October 10, 2010 reading:
Thanksgiving / Pentecost 20
Luke 17:11-192
This year the lectionary bumps right into Canadian Thanksgiving. We often choose this gospel when we leave the cycle of readings to mark what is, after all, not a Christian holy day. This text is easily skewed toward a Thanksgiving sermon. After all, the 10th man, the formerly leprous Samaritan double-outcast turns back, praises God with a loud voice, falls at Jesus’ feet, and thanks him!
First, let’s blow off the whiff of anti-Semitism that creeps into our reading and preaching this text. It’s too easy to make this a good foreigner versus bad Judeans, old religion versus new moral tale. Sure, the other nine men don’t come back to thank Jesus. Assuming they’re all Jews, they go to do what the tradition requires. They’re not really clean until the rightful authorities say so. They do what Jesus tells them to do! And they’re already healed!
Does this man stop when he realizes he can’t go with the others to show himself to their religious authorities? Or does he turn around because he understands more of what Jesus has done for him? Made clean, healed in body, he’s also now whole.
Yes, he can go home again. But that’s not all there is to wholeness. He’ll return to play his part as a brother, a son, maybe even a father. He’ll turn his part of the world upside down. That community sent him out there. Will they welcome him back?
The nine aren’t guaranteed a warm welcome, either. Their community followed the rules and put them in their places. With or without priestly sanction, the community will decide where they belong now.
Miracles cause problems. Healing changes things. You can go home again. But things will never be the same. Some of us just don’t get that. Is the real contrast between the nine and the one found in the readiness of nine to seek restoration, and the readiness of one for re-creation? In gospel stories (especially Luke’s) it’s usually the outsider, the least likely one who gets the gospel. Those who should already know really don’t.
At Thanksgiving we celebrate earth’s abundance in general, and our large share of it in particular. We look around and think, if not say, “There but for the grace of God … ” We look back 12 months and breathe a sigh of relief. A year has passed without too much loss, too much suffering, just enough strength to endure. Good year or bad, we give thanks for what we’ve held on to. Especially after a bad year. Thanksgiving is the most conservative celebration of all!
When we go to church on Thanksgiving Sunday, will we be like the nine, off to do the right, religious thing? Will we go to give our God the thanks expected for what God has done for us? Or will we go to lay our whole lives before God open to what God has yet to do in and through us?
We’ll gather around our groaning boards, delighted by the over-abundance on display, and pray we won’t eat too much. Will our table-talk deafen us to the rapping at the window? Will we see him? He’s out there. Yes, still outside our ordered, bounded reality. The 10th man. Calling us to join with him in thanking and praising God, whose gracious power makes all things new.
Back to the story. When this man turns back to Jesus he takes his first step forward into a new world. He lays his whole life at Jesus’ feet. That’s an image of discipleship. He opens himself to what Jesus has yet to accomplish in and through him. His thanksgiving begins with what has just happened to him and goes on into the future now open to him.
This story isn’t (just) about gratitude for what is, and what has been. It’s about going on, with Jesus, into a world made new.
