20th Sunday Year B

The Holy Eucharist - The Holy Thank you

'Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well '

What do we think is the message for this reading, this gospel story? Is it that we should say Thank you for the gifts that we receive?

Or is it that we should have enough faith to call to God for help when we need it?

Or maybe it is that we can and should seek healing every day for the many many things that blight our lives; that we maybe overlook each by each and then let fester until they become a cancer that pulls us down or makes us despair of any hope or positive outcome?

Or maybe it is beyond these somewhat obvious points and questions, maybe it is that we should have respect for every one of our brothers and sisters in Christ no matter their background situations?

I think that if we stop and think about this reading, it is all of these points and so much more.

How hard can it be to say Thank You? Someone does you a favour – you say Thank you. Someone offers you a common courtesy – you say Thank you. Someone is simply friendly and approachable – you say Thank you. You say Thank you as a sign of appreciation; as a sign of respect; as a sign of recognition of the help that you have received and the importance of it within your life.

Someone cures you of a disfiguring and deadly disease; allows you the chance to live your life back in your community, back in your family; to be recognised and accepted as a human being – you say – Nothing. Not only do you say nothing but you vanish and do not go back to that someone at speak with them at all!

You take this huge gift for which you asked, in fact begged, of Jesus, and which, miraculously, he then granted you and you do what? You carry on your way, singing and dancing and rejoicing and become completely oblivious to the who, the how and the why you were cured. Really?

How does that work? How hard can it be to say Thank you? How hard can it be to show respect and regard to the one who has cured you? Would it not be the norm that anyone and everyone who has received a gift of health, of future happiness and of future inclusion and the wiping away of stigma, would want to run full pelt to their donor, their benefactor and show their respect and regard for what they have done and for what has been received. Shouldn’t gratitude, respect and regard be the least that could be shown in these circumstances?

In our reading today we have this point picked out clearly and with an emphasis on the right response coming from the wrong people – or the people who were certainly pictured as being wrong.

Our gospel reading today is from Luke. Luke’s background is that of a physician: a person who is centred on healing the sick, the broken, the downhearted and dispirited. A person who possibly would have responded most to Jesus’ teachings of care and respect for all and a person who would have been astounded, perhaps bewildered, but definitely entranced with the miraculous cures and healings that Jesus performed. I think these aspects of Jesus’ teachings would have resounded most with him and made him think long and hard about how he needed to get his message across to this new and changed audience with which he was faced.

Luke is writing for an audience of gentiles, foreigners, outside of the chosen people and is looking to make a point for them and to them – that God is the God of all peoples. He is calling to all to come to him. That everyone can hear the word; can listen to the word; can respond to the word – if they choose to do so.

The Church, the followers of Christ, had grown. It now encompassed people across the Mediterranean. It covered people from many countries and walks of life. Luke is speaking to a people who are mixed. They are mixed in race, in creed, in colour in just about every which way that they could be. He is speaking to an audience that has conflicting beliefs, conflicting and contrasting thoughts and practices. People who are unsure and unclear about what is being offered to them and in how they should take this in. People who did not have a history upon or within which this story of Jesus had any sound foundation. They had nothing on which it could be based or coloured for reference.

Luke is the healer. He is looking to offer the message of Christ in such a way that it can, and will, be taken on board by everyone and received by them as a message of healing and love. That this message of healing will be their salvation. That it will not only heal their hearts and minds but will also take their souls and spirits to new and ever-brighter heights. That will open up their eyes and minds to the complete healing and salvation that comes with the love of God.

He wants them to be receptive to what he has to say. He wants them to listen and to hear the messages of love and healing. And he wants them to be able to absorb all of this in such a way that they can stomach it and digest it and then place it alongside their own lives and living situations. He wants them to feel that this story and the messages of Jesus are aimed at them; individually and collectively. This is for them and for their families and friends.

And so, he targets here a Samaritan, a people most hated and despised by the Jews because they had chosen a different path to them; because they had spurned the Jewish path and faith. They were the worst of the worst. The Jews didn’t just dislike the Samaritans, they were actively and positively encouraged by their Scribes and Pharisees to avoid them and to spurn them. The Samaritans were the lowest of the low.

And so to our ten lepers. All ten are cured but only one comes back to praise God and give thanks to Jesus: and he is a Samaritan. Not only a foreigner but a despised outsider. Jesus says – were not all ten made clean? Where are the other nine?

Why do the nine who were cleansed, now treat Jesus as if he were the leper and stay away? What makes it so hard to say – Thank you? What makes it so hard to acknowledge the reception of salvation into their hearts, minds and souls?

They had had the courage and strength of faith to ask for help: to risk the wrath of the crowd and speak up and call out for help: something that every leper was warned against. They must not mix with society because they were outcast, they were sinners, they were the spurned of God’s people because they were unclean, because they were soiled, because they were despicable. But they had dared this. They had spoken as one person. They had perhaps taken courage from each other to call out with one voice as a group. They had decided to risk public condemnation and call for help.

But when they were cured, their one voice evaporated into the many that were singing and rejoicing. Their one voice was turned inward to their own joy and to the impact on their own individual lives. The source of the cure was forgotten or dismissed in the Hurrah of the moment.

Maybe when we look at this for ourselves we can see the ‘why’, the answer, more clearly. Maybe the problem is in the need to have to ask for help in the first place? Nobody likes being needy. Nobody likes not being self-sufficient. Nobody likes the idea of having to go cap in hand. Nobody likes having to admit that they, that we, do not have all of the answers, all or even most of the time. Nobody likes having to ask for help because this is a sign of weakness. Because it is not manly or because it shows that we are frail and lacking in some way. If we ask for help, we are lesser in some way. If we seek healing, it is because we have been unable to heal ourselves or our loved ones. It is wrong. It is a stigma. It is something that we have to suck up and put up with and take it on the chin and just get on with the living of life. No-one loves or even likes a moaner – and that is what we see ourselves as – if we have to ask for help.

And it matters not a jot how nice, or caring, or loving, or helpful, or humble, or welcoming or empathetic – the giver may be. In fact most of these can make us feel ten times worse. The ‘Thank you’ gets stuck in the throat; in fact somewhere between the gut and the throat. That ‘Thank you’ is the outward sound of your inward need – and it hurts.

We don’t know whether the nine lepers were appreciative of their cure or not. I would bet they were but that they were so taken up with their cure that they danced merrily away from any awkward reminder of their time in need and of their call for help from Jesus. They were better now and could put all of that behind them.

They had maybe focused on their physical healing and given no note to their mental, emotional and spiritual healing, which would have all come along as part and parcel of that one same miracle cure.

“Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” Jesus tells the lepers that it is the faith that they have, that each one of them has shown through their crying aloud for help; their risking of public scorn and derision and potential humiliation and physical hurt. This faith, this strength of belief that Jesus had the answer, that Jesus was the answer to their ills – this faith, had been the cure for them.

We are told elsewhere that if our faith were as small as a mustard seed, we would be able to move mountains. We are told that it is this faith which will guide us, it will protect us and it will lead us to our Father in heaven.

It is this faith which we must build up and strengthen and then use to help cure and or resolve the many difficulties and issues that we become faced with throughout our busy lives. It is our faith that will help us to prioritise where we need to allocate our resources, our energies and our prayers. It is this determination of our faith onto and into our lives that will put all else into its proper focus.

Luke offers us the opportunity throughout his gospel to consider the Word of God as total healing, total freedom, and total wholeness in spirit, soul and body. He presents each and every parable and snapshot of Jesus’ life as a means to healing; as a method of taking the Word of God into our lives, as readers and listeners to make us whole and complete. As a means to gaining total healing, total freedom and total wholeness in spirit that allows us to heal and then to grow.

A simple and obvious question is – “who are we among this ten – the one who gave thanks or the nine who danced away without a glance back? Are we ones who have the faith to ask for what we need and the full human awareness to say Thank you for any and all help that we receive; to show our respect and regard to a loving and all-caring Father for the healing that he gives us every day in so many different and varied ways.

We gather here each week to celebrate our Eucharist together. Eucharist means “thanks”. When we gather we are gathering as the tenth leper did – in glorious praise of God and in thanks to him for the gift of his son. We are the neediest of the needy, seeking to give thanks for the myriad of blessings we have each received in our lives. We are a chosen people who does not want to take God’s graces for granted or to hide away in the shame of our need. We want to be as vocal and as outward praising as the tenth leper was. We want to sing and dance and shout and praise and rejoice for the gift of having God in our lives.

We want  to confidently shout out, “Here I am Lord. I come to do Your will.

Help me please when I falter and fall.

Raise me up when I stumble.

Guide me when I lose sight of your path.

Encourage and enrich me with your grace and courage so that I can call to you in my hour of need.

Heal me when I fall sick with doubt and dread.

Hear me when I call.

Help me to focus my call on you and to give you praise and thanks every day for every blessing that fills my life.

Is that how we feel? Are we in a praising and thanking mood? Are we  – like the tenth leper – looking to sing praises to the Lord in thanks, in joy, in celebration?

And what about with each other? Do we see Christ in each of our fellow Christians? Do we give thanks out to each other – to each of God’s chosen ones or do we let it lie within us – hidden, silent, unknown?

Are we the one or the nine?

Luke is telling us that our healing lies in the Word of God. Our complete healing of body, of mind, of spirit lies with Jesus. If we but believe in him then all of our troubles will be over; all of our cares and woes will be done; all of our anxieties, stresses and strains will be gone.

We will all have seen or heard the many adverts that encourage us to speak out; to talk with someone; to reach out for help from those around us. I have made use of these systems and protocols myself over many years and have felt the benefit. And I have been surprised that this benefit came so much more from with than it did from without.

It helped that I could talk through my issues and concerns. That I could hear myself saying out aloud what it was that was causing me worry and anxiety. It helped me to frame these issues within settings in which I could identify and recognise the various who, what, where, when and how – was going on and it gave me some indication, some starting point for any actions I decided to take.

And yes – most of this was started off by a suitable health-care professional. But it was taken forward by myself and my faith in the Lord. I found I was able to have the most difficult of conversations, with God. I found I was able to open up my heart, my mind and my soul to God and wholeheartedly ask Him for help; ask him for healing. To bundle up each of the problems and problem areas that I had identified and to offer them to Him and ask for his help to sort them, to class them and to prioritise them. And it worked.

I found that over a period of time, I was able to rid myself of needless, extraneous problems that were not necessarily mine and whose solution was outside my personal remit. I found that having had long and sometime torturous talks with God, I was then able and better equipped to have the related talks with those I loved and with those for whom I worked. I found that my faith had given me the clarity to go to God with all that felt over-burdened and that through my conversations and subsequent listening and taking in – I could find peace and a greater degree of harmony.

When we speak of healing, we shouldn’t just concentrate on the simple or complex illnesses that we take to our GPs, be they mental, physical or emotional. When we seek healing from God our heavenly father, we need to bring to him any and all things that are causing us concern or disquiet in our lives.

Healing is about addressing anything which is causing us to worry, to doubt, to stutter or to stumble. When we seek healing, we should be able to offer up all that we are. We should be able to consider who we are and where we are at in our lives and, through this process of consideration, identify and recognise where the barriers to good health are. What is causing us unease or distress or anxiety, be it physical, mental, emotional or spiritual?

 Identify it. Recognise it. Offer it up to God in the sure and confident knowledge that he will offer us healing and wellbeing in return.

Our faith will set us free. Our faith will be our salvation – if we but believe and accept Jesus into our lives.

Luke wrote his gospel for an audience of mixed peoples. People from all races, creeds, colours, stations, ages and backgrounds. He knew that there had to be a way for them all to hear the message of Jesus and to take it into their lives readily and easily. He knew that they had to be able to understand what it was the Jesus was teaching and what this meant for each of them in their own circumstances.

He chose for his medium, the message of healing. The message that we are all unwell in some way or another and that with the intervention of God, we can all receive healing. That with faith on our side, we can all be cured. That with this knowledge we can all achieve full health and happiness in and through Jesus Christ our Saviour. Our faith can heal us. Our faith can make us whole again.