The Tenth Leper
By Rev Steven R
Mitchell
Mountain View
United, Aurora, CO 10/13/2013
Based on Luke
17:11-19
How
many of you have ever had an experience that physically separated you from your
peers? Back in the dark ages when I was
in second grade, everyone had to go to the nurse’s office for an eye
examination. It was a very anxious time
for all of us, for if you failed that particular examination, that means that
you would have to wear a pair of glasses, which put you in the group of “the
untouchables”. The news would spread
rapidly if one of your classmates in front of you had failed the test. I lucked out in that group screening – I had
passed my eye examine.
A
few weeks later, during class, I was called out by the school nurse to follow
her down to her office. This was a
terrible event because now the whole class knew that something had to be seriously
wrong with you for the nurse to pull you out of class. In her office I was once again asked to take
an eye exam. I knew I was in trouble
when the nurse asked me to read the first letter on the eye chart that was at
the other end of her office, when I replied, “What chart?” I had failed not only to recognize the big
letter “E”, but I wasn’t even able to see that there was a chart on the wall.
Once
the news went public that I needed glasses, I was immediately shunned by many
of my classmates. There was a prominent
believe that poor eye sight was contagious.
This was my first experience of what it was like to be different, to not
be like the other kids. The only refuge
that I found for those first few weeks was that of those few other kids in my
class who were already wearing glasses, those kids who just a few days before I
too stayed away from.
Poor
eyesight is something that can easily be corrected and really doesn’t keep one
separated from society, but there are many things that can and do separate a person
from others. This morning’s text tells
us of an encounter that Jesus had with some people who were physically isolated
from their community. The passage says
that Jesus was passing through the region between Samaria and Galilee on his
way to Jerusalem, when he was approached by ten lepers asking for help. Jesus takes compassion on them and tells them
to go to the temple to be blessed by the Priest. It is on their journey to the temple that
they discover that they are healed. Nine
of them do as directed by Jesus and go to the temple, but one a Samaritan
doesn’t go to the temple but rather returns to Jesus and thanks him.
The
question that I would like to pose this morning is “what separates us?” What separates us from one another? What separates us from God? Are there justifiable reasons or realities
that separate us from others? Is disease
that is communicable a justifiable reason to be separated, like in this
morning’s text? Is culture differences a
good reason to be separated from one another?
How about mental illness, or social-economic differences, or religious
bias, are these legitimate things to separate ourselves from another?
Virginia McDugall posted
an interesting quote the other day on her facebook page, by an East Indian
Philosopher and Spiritualist by the name of Jiddu Krishnamurti. “When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim
or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the
rest of mankind. When you separate
yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand
violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political
party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of
mankind.”
Why do we
continually insist on creating walls that separate us from others? Could the origins be found in the stories of
Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden? Is
one of the major truths about our need to separate ourselves from God and other
humans found in the story of listening to the deceitfulness of the
serpent? Can we find the need to blame
and justify our negative behavior toward others in the story of Cain and
Able?
One of the
realities of humanity is that we are “tribal” creatures. We are wired through our DNA to be
mistrustful of anyone or anything that is different from what we
understand. You cannot find a western
movie that doesn’t emphasize this reality.
You see a farmer working on his wagon in front of his house. He sees a stranger riding toward him from a
distance. The first thing the farmer
does is reach for his firearm, in case the stranger might not be friendly. We build gated communities, have doormen stationed
at main entry of our condo buildings. You cannot enter beyond a check point in our
schools, or board a plane without going through some form of security
check. We have put in placed “safe”
policies in our churches for those who work around our youth. All of these things have come as a result of
violence. We would rather go to war than
sit down and learn about the needs of the other, be it on an international
level or in a church board meeting.
All of these
negative behaviors come because of separation.
In the story about the ten lepers, we can assume that nine of them are Hebrews. The question that Jesus asked the one, who
returned, the Samaritan, was “where are the others?” One of the possibilities for the Samaritan
returning, was, he was an outsider by his nationality. The reason why Jesus was sending these
people to the Priest was so they could be deemed healed, thereby being
re-instated to society. This would not
have been a possibility for the Samaritan even being healed of his leprosy; he
would not have been welcomed into the Jewish society because he was an outsider
to begin with. One could only wonder if
the relationships built between him and the other nine, because of the common
need to band together for survival was strong enough to have them move beyond
those cultural hatreds and continue on with their relationship once they were
all healed.
How much does
“faith” play into our ability to break down those walls that separate or used to
strengthen that separation? We are
beginning discussion, thanks to the work of Pastor Wayne Laws, about how we can
walk beside those who have had their lives devastated by last month’s
floods. David Popham has indicated that
through the UCC Conference phone calls to churches that serve in those
communities hit by the floods, several church communities indicated that they or
their members were unaffected by the flood waters, but acknowledge that just down
the street there were families and business who suffered loss. Their answers reflect a faith of “us” and
“them”, of separation not inclusion with their surrounding community.
In discussions with
the Pastor of St John’s UCC church in Greeley, Pastor Wayne has learned that we
are the only church in the UCC Conference who has even inquired about how we
might be able to reach out and help St John as they struggle to help those affected
in the surrounding area of Greeley, such as the town of Evans, which is highly populated
with seasonal farmer, many who are non-documented residences. This speaks about how “faith” is working
within our fellowship. I am sure that we
have many more lessons to learn about inclusion, but in our faith, we recognize
that inclusion not isolation is the first step in healing and widening the
circle of God’s love. Amen
No comments:
Post a Comment