Sunday Worship 12 October | Lectionary Proper 23: Your faith has made you whole

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7

This is the text of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets and all the other people Nebuchadnezzar had carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon...This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

We first encountered the book of Jeremiah back in August, when we learned that it was written as a record of the word of God that was given to the prophet Jeremiah in the thirty years leading up to the exile, when much of the population of Jerusalem was deported to Babylon. At this point in the book, the exile is underway. The two verses omitted by the lectionary tell us that “this was after King Jehoiachin and the queen mother, the court officials and the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the skilled workers and the artisans had gone into exile”. The prophets have been warning for decades that the injustices and unfaithfulness of the people would catch up to them, and disaster has finally come to the door. The government and the professional class have gone, and that must have been as destabilising for those who were left behind as it was traumatising for those who were taken.

Into that trauma comes this letter from Jeremiah, addressed to those the Lord has carried into exile. That phrase raises some big questions for me, because a plain reading suggests that the exile has been orchestrated by God, but I find that kind of punitive action so difficult to square with what I see of God elsewhere in scripture, and what I know of God in my own life. When we explored Revelation together this time last year, I suggested that the desolations that John saw in his vision were not threats of punishment but warnings of consequence, and I bring that same reading to the prophets. The people had lost sight of how they were meant to live, and that was always going to cause problems, just as the injustices and unfaithfulness of our own generation will cause problems for us if we do not address them. I think the language of being carried into exile is a vital assurance that God is still with the people, and I think it can offer us that same assurance, but I would not read it too literally.

The lectionary jumps ahead in Jeremiah next week, and we may find ourselves elsewhere in scripture anyway, so I want to take a moment to look at the letter in its entirety. We might expect an element of “I told you so”, but thankfully God is a lot less petty than we are so that is nowhere in sight. Instead the main focus is warning the people against false prophets. It’s not clear what they have been saying, but given that the rest of the book of Jeremiah goes on to say that the people need to settle in for the long haul but they will return home eventually, it seems likely that these false prophets were teaching either that it would all be over soon, or that it would never end at all. The first would have given a sense of false hope while the second would have risked instilling a profound sense of despair, and either may have prevented the kind of deep reflection that should have been prompted by the exile. It was important that the exiles maintained a proper sense of perspective if they were to learn anything at all from the experience.

Another important moment from the letter comes in verse eleven, when Jeremiah writes “‘For I know the plans I have for you’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.’” This has become a really well known verse on its own, and it's not hard to see why. There is great comfort to be found in knowing that God has good plans for us, and I do believe that this verse is meant to speak to all of us. Having said that however, it is important that we don't forget the context in which it was first spoken. This must have been the lowest point of the exiles’ lives, and the lowest point in the life of the nation since they were slaves in Egypt. God had good plans, but those plans were not unfolding just yet, and so the people had to be patient and trust. That part of it is really important, because there will be times in our own lives when God’s good plans seem to be nowhere on the horizon, and we too must be patient and trust.

So we’ve looked around the reading we heard earlier, but now let’s look at what God has to say in these verses in particular. “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” God is speaking to people who have been ripped away from their homes and possibly their families, people who must have felt that their world had ended, people who were surely hoping for a way out and a way home, and yet here God is telling them to settle down, to accept their fate for the moment, to build new lives. It was probably not the message they wanted or expected, but God knew it was the message they needed. It was the only way they could survive the ordeal.

But what do these words have to say to us? I have heard some commentators suggest that the church in this country is in exile, as we live in an increasingly multicultural and secular society, but quite frankly I think that’s an insult to the experience of those who were taken to Babylon all those centuries ago, and to the experience of those who find themselves forced from their homes by war and disaster today. There is no question that our position and power as Christians has changed, and we should absolutely be praying for the peace of the cities in which we live, but we still hold a great deal of privilege and freedom, and I don’t think it helps anyone for us to pretend otherwise. If anything, this passage should lead us to think about those who are among us as exiles, the refugees and asylum seekers who may not have been dragged here but neither came here entirely by choice, who do not know if or when they may return home. How can we make sure they are able to “build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce”? How can we pray together with them for the peace of our cities so that we all might prosper?

We may not be in exile as a church, but there will be times in our lives that do feel like exile. Times when we seem to have been dragged into a situation we did not choose and do not want to be in. I hope this passage contains some comfort for us in those times, an encouragement that we too can settle down and accept our fate for the moment and rebuild our lives, that we can find peace and joy as we trust there will be a way out and a way home.

 Luke 17:11-19

Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus travelled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” When he saw them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed. One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”

We’ve not heard from the gospels for a few weeks, so this morning we are back with Luke and the healing of ten lepers. I want to start by acknowledging that healing stories can be really difficult and even painful. I’m sure many of us have prayed for healing for ourselves or others and not seen those prayers answered, and that is hard and it can be confusing. One of the most faithful people I have ever known has suffered from a debilitating chronic illness for thirty years, despite many prayers for her healing. When I was in labour with Eddie, she woke in the night certain that she needed to pray for me, and we worked out afterwards that she woke at the same time that labour started to become very difficult and I really needed some help. God was so clearly at work in her and she was so clearly in tune with God, and yet she has never been fully healed. I don’t understand it, but because of it I am certain that when healing does not come, it is not for lack of faith on our part or lack of care on God’s part, and being certain of those two things allows me to live with uncertainty on everything else.

With that said, let’s work our way through this particular healing story. Ten socially distanced lepers call out to Jesus and ask him to have pity on them, to which he responds by telling them to show themselves to the priests. A bit of context may be helpful here. Leprosy was at this time used as a catchall term for a variety of skin diseases, and those who were afflicted were removed from society until such time as they were healed, and even then they first had to be inspected by a priest and made ritually clean through the offering of a sacrifice. The law was intended to prevent the spreading of infection, but that makes it no less exclusionary or ableist. It is similar to the height of the AIDS crisis, when patients were all but abandoned in wards because even many medical staff refused to come near them. I cannot imagine how much it compounded the suffering to experience it without kindness. We are far from getting it right on illness and disability, but I am so glad for the progress we have made in recent decades.

So Jesus tells the lepers to show themselves to the priests as if they are already healed. He’s asking them to take a risk, because if they go into the village and show up to the priests covered in sores or rashes, they will be breaking the law as they will be seen to be defiling the community. It is a remarkable act of trust that they go without asking any questions, and as they go they are cleansed. That’s an interesting word, isn’t it? Cleansed implies that until then they were dirty or impure or unacceptable, which reveals something of the underlying attitudes towards illness and disability that lie behind this scene. But then those attitudes were behind the stigma that fuelled the AIDS crisis too, and they are not entirely forgotten, so this is not about looking back on the distant past from a place of superiority, but recognising what is happening here and using it as a prompt to reflect on our own attitudes.

The lepers are cleansed, and one of them realises this and comes running back, praising God and thanking Jesus. We don’t always recognise what God has done in our lives, but presumably the others also realise they have been healed and choose to carry on to the priests, which in all fairness is what they were told to do. We are told that the one who returns is a Samaritan, although we are not told that he was the only Samaritan, so I want to avoid any tendency to set two groups against each other. And yet it is clearly significant that he is a Samaritan, and it is worth remembering that this passage comes only a couple of chapters after the story of the Good Samaritan. Luke clearly wanted his readers to rethink their opinion of Samaritans, but why was that so important? Samaritans and Jews had a contentious relationship, because while they shared a common ancestry, the Samaritans had intermarried with other groups and their theology had developed in different directions. Emphasising the true faith of a Samaritan is a reminder that God is at work in places and people we might not expect, and we do not need to share someone’s faith in order to recognise it and respect it.

As the man throws himself at Jesus’ feet, Jesus expresses what we might read as some frustration that only one has returned, and draws attention to the fact that he is a foreigner. I am inclined to read this not as an othering of the Samaritan, but as Jesus wanting to make sure that those who were travelling with him really understood that God was working outside the bounds of what was expected. This isn’t just Luke’s message, it is God’s. 

Jesus then tells the Samaritan: “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.” We might read that as an affirmation that it was the man’s faithfulness in doing as Jesus had said that had healed him, but Jesus normally says something like this before the person is healed, so it feels like something else is happening here, like another healing is taking place. I think we can begin to make sense of what is going on if we look more closely at the language. Earlier on we were told that the lepers were cleansed and that the Samaritan had realised he was healed, but here we are told that his faith has made him well. This isn’t just the translator wanting to bring in a bit of variety, there are three distinct verbs in the original Greek, and I think that is the key to unlocking this passage. 

The word translated made you well could also be rendered made you whole, and it has further connotations of being saved. In returning to Jesus, the Samaritan opens himself to wholeness and redemption. In his thankfulness there is joy and connection, there is space to find out how God sees him after a life shaped by how society has seen him, there is the beginning of a new and more hopeful story. And all of that could have been possible even without his skin being cleansed. I think we see here that there is more to healing than the cure of disease, there is also comfort for our dis-ease, and perhaps this too is something to hold onto when the healing we pray for seems elusive.