Pentecost + 18, 2022
Thanksgiving
Friends,
when I preach, I study the Gospel texts in their original language, which is a kind of Greek. I’ve been doing that for 40 and more years. With each passing decade we know more and more about the languages of Jesus and of his followers in their natural settings and social contexts. I had a great tutor in the person of Dr Harold Remus who set me on this course. So today, I want to talk about 4 words whose meaning I more firmly grasp today than when I was a student a lifetime ago.
Every three years, our lectionary serves up today’s Gospel, one of my favourite texts, to coincide nicely with Canadian Thanksgiving. This text goes by a variety of titles: “The Healing of the Ten Lepers.” “The story of the Thankful Leper.” and so on.
Now in my parish of thirty years, there were two people who served as missionaries in India. Ed Nabert, who had died just before I arrived, had been a hospital administrator; Joan Nabert, his wife, was a social worker who helped the local community to create meaningful employment and to become self-supporting. She was an astonishing woman. She continued to work in India, long after her husband had died. The binding reality in all of that is leprosy.
The first thing I learned when I got to New Hamburg, was that if I called these people “lepers” Joan Nabert would have my hide. Victims of Leprosy. OK. People with leprosy. OK. People with Hansen’s disease, very OK for Lutherans. 150 years ago, Norwegian Dr. Gerhard-Henrik Hansen discovered the slow-moving bacterium which causes leprosy, and he devised a course of treatment which was successful for the time. Today a couple of drugs can do most of the heavy lifting.
I can still hear Joan in my head. “You don’t call people by their disease.” The thing of it is that leprosy was/is stigmatized, in a way cancer or heart disease are not, in Jesus’ day, as in ours. It’s a disease which proclaims itself as sufferers are marked by their illness as disease gradually disables and consumes them. So, they were thought unclean in the societies of Jesus’ day and were relegated to the no-man’s-land outside the cities, and beyond the privileges and protections of citizenship.
The word leper in today’s Gospel is LE-PROS in Greek. It comes from a root which means scale or scab. These were scaly people, scabby people. They main point is that their affliction was visible and, because of that, they were judged ritually unclean, whether among the Jews or the Samaritans, and as such could only be judged clean by the local priests to whom Jesus sends them. They were the arbiters of sickness and health, those to be welcomed and those to be excluded. In this terrible disease, Jews and Samaritans kept company in their misery. They lived outside the bounds of society, whether that of Jews or Samaritans. They were shunned. Moreover, they were expected to announce their illness to any who might approach. There be lepers here. So, in today’s gospel you have Samaritans and Jews, who despised each other in their better days, keeping company in their misery. LE-PROS. Leper.
AL-LOG-EN-ACE. Foreigner
Of the 10 persons with leprosy, at least one of them, perhaps more, was a foreigner, from the Jewish perspective, a Samaritan foreigner. AL-LOG-EN-ACE. “ALLO” has to do with otherness and the rest, and core of the word, means race, or tribe, or family, or origin or all of these and more. Like leprosy, being foreign was something you could see coming. The people are visibly, recognizably different. And Jews hated Samaritans. And Samaritans hated Jews. And a Samaritan leper was twice cursed or so thought Jesus’ own people and his followers.
The Samaritans were a group of people who lived in Samaria, an area north of Jerusalem. They were half-Jews and half-Gentiles. When Assyria captured the northern kingdom of Israel, in 721 BCE, some were taken in captivity while others were left behind. The ones left behind intermarried with the Assyrians. Thus, these people were neither fully Hebrews nor fully Gentiles. They were foreigners. Jesus offers the ten the possibility of reintegration into community life whether Jewish life or Samaritan life.
Now this is where today’s Gospel gets hard. I have always had a special place in my heart for Cranky Jesus. I figure if Cranky Jesus could keep the faith so can Cranky André. Cranky Jesus emerges when Jesus’ humanity gets the better of his divinity. Cranky Jesus is a figure of my imagination but also a figure of my faith and, perhaps, yours. Cranky Jesus emerges when something Jesus says or does points to the failings of his humanity. Truly of God but truly human. “Was no one found to give thanks except this foreigner?” (Emphasis on foreigner.) Ouch! That’s a Cranky Jesus sort of moment. You can hear anger in it; frustration; exasperation; dejection; depression. Jesus knew better. How about this man? This person. This one. Jesus knew better. Not so among us. AL-LOG-EN-ACE. Foreigner
SE-D’SO-KEN or SO-D’ZO. Healed. Made well. Saved.
Ten people with leprosy are made clean. The returning one, however, is described by Jesus as made well or saved on account of his faith. In Greek, the word is SO-D’ZO and it can mean being healed or being saved. But it’s not, in fact, the one truth or the other. Salvation harbours healing. Salvation bears healing in its wings. In Greek, salvation points to a healed reality and not merely an alternative reality. Do you understand?
Streets paved with Gold. That’s an alternative reality, a vision of the main street in the Great City in the Book of Revelation. It’s one vision. It’s an alternative vision to the present age. But it’s not my vision. The Swedish American musician and activist who gave us the expression “pie in the sky by and by” was preaching against a sort of faith which abetted hunger and poverty and misery in this life in favour of all goodness in the sweet by and by, an alternative reality. By the way, the man was born Joel Emmanuel Hägglund, in Sweden, and his first language was Swedish. He learned English as a young man and became known by his nom de guerre: Joe Hill.
Salvation is as much about this world as the next. Healing is a process. Salvation embraces change in our time such that glimpses of a world fully reconciled to God can occasionally shine bright. When we engage in, encounter, discover, facilitate, witness … and celebrate the healing of persons now, there is an intimation of, and a pathway to, salvation. Healing puts the process and not merely the result in salvation. SO-D’ZO. Healed. Made well. Saved.
A last word. EU-CHA-RIS-TO. To be grateful. To be thankful. The stuff of right now and tomorrow, especially.
That’s what the one in ten was. Maybe others, too. We don’t know. Maybe they were off celebrating with family and hugging their kids for the first time in forever. In any event, the foreigner was thankful. The root of the word is CHA-RIS and means “grace”. In Greek, “he gave thanks” is EU-CHA-RIS-TE-O. So, the Samaritan man with leprosy, looked upon himself, saw it as grace, and gave thanks. Jesus took the bread and saw it as grace and gave thanks. Same word.
Putting it all together, 10 persons with leprosy, shunned by, and required to live outside of, their communities, were embraced all in the same salvation-cloaked healing, and one of them, a Samaritan, saw grace and gave thanks to Jesus. Today’s Gospel suggests to me that our gracious God seeks to embrace all in salvation, and it will take all of the time healing requires to get there. A story…
Back when I was an intern at St. Peter’s Lutheran, just up the way from here, they had a program which saw pastors, interns, placement students, counselors and confirmands come together for a week of Confirmation Camp. So, I was bunked in with Pastor Eric Reble, a former missionary teacher in India, and my supervisor, and with George Wawin, who was a placement student in an adventure which would see him become a pastor, then a social worker and now a Medical Doctor. Pastor George Wawin, MD.
Now, back then, George worried about stuff. So, we’re in our bunks, it’s lights-out dark, and George asks Eric from out of the black of night: “Pastor, do you believe that all people are saved?” As I say, George worried about stuff. “Do you believe all people are saved?” Said Eric “That is not our belief. That’s our hope!” I’ve always loved that construction. That God might extend salvation to all is our hope. Think on these things as we gather for Eucharist—where we get to know grace—in this time of Thanksgiving.
Silence.
May the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in God’s sight. And let the church say “Amen.” R/ Amen.
André Lavergne, CWA (The Rev.)
Church of St. John the Evangelist, Kitchener
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.
As our parish musician, he provides both support and leadership so that a variety of parish programs can find musical expression and attract participation. When our handbell choir is in season, he is one of our ringers. At parish dinners, he provides popular piano music for the guests to dine by. For both worship services and concerts, he will rehearse and accompany vocal and instrumental soloists from our congregation on piano, organ, or even accordion.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.