RCL - Proper 23C - October 09, 2010

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Adam McCoy, OHC

RCL - Proper 23C - October 10, 2010

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

Some years ago I was walking down East 109th Street from St. Edward’s Church in East Harlem, where I was the priest, toward the subway and the super at one of the buildings said hello. I stopped and said hello and pretty soon it was clear to me that he had something to say. Now if you live in New York City and one of the supers has something to say, even if he’s not your super, you should generally listen, because they know lots of useful things. He said to me that he had been watching me over the past few days and he saw that I had not been smiling much, and wondered if something was wrong. I said something noncommital. And then he said something I have not forgotten. He said, “You should be smiling because you know about the love of God. And if you can’t show it, Father, how can anyone else?” I thanked him and went on my way. It took me a while to admit to myself that I was knocked back a bit. I spent much of the rest of the day thinking about it, and when I saw him again I made sure I was smiling. I realized that day that I was one of the nine we just heard about in today’s gospel.

There were ten lepers. Ten lepers were cured. But only one turned back to give thanks, and as often happens in biblical narratives he was an outsider, the wrong sort of person. Today and every time this gospel story is read we give thanks for him. But what about the others? Because to be truthful, a lot of us are more like the nine than we are like this grateful Samaritan.

When we have problems, when we are sick, when things are not going our way, how often we sink into our situation and identify with it. Luke’s narrative shows this, actually. These people are called lepers. Just lepers. A more politically correct rendering might be something like “ten persons displaying symptoms like Hansen’s disease”. But the text is brutally realistic. In this telling they are described by their disease, as if they are their disease. Their identity for the purposes of the narrative is their leprosy. The are lepers. And as they turn away, all of them with faith enough to be cured, for they all do as Jesus tells them, the nine continue on their way. We don’t know what happened to them. But if they continued to be defined by the state of their health, they would presumably have become known as persons who were cured of leprosy, or perhaps Persons Formerly Known as Lepers. Maybe they became famous. But their identity would continue to be circumscribed by their condition.

In the moment the tenth leper turns back to thank God for the return of his health, however, Luke gives him a new identity. He is no longer just “a leper”, but suddenly, he is a Samaritan, a member of a particular human community. His ability to mingle as a normal person with others has been restored. He is now not a faceless representative of a disease but a member of a specific group of people, a part of a living people, with all that implies. He is human again. He is restored.

How many unsatisfactory categories can we put ourselves in? How many limiting labels can we apply to ourselves? We don’t have to seek far to find them.

What is the most dysfunctional aspect of the way we live our lives, the one which can define us if we let it? There is liberation in saying the word when we have been living in denial: Hi. I’m Adam. I’m a..... And then we name our addiction. Admitting to that identity is to start a journey of recovery. But it is not all we are.

What are the illnesses which constrain us in some way? We may not be lepers, but we can certainly be diabetics, cancer patients, gout sufferers, and there are times when we are so consumed by our ailments that we might as well become them. But they are not all we are.

What are the losses and failures of our lives? The jobs we did not get, or the jobs we got and lost. The friends no longer with us, the lovers, wives, husbands, family members, perhaps even children, who are gone but whose absence leaves such a gaping hole that we can hardly step over it in the morning to get on with things. Loss is real, and we can’t heal a loss until we face what it is. But it is not all we are.

When we define ourselves by what is wrong, we are reduced to something less than we actually are. If our inner sight is trained only on our dysfunction, our illness, our failure and our loss, then our sight is diminished, we see less, and our self shrivels. We pray for “it” to be cured as if “it” is the only important thing about us, and then when “it” is cured, we have been so focused on “it” we may have forgotten what else we could be. And so we go looking for another “it” to take its place.

But the tenth leper shows us a different way. That person had the focus or was given the grace to realize something wonderful has happened. It was probably an awkward and embarrassing moment, turning back, shouting, prostrating at Jesus’ feet. But in that moment the leper is given back a full human identity. And how wonderful it is that he is a Samaritan! God’s grace once again shows its power with the wrong kind of person! Maybe you’re the wrong kind of person. Maybe I am too. Maybe our wrongness is what God wants to lift up, to give to the world as a witness of grace and gratitude and restoration and wholeness from an unexpected source and from an unexpected person. Maybe the awkwardness inherent in us is what God wants.

How many times have we been given our lives back? It may be a simple way – curing a toothache that has become the unavoidable focus of our entire being while it lasted, or the resolution of some small but nagging problem. It may be something truly overwhelming – the discovery that a surgery can remove a tumor and give us years of life, or a relationship healed after years of hurt. I have to admit I’ve been given my life back more than several times, and I’m willing to bet you have too. And then what did I do when I got my life back? Most of the time, in a day or so I usually forgot all about it, and went looking for some other “it” to focus on. And when I do that, I will go on my way and not turn back to praise God. I will not make thanksgiving the center of my consciousness, but look for another incomplete identity, another way to be less than God wants me to be.

The difference between the nine lepers and the tenth is not the grace and goodness of God. God healed them all. The difference is that one of them was changed. He ceased to be a human manifestation of a problem and began to reorder his life. He put thanksgiving for his blessing in the middle of his life where his problem used to be and got back his full humanity.

I don’t remember what was on my mind that day when I met the super in the street. I can guess, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I was letting “it” take me over. I was becoming “it”. I know it wasn’t anything like the terrible disease those lepers had. But that super’s intervention was like the voice of Jesus to me. Quite apart from the quibbles about whether a priest’s behavior should present the perfect face of the community’s faith (which is often annoying to priests, but which quite a lot of people actually believe!), his question was reasonable. Why was I letting whatever “it” was take me over when the love of God was there for the taking? Go, just go, Jesus says, and the goodness of God for you will happen.

I got a big part of my life back that day. At least for that day I found the grace which allowed me to stop being defined by my problems, and at the end of that day I was able to turn around and praise God for it. I was able to move my self-preoccupation out of the spotlight and let God be there. Luke tells us that the odds are 9 to1 that we’ll slip back. And I do. But thank God for the 1.

Are we our problems? Or do we have problems? What is the center of our lives? Can we take ourselves out of the center and put God there? When our problems are resolved, can we turn in praise and thanks and remember who made us and loves us and calls us? And when they’re not resolved, can we live in the assurance of hope that the love of God is stronger than they are? Can we put “it” up against the love and call of God, and choose instead to center ourselves on God, to live in gratitude and thanksgiving? I hope so. It is the way to recovery. It is the way to full humanity. It is the way to restoration of our real identity as sons and daughters of the Most High.