your faith has made you well

Preached October 10th, 2010 at St. David of Wales

2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c
Psalm 111
2 Timothy 2:8-15
Luke 17:11-19

Jesus grant us the gift of pain that we may feel the brokenness of your beautiful world.
-amen

nobody Wants to be in pain.
nobody Wants to feel how dark and hard the world can be.
We have lost too many beautiful children this past month. living as outcasts in a cruel world, the pain was too much for them. it can hurt to live in this world.

but the other options are worse.
leaving, or going numb.
very few of us leave the way Tyler Clementi, Asher Brown, Seth Walsh, Billy Lucas and Raymond Chase did. I think most of us just get a little or a lot numb.
Leprosy is a disease of the nervous system that keeps you from feeling pain.

Both the old and new testament readings this morning are stories of people suffering the devastating effects of numbness. –

Namaan travels all the way to see Elisha and Elisha won’t even come see him, he sends a messenger out. And Namaan doesn’t want to listen to the messenger. he has such strong expectations of what God’s healing love is going to look like that he almost walks away from chance to be whole again.
thankfully, none of us are like that.

the lepers in the gospel are sitting across the street and they call to Jesus and he calls back.
the nine are made clean through obedience but the tenth is saved though gratitude.
All through Luke’s gospel this late summer we have been hearing stories about how we have to turn our backs on everything we thought we wanted.
Family, security, safety, inclusion all those things can’t come between us and Jesus.

and then this morning we have this gorgeous image of an amazing reunion, that doesn’t happen.
this is the hardest one for me to wrap my mind around- this is worse than hate your mother, or let the dead bury their own dead.
according to Leviticus- (45-46)
“The person with such an infectious disease must wear torn clothes, let his hair be unkempt,d cover the lower part of his face and cry out, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ As long as he has the infection he remains unclean. He must live alone; he must live outside the camp."
Who knows how long this morning’s leper has been living like this.

can you imagine?
He must have had a family. he had a life before this, but after contracting leprosy he has lost everything. no more contact no more worship.
totally cut off.
so he finds these nine friends. fellow lepers. and they sit by the side of the road all day talking about the lives they used to have, and occasionally calling out to passers by “unclean!”
this is like the untouchable caste in India except you can get flung into it without warning. and the reason for much of your isolation is that the priests are convinced that since you have leprosy God has judged you and your sins are beyond forgiveness.
so there he sits. Alone abandoned cut off from everyone and everything he ever loved, in the depths of inadequacy.

then here comes Jesus.
Have mercy on us they all cry.
no really Have Mercy!!
and he does.
“Go”, says Jesus, “to the priests. show your selves.”
be part of community again.
“go”
and they do.
as they are on their way, Maybe one notices first , then another, “my hand is whole again”, looking at his friend whose face has become whole and beautiful –
“as they walked they were made whole” they were cleansed.
can you imagine? now their whole world is countable footsteps away from being restored. everything they had lost will soon be found.

they can worship again they can hug their children again. they can come back into community life. they must have started running on their now strong legs
--and then .
one of them stops. the others turn and look at him. “what is it?”

his feet feel heavy.
they are on their way back to the most amazing reunion of their lives and he is turning back.
there it is, the life he has dreamed of night after lonely night waiting for him. the world of friends and family. the world that was ripped away from him by a cruel and devastating disease.
he must have wept a little turning his back on the city, deciding to leave voluntarily what had just been returned to him before he even had a chance to taste it again.
but as he starts walking back, it must be a new man. this is wholeness this is cleanness.
it is not for the old life. this is a life so transformed by gratitude that it becomes unrecognizable.
Jesus says as much to him
your faith has made you well.
the nine that don’t came back are fine, they are the nine unlost coins, the ninety nine unlost sheep, the older brother. their bodies were returned to a state of health. And they very well may have lived long and comfortable lives.

Oh, but that one who came back.
What a life he must have led.
healed and free in a way most of us can only dream of. he had turned his back and walked away from everything he though he wanted and ran straight into the arms of love.
he flings himself at the feet of Love.

“Get up.” says Jesus.
“your faith has made you well. “

We get to rejoice in the one who comes back. over and over, and its not always fair and it doesn’t always make sense especially when the nine did what they were supposed to do.
“go to the priest” says Jesus and they went.
Jesus is lord of special cases.

“your faith has made you well”

this is not a faith of intellectual assent.
this is not a faith that needed ecumenical councils to clarify it.
or books of theology to understand it-
this is a faith strong enough to turn your feet away from home and head back out. back away from your safety.
this is the kind of faith that can make you well.

he is now well enough to be hurt again.

this is the kind of faith that can make us well.
this is a faith that lets us feel pain again.
this is a faith that will restore our ability to weep for Tyler, Asher, Seth, Billy, Raymond and all who cannot weep for themselves.
this is a faith that will make us tender and vulnerable

thank you.

Little boats

Preached October 9th at the Academy for Formation and Mission

Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
Mark 6:45-56

God, give us courage to get into our little boats and head out into the windy wild waters, where we may meet your son our savior, Jesus.
Amen

Our dear friend in Christ and holy man for today is Wilfred Thomason Grenfell. An English doctor he became a medical missionary to north sea fishermen, and when he saw the poverty and horrid conditions in Labrador, devoted himself to the people there.

He was inspired by the notion of Muscular Christianity, in which sports and athleticism were supposed to have a masculine remedy for the protestant faith that had gotten to girly for the real men of the 1920’s.

While there is plenty to bristle at in these sorts of icky gender stereotypes, it is hard not to be impressed with the results of such a theological attitude on Wilfred. It led him into a harsh and challenging world where he spent the majority of his life doing as much as he could, to improve the lives of the hurting and neglected people he met.

We are not God’s Sunday best or Gods fine china, we are not being kept in God’s cupboard waiting to be taken out at holidays and fancy occasions. We are not God’s party dress, we are God’s grubbiest. We are the jeans she will wear to garden in. We will get torn up and worn out and beat up on this journey, but it will only make us softer. I pray to be something strong and useful for Jesus.

If the only effect of going to church is to love the church we have all failed. we need the courage to throw it all to the wind and go out in our boats fight against the high waves and strong waters that threaten to knock us off course. it will take everything we have. and then hopefully when we have gone too far, when we have sailed past our comfort zone, Jesus will walk across that rough sea, and meet us where our competencies fail us. But that also means the stronger we get the further out we can go.

Let our formation be forming us into something useful. let us be tools of God that over times have all the rough edges worn away and from years of hard use let us fit smoothly into the hand of our God. Let us take on the shape of his hand as we do his work in the world.

sometimes it is useful to imagine explaining your plans to Jesus to see how they sound.

“Jesus, I was thinking, I would like to stay here in my boat where it is safe and on shore. I am waiting for a better day, better weather, my boat isn’t quite good enough yet. I‘ve noticed that those guys over there have a much nicer boat, and I was thinking my boat should be a little more like theirs. I’m going to spend the next three years getting it really nice and then maybe you and me and some of our nice friends can all go sailing. I just need to be sure I’m ready.

What do you think of that Jesus?

Cant you just picture Jesus saying
“Oh, Honey. just GO-
get in the dang boat. Don’t you know it will never be good enough, you will never be good enough, there will never be better weather, there will never be a better time than right now. You will always be vulnerable, you will always be weak and you will always need me.
go now.
get in the boat you are in with these people already around you.
this is it
if it gets too bad if you go too far I will walk across the water to you, I will still the waves, but I can’t do that unless you strike out.
I can’t come to you until you leave.

I think most of us have made it beyond the question of how can the church serve me? but our examination of ministry should not end with how can I serve the church? but how can the church serve the world?
We should not worship the boat but simply see where it can take us.

There is no where we can go that Jesus can’t reach us.
We can head off in the darkest night in a boat miles from nowhere.
we can go off to Newfoundland
we can run into the cities or into the suburbs
and Jesus will find us, and calm us, and give us strength to do our work.
There is nothing we can devote our lives to that can’t be illuminated by the love of Jesus.
there is no water too rough for God.

because you see God and water go way back-
all the way to the beginning-
God has moved over it, rained it down, dried it up, parted it, brought it out of rocks, made it good to drink, and then walked right across it to people he loved, who were scared and confused whose hearts did not comprehend what bounty and love and plenty and safety looked like.

In the midst of their journey with Jesus they are still afraid. They don’t know what it is not be suspicious. they are straining at the oars. fighting the wind, sure of going their own way.

and Jesus walks across the water to them.
like its no big deal.

cheer comfort courage-
all the same thing.
to be brave is to be of good cheer. -

instead of constantly questioning our work, in stead of fighting the wind we should keep an eye out for Jesus.

let the church be a boat ramp where we can launch ourselves out into the world and see what’s out there.
Let’s be careful not to make idols of ourselves. We are never going to be good enough, or ready enough to serve Jesus, so waiting until we are to start is ridiculous
there is a wild hungry windy world out there and we have been invited to sail out into it.

Go.