What makes us thankful
Thumbnail image “Purple Proof,” taken by Staff Sgt. Christopher Allison.
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale
October 13, 2019—Proper 23C
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; Psalm 66:1-11; 2 Timothy 2:8-15; Luke 17:11-19
Have you ever heard accounts of young children in Kenya who yearn for the opportunity to walk an hour or more each way to get to school, and then can’t get that out of your mind when you’re trying (again!) to roust your kids out of bed to make the school bus on time? Or perhaps you were stirred to read reports of how many hours the Afghan people stood in line that first time they had the chance to vote, and then tried not to think too hard about the percentage of eligible voters in our country who actually make it to the polls?
These sorts of things came to mind for me, as I read today’s gospel. A story in which ten lepers are healed, which is great good news for all of them, and God be praised, but only one of them returned to offer thanks to Jesus for this gift. Only one: a Samaritan. Only one: the one whom Jesus’ listeners would have understood was the despised other. The one whose people have got it all wrong about God and righteousness. Yes, that one. Again.
Once again, Jesus is emphasizing the righteousness of the despised foreigner, over and against those we might expect to be righteous. Once again, Jesus is demanding that we call into question our desire to take righteousness for granted. That we question the presumption that the respectable religious people are actually doing God’s will. That we question the presumption that there are “good people” and “bad people” and that as long as we can believe ourselves to be the good people, that everything we do must be good.
Respectability gets you nowhere with Jesus. Overt religiosity gets you nowhere with Jesus. Defining yourself as “good people” definitely gets you nowhere with Jesus. It’s what you actually do that matters, and what you are doing must hold up to actual biblical scrutiny.
Can you look the prophets in the eye, when they ask what you’ve done for the poor and the marginalized and the foreigners among you? Can you answer the priests, who might ask whether you are giving God the requisite sacrifice of thanks and praise?
It’s the latter command that the Samaritan leper has satisfied. And yes, he’s partly just a rhetorical device to remind us that we might not be as obviously righteous as we thought. But there might also be something there that’s inherent to his outsider status. Not to say that foreigners are better people, but that strangers in a strange land might just have a spiritual advantage we should consider: like those Afghans and those African children who know that voting is precious, who know that education is precious, because they know what it is to lack something. They know what it is to be desperate. They know what need is.[i]
And so they know, in a very deep and real way, they know what gratitude is. Because when you truly know deprivation, you are far more likely to recognize the gift.
This is true in the spiritual realm as well. Let’s look at 2 Timothy, at these words written to strengthen a community in peril: “If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he will also deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful--for he cannot deny himself” (2 Tim 2:11-13).
Which is so interesting, isn’t it? How did that “if we deny him, he will also deny us” get in there? It’s like a sheep sneaking into the flock, when any idiot can tell it’s a wolf with a wooly hat on. Very strange, in the midst of such powerful statements of hope and reassurance.
Strange, yes, but not completely incomprehensible. After all, a Christian in that time might well be brought before the authorities, might well be offered the chance to deny Jesus and thus escape punishment. This was a very live issue! So these urgent reminders to stand firm and not denounce the faith are sprinkled throughout the books of the New Testament. To turn away is to lose him, they assert, trusting that this will strengthen the saints when they are faced with imprisonment, torture, or death.
And so here it is again, slipped into a trio of phrases about the steadfast nature of God. It doesn’t really match, but I think there’s something powerful in having it there. Something real, that almost makes it easier for me to accept the reassurances. Because it acknowledges that we might well drop the ball so badly that God will be tempted to give up on us.
So we know that the promises will hold true, even if we’ve been that bad. Even if we’ve been bad enough that God has momentarily thrown up his hands (as he did numerous times during salvation history) and chucked it all (banished us from Eden, sent a flood, sent the Assyrians). No matter what we’ve done, and no matter how God has reacted: in the end, the nature of God will bring God back to us. God’s heart never truly leaves us. God’s faithfulness endures. And God will come to retrieve us, from whatever messed up dead end we’ve driven ourselves into. Again.
We know we are going to stray, to deny the goodness and power of Christ in our lives. Jesus is right: we can’t trust in our own goodness to carry us through, no matter how respectable we may be! But we can hang onto this: God will be faithful to us, even if we are faithless. We can’t count on ourselves, but we can count on God.
In ourselves, that is to say, we are poor, and in this, we are to recognize a great gift. Which brings us back to gratitude. To the kind of deep gratitude that rises up when we cannot deny our need for what we have been given. In turn, like the Samaritan leper, may we respond with praise, which is a lifting up, which is giving ourselves to God as an offering. Gratitude is, in fact, an exchange of gifts: here, Jesus gives the leper the gift of healing, and the leper responds with the gift of himself.
May we too see the steadfast love and faithfulness God gives us, and in response, give our whole self up to God in thanksgiving. May it be so, Amen.
[i] Debi Thomas, https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2395-a-foreigner-s-praise