Restoration and Response
“Restoration and Response”
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, October 13, 2019
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7 Luke 17:11-19
Pastor Andy Kennaly
Sandpoint, Idaho
Several years ago this church sent some youth on a mission trip to Colorado. Shawna and I drove the van we borrowed from First Presbyterian Church of Clarkston, Washington. It took a lot of driving, but we eventually made it. While in Colorado we slept on the floor of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in downtown Boulder. It is an Earth Care Congregation, and that was the theme of the mission trip. We met up there with a youth group from Minnesota, so there were three or four vans driving to work sites as we tried to respond to God’s goodness in our lives by offering restoration to disturbed areas: places like Rocky Mountain National Park, the foothills above Boulder, or ranch land out in the flat, open spaces outside of town. We did things like remove barbed wire fencing, collect seeds of desirable plants for propagation, cut out seed pods from undesirable plants, chopped up invasive trees, and dug out noxious weeds like thistles, even in elk habitat at 9,000 feet.
One of the places we visited in Boulder was NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and they have an exhibit there called Science On a Sphere (https://sos.noaa.gov/What_is_SOS/index.html), which is a big ball in the middle of a room hanging from the ceiling which is a basically a movie screen in the shape of a sphere, with cameras all around the room projecting images. It can look like earth, or Jupiter, or the moon; it can show movies, like watching satellite images of hurricanes as they move across the ocean and make landfall; like air current patterns or bird migrations or agricultural intensities of harvests. There are hundreds of files with all sorts of data which can be shown experientially in that room.
One of the things I most remember about that presentation is when they projected the image of the earth and asked us a question about how thick we thought the atmosphere was. Based on the ball screen in front of us, six fee in diameter, how would we describe the thickness of the atmosphere? “Three feet thick! One foot!” and other guesses were shouted out. Finally the NOAA scientist gave us the answer, because nobody guessed it right. “The thickness of the atmosphere in this model is equivalent to the thickness of an American nickel held flat, the five cent coin, the thin way.” Jaws dropped and eyes widened as we looked at that ball and realized how thin the Earth’s atmosphere really is, and how vast the expanse of space beyond our little thin film of protection. Breathe deep, and be thankful for air, for it is a unique gift in the larger picture of the universe, developed over billions of years as God’s creation lives. Air sustains life as we know it.
Isn’t that an interesting phrase? “Life as we know it.” How do we know what we know? Does our knowing summarize and capture the fullness of life? So often we take life for granted, or assume our limited perspectives define life as we know it. Yet because our thinking can only handle so much, we begin to use our judging mind to exclude that which we don’t understand. Our own thinking becomes barriers to a larger wholeness. Philosophers seek to help us move beyond this, but our culture generally dismisses philosophy. Mystics try and show us a more unitive approach to living in wholeness and connection with all things, but narrow, doctrinal interpretations favoring the institution push those mystics to the margins of the larger church. Even Jesus in this morning’s passage from Luke shows us how the majority misses the point. They participate well enough, but fall shy of moving beyond cultural expectations and religious definitions to enter the larger mysteries of God’s grace and gifts, the more complete wholeness Jesus embodies and invites us to embrace as we too embody the Christ.
The scriptures this morning help us explore the gift of life, the heart of faith, and the key of living into the fullness of God’s creation. That key, shown by the one healed man who turns back and falls at the feet of Jesus, is thankfulness.
Both texts talk about people living in struggle. In Jeremiah the people are in exile, taken captive to Babylon under King Nebuchadnezzar. Many of them had been killed, but the remaining “elders, priests, prophets, and people would hear words of hope from God through Jeremiah. They are called, basically, to bloom where they’re planted; to go ahead and establish life in that foreign land, and in the process, help bless that land in the name of God.
This is an unusual thought for them, because God’s Presence was assumed to be in Jerusalem, in the Temple, and yet, God is blessing them on the margins, in a foreign land, away from everything familiar.
Luke is similar, writing about God at work on the margins, and the message of Jesus connect the most with foreigners, or others who are excluded from the mainstream of cultural and religious thought and practice. Today we read about people with skin blemishes banished from the temple of Jerusalem, sent away from their homes in the town, and kept on the fringe of a civilized life of inclusion. People who were unclean had to yell out loud that they were in the area, to warn others of their presence. Shouting out to Jesus was not unusual, and in fact may have had more urgency because they were not just announcing their unclean condition, but pleading for healing from Jesus.
David Lose, a Lutheran theologian, reflects on this (http://www.davidlose.net/2019/10/pentecost-18-c-the-secret/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+davidlose%2FIsqE+%28...In+the+Meantime%29) as he recognizes that all ten were sent on their way to show themselves to the priests at the Temple, and on their way all ten were made clean. 100 percent success! 10 out of ten made clean. But remember, to show yourselves to the priests involved a very expensive and time consuming process of inspection, indulgence, and uncertainty. The priests had religious rules to follow, codes from Leviticus and practices which involve expensive sacrificial animals. The fact that this one turned around and came back to Jesus is an amazing image of thankfulness. “Gratitude” is what we’re “made for”; it “completes us and saves us and transforms us and makes us whole.
The one who turned back was a Samaritan, for Jesus was travelling between regions, on the margins, where boundaries are permeable. The foreigner, as Jesus calls him, is the only one who turns back. All the others stuck to the system, followed the codes, the rules, the practices and expectations. They did what Jesus told them to do, go to the Temple and show yourselves to the priests. But this one, who seems like an example of thankfulness, was unable to do this. As a Samaritan, he was not welcome at the Temple of God in Jerusalem. The priests would have hated this man and would have kicked him out. Perhaps this man returns to Jesus because he has no where else to go.
When I go to pastor meetings and here leaders of other churches talk about the sin of homosexuality and resisting things like gay pride parades, I am amazed that I serve a congregation that welcomes and includes and is open and accepting of those the larger church and society tend to reject, especially people identifying as LGBTQI+. We even allow Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, PFLAG for short, to meet in our building twice a month for support, encouragement, and hopeful community building. And while its one thing to allow building usage and list them in the bulletin, its another thing to stop by and meet them and hear their stories. It requires the ability to detach from judgment.
When I hear about the struggles of American Indians and the many ways modern culture reaps the benefits of policies based on exploitation at the expense of tribal peoples, I am glad we are a church that coordinates such events as The Blanket Exercise held last Wednesday and the workshop about the Doctrine of Discovery and the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s apology to Native Americans help us see our complicity and ignorance. It’s a humbling thing to be open to learning, and it was wonderful to have the Rev. Irvin Porter come and share Indian perspective in graceful, respectful ways.
When I hear people say things about how they don’t care if the Amazon forest burns as ranchers and miners start fires to clear the land for development and aboriginal villages are destroyed in the process, even as these tribal leaders are arrested and imprisoned, I am thankful that we still manage to have 9 people show up to pick up garbage on a one mile stretch of highway in the Adopt a Highway Program expressing stewardship as an Earth Care Congregation.
Looking at Luke talking about ministry on the edge, David Lose points out one small word that makes a huge difference, and maybe this is why this congregation has a unique niche in our community. This word, in Greek, called sozo (sod-zo), which describes that one foreigner coming back to Jesus out of thankfulness, or continued desperation because he doesn’t seem to fit anywhere else and he has fallen at Jesus’ feet. Sod-zo means made well. “In the sense of being healed. But it can also be translated as ‘saved,’ in the sense of being brought through mortal danger. And it can be translated as ‘made whole,’ in the sense of being completed and made to be what you were meant to be all along.
“So ten were indeed made clean, but only one was saved. Ten were made clean, but only one was made whole. Ten were made clean, but only one recognized it and gave thanks, and became what God had intended all along.” But Jesus had to go to the margins and hear the outcasts cry to discover this one.
Another person reflects on this, saying, “I wonder if we will risk being the one place left where today’s outcasts can go and give thanks that finally, FINALLY!, someone cares enough to offer healing. It’s where we can all rejoice and give thanks to God that grace leads to a life of gratitude.” (David Lose, as mentioned above, listed in the comment by Wayne Rollins).
In the week ahead, lets hold life loosely because our definitions, our understandings and what we know, are too small to contain life’s fullness. Let’s remember to give thanks, and breathe deeply the gift of life’s sustaining grace, because thankfulness is what opens the door to wholeness in ways that nothing else can. And lets continue to minister on the margins, with those rejected by the larger world and even the church because in ministering to those with deep wounds, we find our own salvation, wholeness as a gift in Christ. And as we go into the week ahead, may God’s vulnerable love be humbly glorified, NOW, even as forever. Amen.