not to be grateful. Big stuff like being healed of leprosy, like crawling out of a totaled car without a scratch, like finding a home that withstood the hurricane’s fury; big stuff very likely to lead us (like the Samaritan) to fall at Jesus’ feet in thanksgiving. And it is interesting that it is often the big stuff that finally awakens us to the small stuff.
You see, I have a basic command of reflective listening and public speaking, I read my Bible, and say my prayers. This is the kind of steady discipleship, that of the 9 lepers, that has kept the church afloat for thousands of years. This discipleship is crucial.
Yet I wonder, about that 10th leper. I know how obedient other 9 were. But what about the 10th leper? I’m not likely to follow after him. It is safer here with the obedient 9. With the 9, we know the rules and who does what.
And yet where is the one who followed his heart instead of his instructions, who accepted his life as a gift and gave it back again, whose thanksgiving rose up from somewhere so deep inside him that it turned him around, changed his direction, led him to Jesus, made him well? That’s what this whole journey is all about. Not just following the rules, but being so thankful, so in love with the God that it leads us to new life.
You see, gratitude is not so much a behavior as it is a grounding. Gratitude is not so much an act as an attitude, a frame of mind. That leper knew the power of being known, intimately loved, healed from the inside out. I believe we are most whole when we hold our stance of gratitude in the world knowing we are held by the Holy. We are held by the Holy in each moment; let us never forget to be thankful. Thanks be to God, Amen.Blessings,
Melissa
1 Barbara Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life, Cowley Publications, 1993, pg. 111.