Don Friesen
There is a story of a seminary student in Illinois who was awakened one night by the shouting of his fellow students, who reported a shipwreck near the shores around the seminary campus (Garrett Theological Seminary, Evanston, September 8, 1860). A cruise ship had collided with a freighter and was sinking fast! The student – Ed Spencer was his name — jumped out of bed, dressed hurriedly and ran to the shore to see if he could be of any help. It was a stormy night, the waters were rough, and few were willing to venture into them. Ed, however, was a strong swimmer, so he jumped right in and pulled people to shore, one after the other. Ed did courageous battle with the turbulent waters as well as with the dangerous debris floating around him. By early morning Ed had rescued fifteen survivors. Impressive! As Ed was warming himself by a fire on shore and drinking a welcome cup of coffee, someone spotted two more survivors clinging to the ship. Despite his exhaustion, Ed jumped in, using the last of his strength to bring them to shore, where he collapsed. Many passengers lost their lives that night, but of the 98 rescued Ed Spencer rescued seventeen of them.(story told by David Marcus)
Ed was not able to return to his seminary studies, however. As a result of his heroic efforts he became paralysed and was an invalid for the rest of his life. Years later Ed, now an old man living in California, was interviewed by a Los Angeles newspaper and asked what he recalled about the rescue. "Only this," replied Ed, "of the seventeen people I saved, not one of them ever thanked me."
A Story with a Familiar Ring?
The story sounds similar to the one Susan read just minutes ago. The Gospel story of the ten lepers sounds simple enough. Ten men suffering from leprosy encounter Jesus. Jesus heals them and sends them on their way. One turns back, ecstatic, thanking God, thanking Jesus, and Jesus asks, "Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" (John 17:17-18, RSV) Which leaves us with a handy tool for berating ourselves for the ingrates we are, or with the even more banal childhood lesson, "What do you say when you get something? Thank you. That's right! Good for you!"
However, what if the story is not as simple as it seems? What if we step outside the box and consider some alternate ways of reading the story? When Jesus said, "Where are the nine?" did he say it harshly, as in "Where are the nine?!?" Did he say it with a tone of paternal interest? As in "Whatever happened to the other nine? They must have gone straightaway to the priest!" Did Jesus ask the question in a scolding voice? Did he say it with scorn? With affection? With amazement? With disappointment? It makes a difference.
What if Jesus was smiling when he asked about the other nine? That too would make a difference. For example, someone (Mark Harris, "And Jesus Laughed") has suggested that the healing of the lepers is a quantum leap from the beginning of the Gospel when Jesus sent out 70 of his followers to various towns and villages with the commission to heal the sick. (Luke 10:9). And when the 70 reported back to Jesus, Luke tells us that Jesus rejoiced with them (10:21). Jesus had entrusted healing to ordinary people – some even less than ordinary — and they did it! And now, when approached by the ten lepers, Jesus may have been preoccupied with other things. After all, he was well on his way to his likely demise in Jerusalem, and not wanting to be distracted he simply told the lepers to go show themselves to the priests. "Right," say the ten, and off they shuffle to do their usual paces through the priestly protocol. Only, when one of the lepers — now an ex-leper — turns back, Jesus realized what happened! They had been cured of their leprosy, without his even touching them. The power of Jesus over illness could cure even leprosy, and the power was so powerful that not only could the 70 disciples he commissioned do it, these poor lepers can do it! Surely that would be enough to make Jesus smile, perhaps even laugh! It may well be that this story is not a condemnation of the nine ingrate lepers, or some gratuitous commentary on ungrateful Jews and the gratitude of Samaritans, but an amused, delighted, smiling and soon-to-be-laughing reaction to wonderful news!
A Story with lots of Boxes
Luke's story of the ten lepers invites us to think outside the box, for the simple reason that the story is chalk-full of boxes! For example, there is the box of leprosy. I don't need to go into a lot of grisly detail about the devastating effects of this disease on lepers, but their physical suffering was great, and compounded by their social estrangement. They were boxed in, not only by the fact that leprosy was considered contagious, but because lepers were considered ritually unclean! A leper was allowed no physical contact with non-lepers, and it is for this reason that the lepers in Luke's story "stood at a distance" (Luke 17:12, RSV) when they called out to Jesus.
It may well be that those who first heard the story of the ten lepers were prepared for an out-of-box experience. It reminded them of another leper story — the story of Naaman (2 Kings 5). Naaman was boxed in by several constraints: one, he had leprosy; two: he had to go to an enemy nation to get help; three: he was boxed in by his dignity when Elisha, his healer, e-mailed his instructions to Naaman. Elisha wouldn't even come out of his house to meet this important man, an insult that almost sent Naaman home with his leprosy intact. Five: Naaman was boxed in by his ego when Elisha told him to go wash himself in the Jordan, a muddy little river quite beneath his station in life. And six: Naaman was boxed by his anger, and it was only because his servants gave him a leg-up that he could crawl out of that box.
I think that those who first heard the story of the ten lepers were alert for boxes, and one of the obvious boxes in Luke's story is the racial box. We are not told, specifically, that the nine non-returning lepers were Jews, but the fact that Jesus makes much of the tenth and thankful leper being a "foreigner" seems to imply it. And the fact that Jews and Samaritans fraternize in this story is in itself an out-of-the-box experience.
There is even a geographical box in this story. We know from other biblical stories that Jews tried to avoid travelling to or through Samaria, yet here is Jesus, Luke tells us, in "the region between Samaria and Galilee." (Luke 17:11) Jesus was skirting the borderlands, the in-between area that doesn't fit neatly in any geographical box.
One might also consider that Jesus stepped outside the healing box. According to the Gospels Jesus usually healed people with the use of touch, but he departed from this approach in the case of the ten lepers. There was no pronouncement of healing. There was no eloquent prayer. In fact, Jesus did very little except to tell the lepers to go see their priest!
There are a number of boxes in today's Gospel story, but Jesus doesn't appear to feel constrained by them. In fact, the story itself is outside one of our favourite boxes — the box of rationality. Tony Campolo once talked to an academic colleague about a healing he witnessed, and his colleague said, "My theology does not allow for that!" And Campolo replied, "maybe God is bigger than your theology!" don't put God in a box!
If, like me, you're from Saskatchewan, you don't like being boxed in. A comfortable distance between two prairie people in conversation is about five feet. I have narrowed my own comfort zone somewhat, due to my hearing loss, but my instinct is to back away when someone stands too close to me and to rebel when someone tries to box me in. I don't care if it's a conservative box, a liberal box, a fashion box, a dietary box, or whatever other boxes human beings construct to set themselves off from others. A box is a box is a box!
Nine Ways to Say "No Thanks"
And so I invite you to step out of the box for a moment and consider Luke's story from several different perspectives. What if the lepers we usually consider ingrates had valid reasons for not returning to say thanks to Jesus. What if they had some good reasons to say "No thanks!" It would be interesting if a reporter of that day had done a follow-up story on the nine lepers a year after this encounter. Imagine the nine gathered in one room, and the reporter asking for their side of the story. "Jim, what happened to you after Jesus healed you of your leprosy?" And Jim Leper might reply, "Well, I guess I wanted to wait a while to see if the cure was real. And by the time I realized it was real Jesus was dead!"
"And how about you, Jack?" asked the reporter, and Jack Leper might reply, "Well, I started to wonder if I had ever had leprosy. And whatever it was I had was already much improved, so I didn't give it much more thought."
"And Jason, you?" And Jason Leper might reply, "Well, I was grateful for the cure, but I had to take my son to his hockey game that day; he plays with other little lepers in the Little Lepers Hockey League, and it was an important game he was playing that day."
Lyle Leper was the next to speak up. "I didn't know we were supposed to return to thank Jesus. I was just following instructions. Jesus told us to ‘go and show ourselves to the priests,' and that's what I did! We were so used to following orders that when Jesus told us go see the priest our feet started moving before our minds knew why we were going!" Lyle was probably right; lepers were good at following instructions. Trapped inside a very restricting box, they were used to being told, "do this. Don't do that. Stand here. Not there. Stay away from that." Lepers moved, ate, slept, and spoke according to instructions, with little choice in the matter.
Lyle's friend, Leland, said, "When we first came to the leper colony we all had to take the Myers-Briggs test 2 and what happened in this story is really quite predictable. Nine of us scored high on the ‘judging' personality characteristic, which means that we value a well-ordered life. We're J-lepers. We respond well to order. We prefer structure. Our favourite prayer is: ‘Lord, help me to do what's expected, and help me to do it exactly right.'"
"On the other hand," continued Leland, "Tim, the tenth leper, scored high in the Myers-Briggs test as a Perceiver! Tim's a P-leper. Perceivers prefer flexibility and divergent thinking. They like to consider a variety of techniques. Their motto is ‘On the other hand...' P-people, lepers included, are more curious, spontaneous, indecisive, tentative, and always starting new projects, though the ‘P' could also stand for ponder-er, or procrastinator! The P-leper prays, ‘God, help me to keep my mind on one thing at a ... Oh, look at that bird up there!'"
The other four lepers in the follow-up interview didn't say much. There was Deaf Leper, whose passion was music. One of the lepers had done jail-time, and everyone called him Leper-Con. 3 I think he was Irish. Another of the lepers, Spotted Leper — strange name, I know — had an identity crisis because of his healing. He'd been a leper so long that he wasn't prepared for the change ahead. He felt at home with other lepers. What would he do now? How should he act? He just wasn't prepared for the drastic changes ahead. And the ninth leper refused to be labelled an ingrate; he said that he was as thankful as the next leper, but that he chose the traditional way to express it — in the Temple, before the priest, just like Jesus instructed.
Thanking outside the Box
Most of us think and thank inside the box. We express our thanks at traditional and conventional times and as expected. We send and receive cards as expected, remembering birthdays, anniversaries, hospitalizations and the major holidays. We pray before we dive into the turkey on Thanksgiving and we give a nod to the Baby Jesus before Christmas Dinner. We say gracious words of thanks on cue, but we try to keep our gratitude within the dictates of middle class decorum.
If Luke's story of the ten lepers teaches us anything more than manners and social niceties, perhaps it is to let some of the gratitude within us escape the constraints that put a lid on our thanksgiving. When the tenth leper turned around on his journey to the priest, Luke tells us that he was "praising God with a loud voice." (Luke 17:15) In fact the ex-leper "prostrated himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him." (17:16) A little over the top, by our standards! Luke's story is brief, but we get the impression that this man's actions and speech were anything but measured. He was completely carried away with joy! He wanted to jump up and down! He wanted to dance a jig! He wanted to shout from the rafters! He wanted to throw a party! I doubt that the tenth leper was available for a follow-up interview; he was so ecstatic that he was in no shape to answer any questions, even a year later!
Sometimes it's good to throw aside all social convention, all restraint, and just let yourself get carried away with gratitude and joy. It's like a popular little poem that suggests that we…
We can stay inside the box, just following directions and playing it safe, but there is something about the very nature of gratitude that cannot be contained in a box, however attractively decorated.
We seem more inclined to give our gratitude free rein when we feel a sense of urgency. Sometimes God has to shake the box to get us to drop out of the box for a bit. A fourteenth-century mystic named Hafiz wrote a poem entitled "Tired of Speaking Sweetly" in which the poet imagines God growing weary of speaking sweetly to us of the divine dream of a world that works for all. He writes:
...
That make you fight within yourself, dear one,
causing the world to weep
...
Hold us upside down
Last night, after Eleanor and Bill's wedding, various people stood up during the meal to share stories about the bridal couple and to wish them well. Eleanor daughter, Angela, stood up and expressed what she said she's never said to her mother before. She shared her admiration for her mother's courage and character during the rough patches of the last five years. It was very touching, and I was moved to tears. The time to share our gratitude and appreciation is now!
There is abundant life beyond our self-imposed boundaries. I don't Jesus disapproves of us when we follow instructions — after all, he is the one giving an instruction in our Gospel story — but I like to think that he laughs with utter delight when we follow our hearts and respond with the gift of exuberant thanksgiving and praise! Amen
"Dance like no one can see you;
This summer I met one of my few remaining uncles. He lives in Hawaii and I last saw him when I was only five years old. My Uncle Danny is well into his eighties, but he just got married, and he's happy! Which is good! My Uncle Danny is so happy about his new love that he and his new wife sang for us. They sang a song about their courtship, and my new aunt told us, not without some embarrassment, that Uncle Danny offers to sing this song to everyone! They even sang it in a shopping mall in Saskatoon!
Love like you've never been hurt;
Sing like no one can hear you;
Live like heaven is on earth."
(source unknown)
Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,
Some life experiences perform that service for us. A woman diagnosed with cancer confessed that she no longer waits or holds back in telling people what they mean to her. Time is of the essence, and so she expresses her appreciation now. Today!
Break all our teacup talk of God.
Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly
And wants to rip to shreds
All your erroneous notions of truth
And with others,
On too many fine days.
The Beloved sometimes wants
To do us a great favour:
And shake all the nonsense out."
1 All quotations of Scripture, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version.
2 Thanks to Jeanie Burton and Fred Kane for some of the ideas and the sermon title.
3 Thanks to Lyle D. and Rudy K. for help with the names, though I won't reveal which ones they contributed less you think them silly.