Luke 17:11-19
“Showing Up”
October 13, 2019
This very minute we are surrounded by 7.7 billion other people and, yet, each of us has the capacity to feel tremendously isolated and alone at various times throughout our lives. Think about those times of anger or loss or illness or disappointment or struggle in which you drew into yourself and felt that others would never understand or maybe even accept the person you were at that difficult point in your life. In a large-scale survey conducted recently by Cigna, the health care provider, almost half of all Americans polled indicated that they always or sometimes feel alone. The percentage of those who said they never or rarely ever feel as though they have people around them who really understand them was 27 percent. One in five Americans surveyed reported that they rarely or never felt close to people or have anybody with whom they can really talk. The rates of those who die by suicide in this country are the highest they have been since World War II.
Just two days ago, on Friday night, Bailey Hall was the site of a new effort by The Collaborative, an organization dedicated to “promoting the development of a healthy community supporting substance free youth in a caring environment.” Right here they held the first of four such events meant to let one of the most vulnerable parts of the Bennington County community know that they are seen and valued and are not alone.
Every other month, starting this past Friday, Bailey Hall is beautifully transformed into a bright, colorful and welcoming space for LGBTQ youth, ages 12 to 18, in what is called Friday Night Live. This evening of food and games with some fun educational opportunities is intended to provide a safe and nurturing environment for LGBTQ middle and high school students to realize that they are valued and that they are not alone. It is also important to note that this initial effort took place on National Coming Out Day.
The 10 that were healed by Jesus were men who were forced to live outside of their communities and told where and how they could live apart and were not allowed to participate in Temple services and rituals. They were alone, desperate and truly abandoned.
Jesus knew the way that the cultural undesirables or those considered less than, were treated and he made sure to upset the expectations with his response. Here we have a group of individuals – whom, by the way, Jesus refers to not as lepers but as ten men with skin diseases just as he earlier healed the man who was paralyzed not the paralytic and helped the man who had demons as opposed to the Gerasene demoniac – they are human beings first who have a compromising health condition, a gentle reminder that they and all of us are not our illnesses or our differences.
These ten raise their voices together as one voice while keeping their distance as the purity laws of the time would have dictated. They are raising their voices to Jesus for mercy. They recognize that God is at work in Jesus and that through him they can be brought back into community, no longer considered dirty outsiders to be treated with at least disdain and at worse abuse. Besides being heard, a huge part of this account involves the idea of being seen, really seen. Jesus responds with the call to rejoin the community, instructing them to visit the priests not physicians, as Torah outlines. He saw the men whose physical health was in question and who as a result had been shunned by others. He saw their need and responded and then sent them on their way, following Jewish law as laid out in the chapters of Leviticus that refer to purity.
And then there is the one identified as a Samaritan, who in this region would have been viewed as doubly cursed. The other nine do what they’re told by Jesus and the Samaritan starts to but something stops him. He follows his heart instead of instructions. He recognizes that he’s been healed and that it was God at work and this is cause for dropping down in the dirt in front of Jesus and offering his praise and thanksgiving. We don’t know if he ever goes to the temple for the blessing of the priests. What we do know is that he has been offered more than physical healing by Jesus.
The phrase we heard at the end of the reading, “Your faith has made you well,” translates in Greek to the way we think of “made well” as meaning healed or it can mean “saved” as in being brought safely through mortal danger or it can also mean “made whole” as being completed and made to be what you were meant to be all along. Perhaps this ultimate outsider turned back because he knew that the one person who had truly accepted and changed his life for the better was God’s servant Jesus.
To be seen and known and treated as a human being in need was what the ten’s cry to Jesus for mercy had been. What injustice or suffering beckons to us to be seen? What is worth raising our voices about? What suffering might we address as individuals and as God’s church, the place where love is supposed to look like in action? Here the call for healing mercy comes in a raised voice and so, too, does the praise of God.
This parable, and a number of others that Luke shares, makes it clear that Jesus’ ministry is all about leveling the playing field that is life. The way Jesus does this is to show the width and the breadth of God’s mercy. No debilitating illness or difference of appearance or religious belief or lack of money or societal isolation keeps God through Jesus from reaching out and bringing folks back into community. Who do we know that could use such generosity of spirit and inclusion? What risks, for love’s sake, are we willing to take? As civil rights pioneer Congressman John Lewis frequently encourages, what kind of “good trouble” can we get into by challenging boundaries that keep some out? How can we make them truly feel they are a part of our community – as broad as that word may be if we think of the community of God to which we all belong? Which cries of desperation, shouted or whispered, will we be drawn to respond to with compassion and advocacy?
Let us lift up then these words of prayer for strength in action:
Dear God, thank you for showing me how to love. Thank you for teaching me to look around and find those who’ve been left out by society, friends or school {or even family}. Help me have eyes to see and the courage to stand with those who feel alone in this world. Amen. (Adapted from www.d365.org)