Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

October 14, 2007

Sermon by Pastor Joy Bussert

The Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (Luke 17:11-19)

On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” When Jesus saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then Jesus said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

The Gospel of the Lord.

Let us pray.

Our loving and gracious God,

your mercies are new each day,

and your steadfast love endures forever.

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage.

Give us grateful hearts this day.

Amen.

When I was a little girl, my father always used to say that remembering to say “Thank you” was a sign of a good upbringing, to which I would reply, “So, if I forget, Dad, that means it’s your fault. Right?” There are some thank-yous in life that are obligations, I have learned since, and others that come straight from the heart. And this one is straight from the heart:

Thank you to all of you who helped with the Creation Care Flea Market Friday and yesterday, and those of you who couldn’t, but kept us in your thoughts and prayers. It is a reflection of the spirit of Immanuel that I had pages of members who signed up to help, and many who just came, and some who came back again, sorting, pricing, carrying, the Improvers hauling, checking, bringing to the bank, and hauling to Good Will at the end. Thanks to Ross Robey, Kathy Robey, Tom Cline and family, who provided the concessions trailer and donated the food and the proceeds as well. Thank you to the LASA committee members, including five-week-old Samuel Tate Blissenbach, who donated his mom and dad’s time; to Joe Dufresne, who secured the Thrivent grant; to two other committee members, Heather and Hillary, who were in the middle of midterms at the U.; to the Men’s Breakfast, who had coffee on at 7:30 Saturday morning, and after breakfast pitched in; to A. J. Johnson for donating mums and ferns and kale; to the Creation for sunshine, at least no rain or snow; and to God, for the strength and health that we could all work together, and make music and dance together on that marvelous piece of blacktop just sitting there waiting to have something happen. And speaking of the Teddy Bear Band that Dale and Jeff again hosted and set up, I first met their leader Ron Gustafson—he was the one with the red vest and the hat—in 1995 on the steps of the State Capitol, where the Teddy Bear Band in those days was the rally for Early Childhood Education, now known as ECFE.

Somewhere in the late 1970s, Early Childhood teachers discovered what mothers have known for centuries—that parents of newborns and toddlers were disenfranchised. How can you have a voice when you are sleep deprived? And so they started an innovative movement designed to listen to parents; a statewide network of support that now involves 60% of parents, with children birth to five, in Minnesota. On this Children’s Sabbath, I am grateful for people like Ron Gustafson and the Teddy Bear Band, who remind us to remember the children, and that gratitude comes straight from the heart.

In the exquisite story of the one leper who returns to give thanks to Jesus in Luke, we see a picture of gratitude coming straight from the heart. There were ten lepers healed; only one comes back to give thanks. Parents are correct—remembering to say “thank you” is a sign of being well bred. But the one out of the ten who comes back was of mixed blood, a Samaritan, an outcast, the one not expected to know the rules, the Mosaic Law, requiring proper behavior. Whether this grateful leper ever made it to the temple or not, we do not know. All we know is that he alone returns, falls at Jesus’ feet, and thus becomes a model, not of perfection but of faith.

Here is the story that Jesus told. One day Jesus entered a village between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered the village, ten lepers, keeping their distance, called out to him: “Jesus, have mercy on us!" When he saw them, he told them to do what the law required. “Go to the temple and show yourselves to the priests.” They go. But before they get there, they are already healed. It wasn’t the law that healed them, but the power and mercy of God, working through this Jesus. Only the Samaritan, the foreigner, turns back, falling at Jesus’ feet in gratitude and praise. The least likely, the one at the margins, is the one who remembers to come back to say “Thank you.”

The text does not tell us why this one remembered to say “Thank you,” and the others did not. What we do know is that of the ten lepers—all outcasts because of their condition—this one would have known the double marginalization of being both legally outcast as a leper and racially and socially outcast as a Samaritan.

It would be the human experience described by Dr. Katie Cannon, African American ethicist of the Episcopal Divinity School at Cambridge, who has often spoken of the tri-dimensional nature of class, race, and gender that has shaped African American women’s struggle for survival in this country: “The greater the marginalization, the greater the awareness of one’s dependence on God.”

It was the Danish philosopher Sören Kierkegaard who said, “The wound of the heart is the hole through which God enters the soul.” “The wound of the heart is the hole through which God enters the soul.” And the wound can be personal and individual, or it can be social and systemic in nature. Could it be that this leper knew more than the others of one’s total dependence on God?

In recent years, we have added the creatures of creation, and the very earth and the trees and the air and the water, to our list of categories requiring special care and attention. I do not believe it is too late, although it is urgent. Nothing short of human repentance, that is, turning around—in the Greek “metanoia,” meaning “turning around”— and falling at the feet of the Creator, acknowledging our total dependence on God for our very sustenance and life, can save us and the planet. The ELCA Social Statement, entitled “Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope and Justice,” sums it up:

“We are called to live according to God's wisdom in creation, which brings together God's truth and goodness. Wisdom, God's way of governing creation, is discerned in every culture and era in various ways. In our time, science and technology can help us to discover how to live according to God's creative wisdom.

“Such caring, serving, keeping, loving, and living by wisdom sum up what is meant by acting as God's stewards of the earth. God's gift of responsibility for the earth dignifies humanity without debasing the rest of creation. We depend upon God, who places us in a web of life with one another and with all creation.”

Sometimes we humans heed the voice of the prophets. But sometimes it is at the point of sheer desperation, at the point of hitting rock bottom, that we see our total dependence and need for a merciful God. The difference between the one leper who returned to give thanks and the ones who do not is knowing that total dependence, to which the only response is gratitude.

Jesus often pointed to the margins for the wisdom of faith, to those on the outside, as models of faith and trust for others. He also frequently pointed to children as models of such fundamental basic trust, saying, “Let the little children come to me,” and reminding all others, “Unless you have faith like a little child, you cannot enter the Kingdom of God.”

On this Children’s Sabbath, let me close with the prayer of Marian Wright Edelman, author and inspiration for this national observance that is reprinted on the inside of your bulletin. It is called “Let All the Little Children Come.”

Let the little children come unto me and forbid them not, for such is the kingdom of heaven, Jesus said.

He did not say let only rich or middle-class white children come.

He did not say let only the strapping boys but not the girls come.

He did not say let only the able-bodied children come.

All the children he bade come.

He did not say let all my children or your children or our friends’ children or those in our families and neighborhoods and all who look and act like us come.

He did not say let only the well-behaved nice children come or those who conform to society’s norms.

He did not say let a few, a third, half, or three-fourths come—but all.

Jesus said, let the little children come and forbid them not, for such is the kingdom of heaven.

Amen.