St.
Alban's Episcopal Church
Austin, Texas
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Austin, Texas
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From the Pulpit:
There was a debate this week at the Austin Presbyterian Seminary that I would have gone to if I’d known about it. But it was so packed that I wouldn’t have found a parking space and would probably have had to watch it on the video feed in the overflow room. What had sparked the debate was a newspaper column written by a UT professor about why he had joined a church even though he considers himself an atheist. The pastor of the Presbyterian church he had joined found himself in hot water “with the regional governing body, which argued that those seeking membership must make a statement of belief in Jesus as the son of God and the source of salvation.” (1) The pastor, on the other hand, stands firm in his intention to keep his church open because he believes that belief doesn’t always come easily and that God can transform our lives even when we comprehend very little and cannot articulate exactly what it is that we believe. As I said last week, and as that pastor concurs, belief is how we live our lives, not what we think in our heads. I usually choose just one of our readings to preach about, but am going to break that rule today because I want us to look at both the Book of Ruth and Luke’s story about the grateful leper. This is the only snippet of the Book of Ruth in our Episcopal lectionary. Ruth is a wonderful little book, so let me give you a thumbnail sketch of the story. During a famine a man left his home in Bethlehem and took his wife, Naomi, and their two sons to live in the land of Moab. The father died, and the two sons married Moabite women, but then the sons died as well, leaving all three women widowed. As you know, a widow with no sons to care for her is as good as dead, so Naomi told the two young women to return to their families. One did, but as we just read Ruth stayed with Naomi even though it meant she had no one to care for her. The two women returned to Bethlehem to live the lives of beggars. They go to the farm of Boaz, a relative of Naomi’s husband, who allows them special privileges gleaning the barley and gives them protection among the women of his household. Naomi is very clever though, and a little trickery goes on, a little hanky panky and the story ends happily ever after with Ruth married to Boaz and Naomi holding her baby grandson. As I said happily ever after. So what is this little story about? Or we might ask, why do we read only this one passage in church? It is a marvelous one, often read at marriages: Naomi says: Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. It is about love and commitment, about giving our lives to someone with no looking back, no escape hatch, no Plan B. And then we have the story in Luke of Jesus healing the ten lepers. This takes place in the no man’s land between Samaria and Galilee. That’s where the lepers lived, on the fringes of civilization, out by the garbage dumps, outside the city limits, away from their families and all the creature comforts. Any kind of skin disease made you a leper – acne, chicken pox, hives. You’ve got spots -- you’re out of town, camping with the other spotted ones and warning passers by not to approach you. “Unclean, unclean,” you are required to shout when approached. So Luke tells us that when they saw Jesus, they kept their distance. But they called out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” What are they asking for? Not healing, not the cure, not even ointment or money to buy food. They ask for mercy, something to be given by the heart. Have you ever asked for mercy? Have you ever needed mercy? I have. I have needed somebody to open their heart to me, to try to feel what I was feeling, to be present to me when my own coping mechanisms weren’t working, not to try to fix something that couldn’t be fixed. Just to be with me with compassion. That’s all the lepers asked for. Jesus, look at us. This stinks. Just tell us you know it stinks. And Jesus did, without saying it in so many words. Jesus had mercy on them, and because he was Jesus, because he was a healer and God incarnate he did more. He cured them and sent them off to the priests to get permission to go home. All ten of them obeyed him. they set off toward the temple, and before they had taken a dozen paces they looked at their arms, they looked at each other’s faces, they touched clear skin where the sores had festered. And nine of them lit off for the temple at great speed. Nine of them, with joy in their hearts did just what Jesus told them to do. But one stopped in his tracks. He was a Samaritan. It was not because he wouldn’t be welcome at the temple, which he wouldn’t. It wasn’t because he wasn’t thrilled to have his life back, because he was. It was because he was drawn to Jesus. It was because he knew what had happened. He recognized the source of his healing, and he praised God. He threw himself in gratitude at Jesus’ feet and gave Jesus the only overt thanks that Jesus got in all the gospel stories as we have them. Jesus says to him, “Your faith has made you well.” A better translation would be “Your faith has made you whole.” That is much more than the nine others got. All they got was a cure, though they were perfectly happy with that. Not everybody knows enough to want more, to want something more important than a cure. The faith that makes us whole begins with a call for mercy. It begins by knowing we have a God-shaped hole in our hearts, an ache that can be filled only with God’s love. And it begins, as we read last week, with faith the size of a mustard seed, when we acknowledge that God’s love is always there. All we need to do is open ourselves to receive it. When the tenth leper returned to Jesus he came to praise God, the true source of his healing. Healing is not the same as curing, it is more. You can be cured but not healed, or healed but not cured. In praising God, the leper turned to relationship, to connectedness with the source of all life. This is a story of gratitude, gratitude as a sign of faith. Gratitude which is not a product of happiness but rather the ground from which happiness can flower. Gratitude that is a commitment to the source from which it is given to us as a blessing. I don’t know a thing about the UT professor who claims to be an atheist and a member of the Presbyterian Church, but I do believe that his commitment to being there, to worshiping and learning and giving and being in fellowship with devoted Christians speaks more loudly about his faith than whatever he might say about God with words. And I believe that God can work on us in ways that we don’t perceive. So why do we come to St. Alban’s? Why have we made the commitment that is expressed by our simply being present here today? We could be at the new Super Target that has just opened this morning at South Park Meadows? We could be sitting on the porch drinking coffee and reading the New York Times, but we’re not. We’re here because, just like Ruth and Naomi, just like the Samaritan leper, we know we need God’s mercy in order to be made whole. And that we can only receive that mercy when we give ourselves completely, when we live in gratitude to God and express that gratitude in every possible way. Let us pray. Gracious God, you are the giver of all good things. You are the source of life itself. We give you thanks for every breath we take. We do not pretend to understand you, but we thank you for your mercy so give us generous hearts that we may begin to understand the joy of returning to you abundantly from the blessings you have given us. Amen. (1) Eileen Flynn, Austin American Statesman, Saturday, October 13, 2007
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05/16/2008 | ||||||
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The
Rev. Margaret Waters