SERMON: SUNDAY OCTOBER 10^th , 2010: 8 am

Readings: 2 Timothy2: 8-15; Luke17: 11-19

Our gospel reading from Luke about the healing of the ten lepers is striking in several different ways. It crosses the social and cultural boundaries of the time, because it first speaks of ten lepers. Leprosy was a medical disorder, resulting in disfiguring of the skin, with severe social consequences. Lepers were social outcasts. Because lepers were regarded as unclean (cf Leviticus 13:45-46) they had to keep themselves segregated from others; so the ten lepers met Jesus outside a village and they shouted to him from a distance. The condition of leprosy isolated  sufferers in physical, social and religious terms. But on top of this, one of the lepers was also a Samaritan – an outsider because of his nationality, as well as his disability. And he was the only one of the ten to return and publicly give thanks to Jesus for his healing.

So in the story of the healing of the Samaritan leper, Luke shows that Jews are not the only ones who qualify for God’s blessings; indeed, outsiders may well prove to be more aware of Jesus’ identity than Jewish insiders. Furthermore, Luke shows that the social and religious divisions between Jews and Samaritans have been swept away in Jesus’ ministry. People are treated on an equal footing.

The healing of the lepers took place after they had cried out to Jesus saying “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us !” They recognised his personal authority, and they had to take the first step. And we recall the Old Testament story in 1 Kings, of Naaman the commander of the King of Aram’s army who suffered from leprosy. Luke is particularly drawn by the story of Naaman because he refers to it earlier in chapter 4.

Before Naaman was cleansed he was asked to do something that at first he didn’t really want to do. The prophet Elisha said that he must wash in the River Jordan seven times – even though Naaman would have preferred Elisha just to have waved his hand over him, rather than having to wash in what he thought was not a not very suitable and not very salubrious Israeli river. But Naaman did what he knew was required and he washed in the Jordan; and he was healed of his leprosy.  And then Naaman gave thanks and praised God; and he also tried to give Elisha a present (which Elisha refused because he was doing God’s service and wanted no reward). And like the Samaritan leper in Luke’s story, Naaman was a foreigner too.

Returning to our story from Luke, all ten lepers asked for Jesus’ mercy and healing; but it was the Samaritan leper who was the only one to return to Jesus - to give thanks to Jesus and to give praise to God. The Samaritan didn’t go to the temple, as the other nine did, to present himself  to the priests (to go through the elaborate ritual for lepers to be declared clean, which is set out in the Book of Leviticus), but he turns round spontaneously and returns to Jesus, full of thanks and praise. He recognised that the restoring power of God is revealed in Jesus. He recognised that cleansing must reach more deeply than the surface of his skin. He returns to the source of his healing – to Jesus, the redeemer, the restorer.

We have here a wonderful picture of the gracious initiative of God, held in tandem with our faithful response. Only the one who gratefully returns to the source of grace in Jesus makes an appropriate response to the healing mercy of God expressed in the ministry of Jesus – and this response is an act of thanksgiving.

In Christian prayer, thanksgiving, adoration, praise and blessing are intimately related. In the Hebrew Bible thanksgiving and praise are often one and the same. In the New Testament, thanksgiving becomes more sharply defined, and reaches its culmination in the offering and receiving of the bread and wine of the Eucharist (of Holy Communion). The word Eucharist itself means thanksgiving, and expresses our union with Christ. And so thanksgiving becomes in the New Testament the motive for the Christian’s life and conduct. It informs our whole attitude towards life’s blessings and trials, of which we read in our second lesson from Paul’s letter to Timothy. And it shapes our life of prayer.

May God give us thankful and responsive hearts, and a readiness to live and work to his praise and glory.