Sermons

“Salvation from the Margins”

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7, 11; Luke 17:11-19 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – October 9, 2016

Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words, that we might give thanks for all your blessings with renewed appreciation and understanding. We pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Is this a story about gratitude? Or is this a story about why it was just “this foreigner” who came back to give thanks, and not the other nine? I have a lot of questions. One of them is the same one Jesus asked: Where were the other nine? Why didn’t they come back? But another question may answer that question: Weren’t they probably showing themselves to the priests, like Jesus told them to? And didn’t he probably know that? And wouldn’t the one Samaritan have been free to come back instead of going to the priests because the priests wouldn’t have received him in the first place because he was a Samaritan, not a Jew? And wouldn’t Jesus have known that too? So was his question merely rhetorical and maybe a little unfair to the other nine? Like I said, I have a lot of questions.

But I also have some hunches. One of the things this story reminds me of is a concept I learned about in my first college sociology course called “leapfrogging”. The idea is that innovation – of whatever sort – tends to come from the margins of a society. The reason for that is that the current models of doing whatever is done in a given society tend to work well for those in the center of the society, that’s how they’re at the center of things. But the way things work tends not to work so well for those on the margins, which is why they’re on the margins. So it is those folks who are most likely to innovate, to experiment with alternate ways of doing things and develop better ways to do those things. They are the ones who aren’t satisfied with the status quo, so they are the ones who have the motivation to improve it. I’m sure my professor had lots of good examples of this phenomenon, but sadly I don’t remember any of them, so can we just agree that this concept of leap-frogging is a highly plausible-sounding theory about the way innovation works?

The idea of leap-frogging came to mind because I feel like that’s sort of what’s happening in our scripture passages this morning, with regard to faith. And it seems to me that probably has implications for us in our current environment as well. There is another section of this story about the lepers that makes me ask questions. “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well,” Jesus said to the Samaritan leper at the very end. But which part of this story is the faith that made him well?

Was it the courage and hope to even ask for mercy? Or was it the wisdom and humility to see that his healing was the work of God and to return and give thanks? All the lepers were made clean, so shouldn’t just the request to be healed qualify as the act of faith that made them well? But Jesus only said that to one of them, the Samaritan that returned and gave thanks. Was this pronouncement just a replacement for the certification the other nine would get from the priests, which the Samaritan presumably didn’t have access to? Or is there some leap-frogging faith innovation happening on the margins here?

Before we explore that question, let’s turn for just a moment to the other scripture passage we heard this morning, from Jeremiah 29. The lectionary only went through verse 7, but verse 11 is so lovely and important that I added it on there just so we could hear it again. But really, it’s verse 7 I’m most interested in. The Israelites are in exile in Babylon. They’re apparently going to be there for a while. And what does God tell them to do? “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” Build. Plant. Marry. Multiply. Seek the welfare of the city where you’re living.

I would like for us to stop for a moment and realize that this is the situation of the vast majority of immigrants in our midst today. They are working hard, keeping their heads down, living each day heartsick for their homeland but grateful this new place isn’t as cruelly hard and violent as home and doing everything they can to keep it that way. Let’s be honest, nobody emigrates for fun. Are the immigrants in our communities today in exile? Some of them, yes, literally. Most of them, probably, as measured by the heart. Picking up your whole life and starting over isn’t something most people choose unless staying is harder and more dangerous. So their motivation for the new place to be and to remain better than home must be pretty high. I’m guessing their commitment to that might even be higher than that of those of us who’ve been here our whole lives and don’t know any different. We take for granted our relative safety and our corruption-free lives. We enjoy privileges it doesn’t even occur to us we have, so we mostly forget to give thanks for them.

This is the lesson that I’m hoping those other nine lepers learned from their Samaritan colleague. Can we give them the benefit of the doubt, and hope that they also came back to thank Jesus, once they were done presenting themselves to the priests and getting certified clean? Or that they at least tried, but possibly he’d moved on and they couldn’t find him? Because here’s what I’m hoping had happened to those lepers, before they were healed, while they were still stuck living on the outskirts of town, in Leperland with that Samaritan. I’m hoping that hanging out with that doubly marginalized leprous Samaritan had taught them something about gratitude. I’m hoping that hearing about life from his perspective had taught them not to take things for granted. I’m hoping that he helped them navigate the margins that leprosy had forced them into, from his expertise as a Samaritan struggling to survive in a Galilean context, and that part of what they learned was gratitude.

It’s not that Jesus said that the other nine didn’t have faith. The story tells us all of them were made clean as they made their way to the priests. They all had the courage and hope and humility to ask for help. But the story implies that the Samaritan’s faith has a whole other layer on top of that, most clearly labeled gratitude. And I do think that qualifies as a leap-frogging faith innovation. A faith that is just based on asking God for what you need and want is okay, especially if you sometimes get those things. But this kind of approach to faith usually means you’re only in touch with God when you need something. Incorporating the practice of gratitude into your faith opens up a whole new level of connection with God. Because of course you can still be grateful for the things you got that you really needed and fervently prayed for. But you can also be grateful for the things you didn’t ask for, didn’t know you needed, and don’t deserve. To practice gratitude is to maintain a continual connection to God, and a continual awareness that everything around us is a miracle and a blessing. To practice gratitude is to live constantly astonished by grace. There is no taking anything for granted when you’re living this way. There is no room for bitterness.

Like those other nine lepers, we have the opportunity to connect to neighbors on the margins who can help us cultivate this kind of faith. There are people within our community who are following God’s command to “seek the welfare of the city” where they are, even though their hearts tell them they are living in exile. There are neighbors all around us who have come from places of incredible violence and unending war, situations we can’t even begin to imagine. There are Haitians living on our streets and sleeping on church floors down the block right now who can help us begin to recognize the depth of God’s goodness and mercy, and how gratitude can help us to seek the welfare of all the cities where God’s people live.

What kind of faith will make us well and whole and holy? The kind that begins with trust in God but doesn’t stop there. The kind that returns again and again to lay our spirits down at Jesus’ feet and praise God. The kind that takes nothing for granted and works hard to ensure everyone can build and plant and marry and multiply. We cannot afford to ignore the lepers in our midst, and especially not the Samaritan lepers, for they have so much to teach us. Those margins of society, where people are living in ways we can barely imagine, are where the faith innovations are happening that will make us all well and whole and holy. Let us, those other nine lepers, change the end of this story and return to give thanks. As we celebrate our healing, let us commit ourselves to seeking the welfare of the city where God has put us. Let us open our hearts to the salvation that comes from the margins. Alleluia and Amen.