Kyrie Eleison
2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15; Luke 17:11-19
October 10, 2010
They never got close to him, and they weren’t supposed to. Passing through the hinterland of Galilee and Samaria on his final trip to Jerusalem, and since there are no good Samaritans, Jesus was keeping his eyes open as he entered a village. Right where they belonged on the fringes, ten lepers were hovelling down, unclean, no longer considered really human, invisible.
So Jesus did not see the lepers. They saw him, however, and called out from a respectful difference. Actually, they yelled, “Jesus, Master, have mercy upon us.” It’s not quite “Kyrie Eleison,” or “Lord, have mercy,” but almost.
Jesus did not come any closer, he just answered their call with an unusual response. Go show yourselves to the priests, the usual phrase for have someone declared clean and be readmitted to the faith and to the human family. It didn’t make sense if any one of them had stopped an instant to think about it, but when you are that diseased and that despised you don’t stop when someone actually talks to you as a human being. And like so many of Jesus’ healings, Jesus did nothing to them, but made a suggestion. No touches, no magical formulas, yet in the very act of turning and going towards the priests they were healed.
This was not an unfamiliar scenario. Jesus once alluded to the curious tale of Na’aman, the Syrian general who had defeated Israel, and had the terrible flaw of leprosy. As a result of his military victories he had acquired a Hebrew slave girl in his household and she was his first word of healing. One would think the slave girl would look upon Na’aman as her oppressor, yet she felt love and empathy for him and told him there was a great prophet Elisha in Israel who had the power of God. He came to see the prophet, but Elisha would not come out to see him sending instead a note with the instructions to go wash yourself seven times in the Jordan. This leper not only hesitated, but arrogantly protested the indignity of trying to wash in a dirty river. His servants again convinced him otherwise of the wisdom of this simple task, something Christian writers would later claim was his baptism. Finally, he did wash and was clean again and went to thank Elisha.
One of the ten ex-lepers stopped dead in his tracks on the way to seeing the priests. Being a Samaritan, it is possible he realized the Jewish priests would not accept him no matter what, for besides the social stigma, Samaritans practiced a sectarian version of Judaism that the Jews viewed as an insult to their faith. He was a modern Na’aman without the military success, but with a humbled sense of gratitude. No longer a leper, at least he was now whole. Throwing himself down at Jesus’ feet - something I have never seen anyone do - he knew he had nothing that Jesus hadn’t given him.
Jesus was amazed, or maybe not, that the only one to praise God was a foreigner who by definition did not know how to praise God the right way. The Samaritan had gone to give thanks to a man and found that he was praising God, which must have amazed him. “Get up,” Jesus said, the verb he used is the same one for resurrection, and go on your way. Your faith has saved you. At least by the Gospel records, Jesus didn’t heal that many people as he told them that their faith had already healed, yes, saved them.
There’s a subtle link here between being invisible and being grateful, which literally means you are full of grace, stuff you didn’t earn. Being this kind of thankful is far beyond good manners, it is coming to know how to be really human.
In the movie Schindler’s List, the commandant of a concentration camp, Amon Goeth, is a cold-hearted villain, taken to shooting Jewish inmates from his back window when he was bored like so many deer or wild game. The Jews were after all not human. Except that he had a Jewish maid servant, another Na’aman story in the making. When Oskar Schindler was visiting Goeth, she came silently into the room and picked up the plates and cups and was taking them out when he looked at her and said, “Thank you, Helen.” In the act of thanking her by name, he saw her visible presence, recognizing that she was indeed a human being.
One winter night in 1935 in the midst of the depression, Fiorello LaGuardia, the mayor of New York City and a man much loved and the one for whom La Guardia Airport is named, showed up in the courts of the city’s poorest district. LaGuardia took over from the judge that evening, and that night a woman was brought before him charged with stealing a loaf of bread. Her defense was simply that her daughter’s husband had deserted her and the daughter was sick and her children were starving.
“The shop is in a bad neighbourhood, your Honour, and she’s got to be punished to teach people a lesson,” said the prosecutor.
LaGuardia turned to the old lady – “I have to punish you,” he said, “the law makes no exceptions. Ten dollars or ten days in jail!” Having rendered the judgment, LaGuardia reached into his pocket and took out a ten dollar bill. “Here’s the fine!” he told the court. “Paid in full which I am giving to her. Furthermore, I am fining every person in this courtroom a dollar for living in a city where a grandmother has to steal food to keep her grandchildren from starving. Mr. Baliff, collect the fines.”
The New York Times reported the next day that over $50 was given to the bewildered grandmother. Making forced donations were – the red faced shopkeeper, numerous petty criminals, court officials and police officers. Nobody was invisible in that courtroom and the only person who wasn’t a leper was the thieving grandmother. This is Thanksgiving, one day when you humbly recognize the immensity of the grace granted freely to you, a grace you did not earn and by your own human standards probably do not deserve. Kyrie Eleison, Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me. When you offer thanks from that position, your faith has already saved you.
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan