Sermon: The Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost
October 13, 2013
Proper 23-C
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Psalm 66:1-11
2 Timothy 2:8-15
Luke 17:11-19
What does it mean to be saved? If we’ve ever thought much about it, chances are that it has to do with being somehow insured against eternal torment. “Being saved,” by that definition, means being a part of the in-crowd: those whose names will be heard “when the roll is called up yonder.” That is a fairly common understanding of what it means to be saved; and, if that’s as far as it goes, then it is a pretty poor understanding of the whole idea.
What DOES it mean to be saved? It probably helps if we realize that the word used in our Scriptures that is sometimes translated as “saved” can also be translated equally well as ”healed”; and can also be translated equally well as “made whole.” Anytime you hear that word “saved” used in the Bible you can almost always, if not always, also hear it as “made well," “healed” or “made whole.”
So when someone says to Jesus, “Heal me,” that one is also saying in the Greek that our Bible uses “Make me whole” and “Save me.” And when Jesus says to someone “Be healed,” he is saying “Be made whole,” “Be saved.” All three at the same time.
So, in the understanding of the Bible, to be saved is to be made whole, here and now. If Jesus says you are healed, the healing takes place – so does the being made whole, so does the being saved.
One of my earliest mentors and priests was once asked by a zealous Biblical fundamentalist, “Have you been saved?” And his answer was, “Yes, I have. It was on a hill outside of Jerusalem about 2,000 years ago,” the point being that in the life-death-and-resurrection of Jesus we have all been saved. We have all been healed. We have all been made whole. Some people choose to live their lives as if this is so, and others choose to go through life not realizing that being saved, that salvation, is already theirs – in both senses. That is, we have all been saved from eternal damnation as it is sometimes called, and we have all ultimately been made whole, healed and safe.
So have some people we hear about this morning.
Jesus is approached by ten lepers, ten people who had some kind of disfiguring, discoloring skin disease stand at a distance from him as was required by the Law; and they cry out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” They have heard of him. They know his reputation as a healer, and they try to get his attention – thinking that he might somehow relieve their desperate situation. As lepers, they were forbidden any contact with other human beings who were not also suffering from such a disease. They would not have been allowed into their own homes. They would not have been allowed to shop for food, or go to church, or hold their children. We can only wonder how they survived at all. Maybe they relied on the kindness of people who would set out food for them; who would leave a shirt or a tunic hanging on a tree so that they could exchange it for the rags their own clothes had turned into. They must have been hoping for some similar kindness from Jesus. They got their kindness – and a whole lot more.
In response to their crying out to them, Jesus tells them to go and show themselves to the priests. That probably sounds quite odd to you and me, but the ten lepers would have known exactly what it meant. Anyone who thinks he has been cured of a disfiguring skin condition like the leprosy of the Old Testament has to go to a priest and have the cure certified. You are not officially cured until the priest says that you are cured. These ten lepers have just been told in an indirect way that by the time they get to the closest priest, they will be free of their disease.
And so it came to pass. All ten were cured.
But only one returns to thank God, in Jesus’s presence, for what incredible good fortune has been his. We don’t know anything about what the other nine do. They may have gotten their Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval from a priest, returned to their homes and gone on the win the Nobel Peace prize. Or they may have become bandits. We simply don’t know, and there is no reason to speculate. What we do know is that one of them did return. One returned, and he was a Samaritan – a Samaritan one of those people, one of those half-breed collaborators whom Jesus’s people would not, could not have anything to do with.
This Samaritan returns, “praising God, it says, and thanking Jesus for giving him something to praise God for.
And that’s when Jesus says, “Your faith has made you well.” But remember that this also means,”Your faith has made you whole. Your faith has saved you.” Were not the other nine healed? Well, we are told that they were, but to this one, this outcast social reject, he says, “You are now saved. You are now whole. You are now well.” And it is more than worth asking is this one, the one who nobody listening to Jesus would ever have thought of as “whole and saved,” is this one “weller” than the other nine?
And I think we must say,”Yes, this one is ‘weller.’” He is weller because he has not only felt gratitude, but has acted on it. He has felt gratitude and he has recognized, without being prompted, that all good things come from God.
So, for what good thing are you grateful. What good thing has made you more than you would have been without it? What good thing helps make you whole. What good thing makes you confident that you have been saved, both from whatever is worse in this life and from anything bad that might exist in the world to come? For what are you grateful? In twelve-step programs people who are seeking to be saved from the disease of addiction are very often, very often indeed, told to make lists of the things for which they are grateful. They call it adopting an “attitude of gratitude,” and it is seen as a necessary requirement healing. That is just one of the reasons I continue to describe twelve-step programs as real church. They know they are in the business of making people whole, of making the as well as they can be – the business, that is of salvation in a way that matters here and now. Less known, perhaps, is that a person in a twelve-step program is not considered to be recovering appropriately until, being saved, that person begins to help and accompany others on the road to wellness.
AA and the other programs know what we in the Christian church have known for centuries. I invite you now to turn to page 125 in your Book of Common Prayer and pray along with me.
Almighty God, Father of all mercies,
we your unworthy servants give you humble thanks
for all your goodness and loving-kindness
to us and to all whom you have made.
We bless you for our creation, preservation,
and all the blessings of this life;
but above all for your immeasurable love
in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ;
for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.
And, we pray, give us such an awareness of your mercies,
that with truly thankful hearts we may show forth your praise,
not only with our lips, but in our lives,
by giving up our selves to your service,
and by walking before you
in holiness and righteousness all our days;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit,
be honor and glory throughout all ages. Amen.
I hope that, among several others, the phrase we can take to heart this morning is the request that God will “give us such an awareness of [God’s] mercies, that with truly thankful hearts we may show forth [God’s] praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives.”
The tenth leper did this. He knew what he had to be grateful for; he was indeed grateful for it; and he showed it in the thing he chose to do.
For all that, he was “weller” than the others – unless they too found some way to thank God for God’s good gifts – even though they too had been cleansed of leprosy. The one who gives sincere thanks has not only been made well, that one has also been made whole as a human being. That one has in fact – and in every way the matters – been saved. And so are we.
That salvation, that wholeness, that being “well, weller and wellest,” is also yours and mine when we recognize who it is who loves us and who it is who is the source of all good things; and who it is who desires for us greater things than we can ask or imagine.
