Patrick Comerford
Next Sunday, 13 October 2019, is the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XVII).
There are two sets of readings in the Revised Common Lectionary as adapted for use in the Church of Ireland, the continuous readings and the paired readings.
Continuous readings: Jeremiah 29: 1, 4-7; Psalm 66: 1-11; II Timothy 2: 8-15; Luke 17: 11-19. There is a link to the readings HERE.
Paired readings: II Kings 5: 1-3, 7-15c; Psalm 111; II Timothy 2: 8-15; Luke 17: 11-19. There is a link to the readings HERE.
Introducing the readings:
The readings next Sunday invite us to think about healing and restoration, not just for ourselves, but for all, especially those we regard as outsiders and foreigners. Who are the outsiders, and who are the insiders? Does God have favourite insiders and exclude those we regard as outsiders.
In the Old Testament reading (Jeremiah 29: 1, 4-7), the exiles in Babylon find themselves in a dichotomy, they see themselves as insiders within their own, closed group, and the people among whom they live as the outsiders. Yet they feel excluded and marginalised, believing their exile in Babylon means they are without roots and are unable to worship the God who was worshipped in the Temple in Jerusalem. The Prophet Jeremiah upbraids them, tells them to put down roots, and to pray for the society and people where they find themselves.
The Psalm (Psalm 66: 1-11) reminds the people of past experiences of exile, in Egypt or in Babylon, but also reminds them that all people, ‘all the earth,’ is called to worship God.
In the New Testament reading (II Timothy 2: 8-15), Saint Timothy is feeling isolated in his ministry in Ephesus, and challenged by false teachers. But Saint Paul urges him to continue with his efforts to proclaim the Gospel.
In the Gospel reading (Luke 17: 11-19), we are challenged to put aside our concepts of insiders and outsiders as Christ meets a group of ten people from one of the most isolated and marginalised groups of people of the day, in an isolated and marginalised place on the road from Galilee to Jerusalem. Within that small group of isolated and marginalised people, there is one among the ten who is also marginalised because of his religious background, yet it is he shows what true faith means.
Jeremiah 29: 1, 4-7:
We are coming to the close of a series of readings from the Prophet Jeremiah, which conclude the following Sunday [20 October 2019].
This reading is part of a letter he wrote from Jerusalem to the leaders of the people in exile who had been deported to Babylon after Jerusalem had fallen and Judah had been occupied Judah in 597 BC. These people believed that God could be worshipped only in Israel could be worshipped, but Jeremiah tells them God can be worshipped where they are, in exile.
Jeremiah tells them to make their home in Babylon, to build houses and live in them, to plant gardens and eat what they produce, to have large families and to settle down. He tells them to even to pray for the welfare of Babylon: ‘seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.’
Why does Jeremiah give advice like this? Later, in the verses that follow, they are told they are going to be in exile for 70 years, for many generations, before God brings them back to the land. False prophets are predicting an early return, but all the earth is invited to praise God, who preserves protects us, as he has done in the past.
Psalm 66: 1-11:
The numbering of the verses in the version of Psalm 66 in the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of Ireland (see pp 663-664) corresponds to Psalm 66: 1-12 in the NRSV and other English-language translations of the Bible. So caution is needed when preparing service sheets with this reading.
The psalm tells us that all the earth, and not just Israel, is invited to praise God, who is ‘awesome in his deeds’ (verse 2) and who is ‘wonderful’ in ‘his dealings’ with humanity. The psalmist recalls the Exodus, and how the people crossed the Red Sea and the Jordan on foot. God keeps watch over ‘the nations,’ so they should not rebel against him.
God preserves us in life and protects us. In the past, he has tested us and purified as silver is purified. Israel has been subjugated by other people, which may be a reference to exile not only in Egypt but also in Babylon. Yet, after being tested by fire and water, God has brought them to freedom and liberty again.
II Timothy 2: 8-15:
The Apostle Paul is worried that Saint Timothy, who is working alone in Ephesus, is feeling isolated and lacking the courage to hand on the good news of the Gospel, as we saw last week. Saint Paul prays that Timothy rekindle the faith he received from his mother and grandmother and that was strengthening at the laying-on of hands.
Saint Paul now advises Timothy to recall what he has been taught by Paul about how the crucified Christ has been raised from the dead. Paul reminds Timothy that he too has suffered hardships. But the good news is available to all and if we have died with Christ we will also live with him, if we endure we will also reign with him.
Verses 11-13 are probably from an early Christian hymn. If we share in Christ, in his death for sin in the world, we too will have eternal life.
Saint Paul then tells Timothy to challenge false teachers, who argue over words and prey on those who listen to them. Timothy has no need to be ashamed as he boldly proclaims the Gospel.
Luke 17: 11-19:
In the Gospel reading, we continue with Christ on the final stage of the journey from Galilee to Jerusalem. He is going through the region between Samaria and Galilee when a group of ten lepers approach him while keeping their distance.
At the time, people with leprosy were outcasts from society. They were regarded as ritually unclean, and people believed not only that the disease was infectious and transmitted by touch, but that the sufferers were possessed by evil spirits.
But these 10 show no sign of being possessed by evil spirits. On the contrary, all 10 show their faith as they acknowledge who Jesus is when they cry out, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!’ (verse 13).
To be reclaim their place in society, lepers needed certification from the priests that they were healed and clean.
But one among these 10 is a Samaritan, who is regarded as a foreigner and despised. He decides on his way to turn back and return to Christ and thank him. As a Samaritan, he worships God differently. All ten are healed of leprosy but the Samaritan is the only one among them who is shown to have real faith. This faith has made him well.
The Greek phrase at the very end of this reading, ἡ πίστις σου σέσωκέν σε, is translated in the NRSVA as ‘your faith has made you well.’ But the word σῴζω (sodzo) has a greater dramatic impact. It means not only to save, keep safe and sound, or to rescue from danger, destruction, injury or peril or even to make well, heal or restore to health. It also means to rescue someone from impending doom or destruction, to save or deliver them from the penalties of the Messianic judgment, to save them from the evils that obstruct the reception of the Messianic deliverance.
A reading that should have a dramatic ending is often deprived of its dramatic impact because we end it with an insipid and pious trailing off.
Reflecting on the Gospel reading:
This Gospel reading is well-loved by preachers – perhaps because it provides the opportunity for so many sermons on faith and healing, inclusion and exclusion, how Christ meets our every need, how we need conversion, on the connection between healing of the body and healing of the soul, perhaps even on the value of good manners and learning to say thank you.
Some parishes next Sunday are going to hear about one Samaritan who returns and says thank you. Some may even hear about nine other lepers who did exactly as they were told, went and showed themselves to the priests, received a clean bill of health and were restored to their rightful place in the community of faith.
But which is the greatest miracle for you: the healing of these ten people? Or their restoration to their rightful places in the community of faith?
Perhaps it is worth noting that it is the 10 men, not Christ, who keep their distance on the outskirts of the village, because they are forced to behave this way, to be marginalised and to live on the margins.
Christ keeps his distance, as might be expected. Yet, from that distance, he sees. We often translate verse 14 to say that ‘he saw them’ but the Greek says simply, καὶ ἰδὼν, ‘and having seen,’ without any object, there is no ‘them.’
For Christ, we are not mere objects; and for Christ there is no ‘us’ and ‘them.’ He sees the future without the limits of the present.
This is a story about trusting in God’s plans for the future, rather than living in the past, living with the fears of the present, living without hope for the future … precisely the context for the urgings and exhortations to the exiles by the Prophet Jeremiah in the Old Testament reading (Jeremiah 29: 1, 4-7), precisely the hope the Apostle Paul has for Saint Timothy in the epistle reading (II Timothy 2: 8-15).
But we foil those plans, we quench those hopes, we continue to live in the past, when we continue to limit Christ’s saving powers with our own limitations, continue to look at him with our own limited vision.
Christ sees … sees it as it is in the present and as it could be in the future.
Perhaps that is why Saint Luke has placed this story in a location that is in the in-between place, the region between Galilee and Samaria. The place between Galilee and Samaria is neither one nor the other, neither this earthly existence, nor what the future holds, but still on the way to Jerusalem.
Even the village here is not named. Is it Sychar, the village where he met the Samaritan woman at the well who becomes one of the most powerful and successful missionaries in the New Testament? Is Christ in the Decapolis, which squeezes partly between Eastern Galilee and Eastern Samaria? Is there some literary image being created with the Ten who seek healing and the Ten Cities.
Perhaps this is idle speculation.
We should not forget that not one but ten were healed. Christ does good – even to those who will not be thankful.
And even then, we do not know why the other nine did not return to say thanks. It took an eight-day waiting process for a person with leprosy to be declared clean by the priests.
After those eight days, did they then go and give thanks to God in their local synagogues?
Did they first breathe sighs of relief and return to the families they loved but had been isolated from for so long?
Did they return to that unnamed village, and find that ten days later Jesus had moved on … the next named place we find him in is Jericho (see Luke 19: 110, the Fourth Sunday before Advent, 3 November 2019)?
Surely Christ does good without expecting a thanks that comes straight from some Victorian book on good manners for girls in Cheltenham or Rodean, who know when and how to write thank you notes.
How often when we give a gift to someone do we want to control how they use it?
I give a Christmas or birthday gift, and then I am upset when they do not like it, when they trade it in for something else, or pass it on to someone else, or simply just never say thank you or acknowledge what I have done for them.
But who was the gift supposed to benefit: me as the giver, or you as the receiver? What was it a token of: my love for you, or my need for you to acknowledge how important I am to you?
A begrudging attitude to how others receive and use the gifts I give them, or taking offence when I feel they have not thanked me profusely enough, amount to a passive aggressive attitude on my part, a desire to control. If we give gifts only to be thanked, are we truly generous?
And if I only say thank you so I remain in someone else’s esteem, perhaps even to be rewarded again, to be kept on their invitation list, am I truly grateful?
Christ is not passively aggressive in this story. He is not seeking to control. He sends the ten on their way … and they go. If he had expected them to return, he would not have been surprised that one returned; he would have waited around in that unnamed village until the other nine had time to make their humble ways back there to thank him.
Instead, it is more important what Christ frees them for, and where he frees them.
He frees them to regain their place in the community, in the social, economic and religious community that is their rightful place.
For the Samaritan, his ‘faith has made him well’: ἡπίστις σου σέσωκέν σε, or, more accurately, your faith has saved you, rescued you, restored you. The word σῴζω is all about being saved, rescued, restored, ransomed, and not just about regaining health and physical well-being.
That land between Samaria and Galilee is where we find Christ today. The in-between place, the nowhere land, the place where people need to be saved, rescued, restored, ransomed.
We all find ourselves in the in-between place, the nowhere land … to borrow a phrase from TS Eliot, wandering in the Waste Land.
Perhaps, just for one moment, it is possible to imagine that Christ has arrived in that particular in-between place for a reason. For the land between Samaria and Galilee is neither one place nor the other.
And that in-between place is a place where I might find myself unsure of who belongs and who does not, where I might be uncertain, untrusting, even frightened and afraid. It is a place where the usual rules may not apply, where I do not know my place, where I do not fit in, where I appear not as the person God see truly sees me, but as others want to see me.
This is the place where Christ is travelling through in this Gospel story. It seems to me that I am often travelling in that place every day, today.
We all know what it is to travel between what I know and what I wonder about as we encounter this uncertain, often frightening in-between-ness in our lives, in my life.
It is difficult travelling in this in-between land. When we realise we are there, then it may be easier to identify with the Ten Lepers who have been cast out into the in-between land, not knowing where to go, rather than with those who appear certain about where they are going.
When we get to where you are going, we should remember how we feel about the present unknown, whether it is fear – ‘I will show you fear in a handful of dust’ – whether it is trepidation, anticipation, or joy that is tinged with all of these, in this in-between time and this nowhere place.
Shakespeare reminds us, in the words of Portia in The Merchant of Venice,
The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath … (The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, Scene 1)
These lepers in this Gospel reading were cut off from all they knew and loved, all the certainties they once enjoyed or took for granted.
And when we move from an in-between place and nowhere land, we should not hold back from the call to join the task of cleansing, healing, restoration. We do it not for ‘Thank Yous’ and plaudits. It is not about you, it is not all about me.
Indeed, it is not this one man’s thanks that is important, but that his thanks is expressed in turning around, conversion, and praising God, bowing down before Christ as his Master and as the Lord God.
Each of us moves at some time, perhaps many times, through our own land that is between Samaria and Galilee, where the rules do not seem to apply, where the words are hard to find, where healing is elusive, where no-one gives thanks, and no-one seems to say please. Yet, Christ is to be found deliberately in these places.
The nowhere, in-between place is where we meet those who have fallen between the cracks in the floorboards, lost their way, have been marginalised without having a say in framing the criteria by which they are marginalised.
The Samaritan leper is an outcast among the outcasts, despised among the despised. But God sees him within his perfect plan, and he offers perfect worship.
Martin Luther was once asked to describe the nature of true worship. His answer was the tenth leper turning back.
Christ invites us into that region between Samaria and Galilee, that space between wrong-doing and right-doing, between them and us – and bids us find our healing and salvation – and theirs. And in doing that we find ourselves engaged, quite naturally, in true worship.
Luke 17: 11-19 (NRSVA):
11 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, 13 they called out, saying, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!’ 14 When he saw them, he said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were made clean. 15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. 16 He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. 17 Then Jesus asked, ‘Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? 18 Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?’ 19 Then he said to him, ‘Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.’
The Samaritan returns to say thanks for healing and restoration © jesusmafa.comLiturgical Resources:
Liturgical Colour: Green (Ordinary Time)
The Collect of the Day:
Almighty God,
you have made us for yourself,
and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you:
Teach us to offer ourselves to your service,
that here we may have your peace,
and in the world to come may see you face to face;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The Collect of the Word:
O God,
you have made heaven and earth
and all that is good:
help us to delight in simple things
and to rejoice always
in the riches of your bounty;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
God our guide,
you feed us with bread from heaven
as you fed your people Israel.
May we who have been inwardly nourished
be ready to follow you
all the days of our pilgrimage on earth,
until we come to your kingdom in heaven.
This we ask in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Suggested Hymns:
Jeremiah 29: 1, 4-7:
No suggested hymns
Psalm 66: 1-11:
683, All people that on earth do dwell
701, Jubilate, everybody
360, Let all the world in every corner sing
104, O for a thousand tongues to sing
640, Purify my heart
II Kings 5: 1-3, 7-15c:
553, Jesu, lover of my soul
587, Just as I am, without one plea
513, O Christ, the healer, we have come
557, Rock of ages, cleft for me
Psalm 111:
84, Alleluia! raise the anthem
130, Jesus came, the heavens adoring
529, Thy hand, O God, has guided
373, To God be the glory! Great things he has done!
II Timothy 2: 8-15:
436, Now let us from this table rise
488, Stand up, stand up for Jesus
599, ‘Take up thy cross,’ the Saviour said
285, The head that once was crowned with thorns
681, There is a land of pure delight
661, Through the night of doubt and sorrow
Luke 17: 11-19:
92, How sweet the name of Jesus sounds
211, Immortal love for ever full
361, Now thank we all our God
104, O for a thousand tongues to sing
366, Praise, my soul, the King of heaven
373, To God be the glory! Great things he has done!
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
Material from the Book of Common Prayer is copyright © 2004, Representative Body of the Church of Ireland.
The hymn suggestions are provided in Sing to the Word (2000), edited by Bishop Edward Darling. The hymn numbers refer to the Church of Ireland’s Church Hymnal (5th edition, Oxford: OUP, 2000).
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