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.