Homily for October 14

The painting is the work of James C. Christensen. Be sure to click on the image to view a large version! (And the larger version is quite large: don't miss the face of the grateful leper on the right.) Notice the bells, shells, bones, etc. the cleansed lepers are carrying. These were primitive "alarms" to warn others of a leper's approach.

Homily for October 14
2 Kings 5:14-17 2 Timothy 2:8-13 Luke 17:11-19

These nine lepers have suffered a bad reputation for some 2,000 years!
So let’s, for a moment, give them the benefit of the doubt.
After all, when Jesus asks, “Where are the other nine?”
we have no reason to think they weren’t at the temple,
showing themselves to the priests,
doing exactly what Jesus had told them to do.
We also have no reason to doubt that they were ecstatically grateful
for what Jesus had done for them.
But Jesus obviously draws our attention to this one leper,
the Samaritan.

Why is this so?

There’s a “coded message” in the gospel text today.
(For the record: it has NOTHING to do with the da Vinci code!)
The coded message is in the mentioning
that this one grateful leper was a -- Samaritan.
You see, the Samaritans were despised by the Jewish people
at least in part because the Samaritans
rejected the (second) temple in Jerusalem
and worshipped in their own place on Mount Gerizim.
So here is the gospel’s coded message:
“Look! Even a Samaritan who can’t find his way to the right temple
knows where to go to give thanks for his cure."

In the first lesson today this same geographic dynamic plays out.
Naaman is so convinced
that the God of Israel is the only God
that he asks to bring home (two mule loads) of Israeli soil
so that there he can worship and thank the God of Israel
on what he reverences as holy ground.

Naaman knows where to go to thank God.

Perhaps it’s difficult for us to imagine or understand
the gratitude of Naaman and the leper
because we may not always know what we have to be grateful for.

We live in a culture which teaches us
to never be satisfied with what we have,
leaving us feeling incomplete and unfulfilled.
If it seems we never have what we want,
or never have enough of what we want,
we will always be just shy of the appreciation that inspires gratitude.

Then, too, ours is what one writer has called a “culture of complaint.”
When complaint becomes the ordinary vehicle of commentary
and when public discourse is generally cast in the negative
it becomes more and more difficult to reach the threshold of gratitude.

Perhaps what we need to counterbalance the culture of complaint is to:
“cultivate a sensibility of gratitude,
in which a person examines his or her life
for signs of God’s grace
and makes a point to be as expressive
about one’s positive experiences as the negative ones.”

Now that takes work:
the work of examining one’s life for signs of God’s grace.
How easy it is for me to miss the moments of grace
when my heart is trained on wanting more things.
How easy it is for me to overlook all I have
if my focus is on what I do not yet have.
How easy it is for me to be lost in the dark
when I have closed my eyes to the light of grace.

And there's more:
“working to be as expressive about one’s positive experiences
as the negative ones.”
Or to put it in terms of the spiritual life:
to be as expressive of the grace my examined life reveals
as I am about the burdens and pain
that are always at hand, always before me.

“A sensibility of gratitude...”
Perhaps you’ve heard that expressed as an “attitude of gratitude.”
Naaman and the tenth leper had this sensibility,
were possessed of this attitude.

What about us? we who live in the culture of complaint?
Do we examine our lives for signs of God’s grace?
Do we have the courage to share the story of grace in our lives
as the leper knew the story of grace in his very skin?

Do we know where to go to thank God?
Well, yes – we do. And that’s why we’re here.

We come to this table to praise and thank God
through, with and in Christ who is, himself, the only true temple!
It is not the temple in Jerusalem or Mount Gerizim that we approach,
but rather the temple of the Christ’s body which is the church
and is the sacrament we celebrate and receive here
at this temple table.

Pray with me that the Eucharist will nourish in us
“a sensibility, an attitude of gratitude”
drawing us to discern God’s grace in our own skin
and giving us the courage to share the story of grace in word and deed.

- ConcordPastor