Pentecost XIX, Year C

Ruth, 1:8-19a
2 Timothy, 2:3-15
Luke, 17:11-19

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Last Wednesday morning, I spoke to a class at S. Anselm's Abbey School, a Roman Catholic middle and high school run by Benedictine monks. Our parish and S. Anselm's have a touch of history together. Our beloved and blessed Fr Meisel was big friends with the long-time Abbot Alban, and Fr Meisel was a regular at the abbey.

Fr Gabriel brought some students from one of his classes here recently. As a follow-up, he asked me to come to the school and to speak to a class of juniors and seniors about faith. He requested that I make it autobiographical. Who can resist talking about themselves before a captive and polite audience? And for those of you who think I do this every Sunday – Touché!.

In thinking about what to say, I imagined what my response would have been if a priest had come to one of my high school classes. In high school, I had no respect at all for Christianity, just vehement, immoderate, vocal opposition. I would've been licking my chops if a priest came to talk to us, like a lion getting ready to tuck in to a slab of red meat. Although I doubt any of these students harbored such animosity, I asked the students about why people might reasonably think Christianity was nonsense, absurd, insincere. Adolescents are keen to adult hypocrisy, and most of the students had something to offer: the Church's inability to live up to Christ's example, its intolerance, its mind control – using belief as a control mechanism, its anti-intellectualism, its long history of abuses and injustices, its suspicion of earthly, physical pleasures, its involvement in politics and worldly affairs, its double standards and double dealing, its rigid doctrine and dogma – occasionally in striking contrast to our experience of life.

Of course, all of these charges are fair and legitimate, though not wholly true. We have to acknowledge them just as we try to acknowledge our individual failings. If we don't acknowledge our mistakes and shortcomings, we diminish our integrity and credibility. But I pointed out that the Church's failings, like our own failings, are not the whole story. Like each of us, the Church is a mixture of good as well as bad. The Church always gets some things wrong, but it gets a lot more right, especially the fundamentals of good living, of producing noble character. The Church is the greatest force for altruism, wisdom, beauty, goodness, truth, learning, peace, love. The Church enriches life, giving us hope and purpose and joy and strength. The Church embraces creation and sanctifies the physical world, meaning that bodily pleasures can be good, that bodily pleasures can glorify God. In the mass itself, God uses the created world to give himself to us; the spiritual often comes to us through the physical.

It's invigorating to spend forty minutes with sharp, critical minds interested in truth and less hobbled by ideology than adults. Afterward, I thought about what my life would look like if I hadn't changed since high school – specifically, if I were not a Christian. It's a good spiritual exercise for each of us to engage in regularly: what would my life look like if I were not a Christian? I usually think along the same trite, clichéd lines: "I'd have free weekends and leisurely Sunday mornings. I'd probably have more money; certainly a lot less charitable giving. Maybe I'd have a Porsche by now." When I get to that part of my reflection, I realize how sad life would be without God in my life. The things that give me identity and purpose would be so much different, so much less important, less real. If I weren't a Christian, obviously I wouldn't be a priest. I'd have a different wife and child, if any at all. I'd not be friends with any of you. I'd have nothing to do with this parish. I'd have a much narrower appreciation and enjoyment of people, as well as history, culture, food, books, music. Without Christ in my life, the inner parts of me would be enormously diminished, flattened, neutered. I'd be less able to love, and have less sense of self, less hope, less strength, less maturity, less purpose, and I'd be more listless, more frustrated, more dejected, more angry, more fearful.

As I read and reflected about today's gospel of Jesus healing the lepers, I saw the same pattern in my life. My high school and college years spent railing against the Church really were a cry for help. I certainly did not see it that way then, but that's what it was. God heard me. He came to me. And in the years since my baptism, I've found the more I try to obey God and to try to do his will, the more faith I have, the more health I have. That is the very pattern that we heard in today's gospel.

Jesus is walking through the region between Galilee, Israel, and Samaria. Although Samaritans revered many of the holy traditions and Mosaic laws and the scriptures of Israel, Jews held the Samaritans in contempt as foreigners, as being outside of God's chosen people, because they did not worship at Jerusalem and recognize the Temple authorities there. Samaritans had another holy mountain, Mount Gerizim, not Mount Zion. This was their sanctuary. Jews were hostile to Samaritans and considered Samaria to be a place of rejection, as displeasing to God.

As Jesus drew near to the Samaritan village, ten lepers met him outside of the city where they would've lived. Whether the lepers suffered from Hansen's disease or mild skin blemishes is unknowable, but both had the same religious effect. Skin diseases made people ritually unclean, and so people with chronic skin diseases had to live apart from everyone else, on the periphery, pushed outside the margins of society.

In their isolation, these outcasts call out to Jesus for help, for his mercy. They are seeking renewal and healing. Jesus acknowledges them, comes to them, and gives them direction: "Go and show yourselves to the priests," meaning the Temple priests in Jerusalem. Jewish priests determined whether someone was ritually pure, whether they could associate with everyone else. As the lepers set off, as they obeyed Christ's command, they were healed. Their healing made them ritually pure, meaning they could rejoin society. In obeying Christ, they were freed, liberated. Their lives had radically changed.

One of the lepers, who was a Samaritan, then turned back to thank Jesus. The Samaritan leper had a double affliction: leprosy and a despised ethnicity. He has been healed of one affliction, but he still bore another, not a physical, but a social blemish. He praises God for his healing and then falls at the feet of Jesus and gives him thanks. In effect, the Samaritan was worshiping at the true Temple - Jesus Christ. Christ's healing and the Samaritan's gratitude, his positive response, have healed the division between Jew and Samaritan. It shows that God reaches out for all people, and he gives us unity.

The Samaritan leper seems to have had a greater appreciation than the other lepers of the gift he's received. Outsiders are often more aware of the blessings insiders take for granted. It's another lesson for us about why the Church needs recent converts, people who have recently come or returned to the Church. If we've grown up in the Church, or been a faithful Christian for a decade, we're an insider and prone to take many of our blessings for granted. Those more recent to the faith remind us of the great gift we have, of our need to share and to reach out to others, of our need to give thanks.

Jesus asked the Samaritan leper, "Where are the other nine? Why haven't they come and praised God?" Jesus tells the grateful Samaritan, "Your faith has made you well; your faith has saved you." Jesus didn't say this to the other nine lepers. The other lepers were healed, but their faith wasn't complete. Gratitude completes faith. We don't really know the joy and richness of faith unless we express gratitude.

It may not be wholly a coincidence that our readings today focus our attention on gratitude. At this time of year throughout the Church, parishes are focusing on stewardship. In the next month or so, we'll be making our 2005 pledges to support Christ's work in this parish. This is a good story to reflect upon as we consider our pledges for the next year. How are we going to respond to God's generosity, to his healing? We may take him for granted, or we may respond with enthusiasm, zeal, energetic generosity. One of the many reasons I love this parish is because the gratitude and generosity here is palpable. I've seen the example of the Samaritan leper here, time and again. But we must continue to grow and not become complacent and presumptuous and lackadaisical.

The world encourages us to expect life to be mostly cherries, that we have a right to health, and plenty of good food, and happiness, and comfort, and leisure, and family, and prosperity, and fulfilling work. And when we get really sick, we expect the world to do more for us, for things to go our way all the time. To believe and expect all of that as our due is the surest path to misery. Rather, we should expect nothing for ourselves and cultivate gratitude for all of our blessings, big and small. Sanity and joy come from calling out to God, counting all of our blessings, and responding to God with praise and thanks.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.