"Against all expectations"

Pentecost 19, Year C, 2001

Trinity Cathedral, NJ NJ

Reading: Luke 17:11-19

It was the last thing they had expected. The last thing
after a series of last things. First of all,
it'd been the lepers,
a whole band of them shouting from the side of the road,
"Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!"
Nothing so unusual about that, I guess;
at the gateway of every city
you find the needy, whether it's a Middle Eastern village
or the sidewalks of the Port Authority bus terminal in New York,
people begging for some change
or a few scraps of food, enough to survive on
yet another day. Nothing unusual at all.
Most people
prefer not to stop,
perhaps throwing a few coins
to appease their consciences,
and then hurrying by
at a safe distance.

But Jesus was not
most people,
and perhaps they should have expected it
when he stopped on his way
to talk to the lepers.
There were always sick people wanting his help,
a woman with a hemorrhage, a man with dropsy,
people who were lame and broken and possessed,
and with a word here, a touch there,
he healed them.
They should have expected it.

Except this time
there was no instant healing;
this time
he sent them hurrying off to the priest,
their skin still scabby and scarred.
Yet by the time they got there,
the scabs had fallen away
and the scars been transformed
and all the priest could find
was the work-roughened skin
of some country workmen.
It was a healing, to be sure, but not quite the way
they had come to expect.
And then
another surprise.
Hurrying back towards them
was one of the men.
Nine of them had made it to the priest;
he had not.
He'd ignored Jesus' command,
he'd ignored the stares of the crowd;
as soon as he saw
that precious
clean skin,
he'd turned back.
Turned back
and dropped on his knees in front of Jesus
to praise God.
It's one of those scenes
etched into our mind
from Sunday School,
nine men hurrying off in the distance,
one
face in the dirt
praising God.
The last thing
you would expect.

But even that
isn't the real
surprise.

The real surprise
is that this
was a Samaritan.
A stranger, a foreigner,
someone you wouldn't trust
if your life depended on it.
Samaritans were suspect -
they spoke with strange accents;
you never knew
which side they were fighting on;
they claimed to worship the same God,
but had all sorts of peculiar traditions.
They were political enemies
and religious heretics,
the last people
you would expect
to find face in the dust
praising God.
And the last people you'd expect
to find Jesus praising
as models of faith.

I was brought up to think,
that the story of the ten lepers,
or the nine and the one,
was a story about giving thanks.
About being appropriately grateful
for everything God has done for us,
and for the things others do
in God's name.
And that's true,
but it's
only part of the story.
That's the part we like to hear, the part that fits with what might be
called
"Christian morality" or "Christian virtues",
it's the part we expect to hear about
in the Scriptures.
But there's another part, a part
which like the picture of the Samaritan face down in the dust
as a model of faith,
is one which perhaps
is the last thing we'd expect.

You see, this part goes against
all our expectations.
This man
was told by Jesus
to show himself to the priests.
Instead,
he turns around
and rushes back
to give thanks to God.
Obedience and duty
seem to be unimportant;
race and creed
are irrelevant.
All that matters
is that he gives God thanks.

I hardly have to say
that we are in the midst
of difficult times.
Four and a half weeks ago
some foreigners brought fear
into the heart of our country.
Just a week ago
we took fear
into the heart of theirs.
In times of war
whether that war is conventional
or, as now, a different type of war,
fear and duty,
anger and patriotism,
tend to be at the forefront
of our reactions.

Watching the news these last few weeks,
I have been struck by how easy it is
to separate our world
into "Us" and "Them."
"Us" are Americans, Christians, citizens.
"Them" are Arabs, Muslims, immigrants, foreigners.
"Us"are in favor of whatever action
the US government decides to take;
"Them" are against it.

You are either for us
or against us
is the mantra we have heard
time and time again
over the last few weeks
but it's simply not that simple.
The world cannot be divided
into "us"
and "them."

There are Arabs
who condemn the attacks on the World Trade Center, and
there are Americans, like Timothy McVeigh,
who use terrorist techniques against their own country.
There are Muslims
who are loyal citizens of this country,
and Americans
who for love of their country
march for peace.
It is not clear cut; there is no simple us and them.

So what are we to do
in this time of crisis?

There are no easy answers.
I will not stand here in the pulpit and give you a list
of the causes you ought to support
and the people you ought to trust.

But I will call you
to faith.
Call you to faith in the Christ
who looked at that Samaritan man
and saw not a political threat
or a religious heretic
but a brother in need.
Call you to faith in a Christ
who ignored the man's disobedience
in not going to the priest,
but instead rejoiced in the greater obedience
of his thanksgiving
to God.

As Luke tells the story,
soon after Jesus healed the lepers,
someone asked him
"When is the kingdom of God coming?"
answered, "The kingdom of God
is among you."
I call you to a faith
in a Christ
who, was ready to see the kingdom
unfolding around him
against all expectations,
unfolding
in a Samaritan leper,
with his face in the dust
giving thanks.

Faith in this Christ
means looking carefully at the world around us,
not simply accepting
what we hear on the TV
or see in the newspapers. It means looking carefully
for the places
where the kingdom of God might be being revealed
in the people around us
and in our own
lives and actions.

Might we hear
in the Muslim call to prayer
a call to renew
our own faith?
Might we see
in the faces of fleeing Afghani refugees
and grieving American families
an indictment of all war?
Might we see
in our immigrant neighbors
not a threat
but a sign of the hope of a new and better world?

What we see, when we look for that kingdom,
may be troubling to us.
Because it's a radical kingdom, this kingdom of God,
it's a radical faith, this faith in Christ!

And remember how it all began,
Mary's words of thanksgiving
in her pregnancy,
celebrating the breaking in of God in this world
in a new and powerful way
in Jesus Christ,
the breaking in of God
to create a kingdom on earth
where the proud are scattered
and the powerful brought down,
where the hungry are fed
and the rich sent away empty.
This is the kingdom
we look for, as Christians
this is the kingdom
we are citizens of.
And as citizens of the kingdom of God,
we are called to live in new and different ways.
to fight poverty and injustice and fear,
wherever those things might be,
to put aside our own vested interests
for the sake of others,
to take up the cross
which Jesus died on,
and offer to the world
the same forgiveness
and healing and peace
which Christ has offered us.

Against all expectations
the Samaritan came back
to give God thanks.
Against all expectations
Jesus commended him
for his faith.
Against all expectations
Christ has welcomed us
into his kingdom,
a kingdom
where, perhaps,
none of our expectations
may be met,
but where indeed
God will meet us.

Raewynne J. Whiteley
14 October 2001