LUKE 17.11-19 9th October 2022.
Today’s sermon is on the art of counting your blessings. It is the cure to so many of our woes and worries, and it is a boost to our faith, and I suggest to you deal with stress, distress and your own health. And counting our blessings helps us to live as a family, to live in community, if we can see the blessings that God is giving us and be thankful, if we can see the blessings that God is giving others – and be thankful. That can be a little harder
It is a risk though, counting your blessings, the risk is that you might see some!, the risk is that you might start to notice more, the risk is that living with an attitude of gratitude brings healing to our souls and opens us up to new possibilities, even to change.
Here’s 10 lepers. First thing to note is their courage. They keep at a respectful distance – they don’t want to infect anyone; they don’t want to have rocks thrown at them. So, note their courage. It is the hardest thing to ask for help. We fear being turned down, and so it is our fear of rejection that keeps us in our place.
You think that this is a bible reading about some lepers being healed of their skin disease and so the take-home point is to have an attitude of gratitude, be thankful. I’m okay if that is your take home but actually notice what Jesus does to them before they start shouting.
To have the courage to ask for help from Jesus means that they’ve heard some stories – I don’t know what they’re expecting – have they heard the story of Jesus touching a leper, or of the story where Jesus healed someone who wasn’t even there, but miles away, or of the one where Jesus spat in some mud and rubbed it on their faces – maybe that’s why they’re standing at a distance. The point is they’ve heard something about Jesus, that its worth the risk.
Its astonishing that even a Samaritan, a non-Jew, is in this gang of 10, even he tries this trick, of shouting alongside the Jews. I don’t know if he’s trying to pull a fast one, or if he genuinely thinks that Jesus might be able to help even him.
If you’re one of the fabulous team of Church watchers (and if you’re not you should sign up for a morning’s shift) you will have seen how folk walk past the Church, they often look in through the glass doors, especially if there’s some noise from Messy Church, or Organ practice – I’ve seen people come up to the open door and pop their head in and then lean back. And others who have made it a few feet in and then turned about.
And its not that the Church sitters aren’t lovely and welcoming, its just that we so underestimate the courage that it takes to come in here and say a prayer, to light a candle.
Jesus has already provoked some faith in these lepers and it has given them enough hope to tip toe as close to Jesus as they feel they can and then shout from there.
The Epistle reading had St Paul reminding St Timothy about things that he needs to remember and things that he needs to remind other people to remember. We need to remember our Creed – Jesus raised from the Dead, descended from David, in whom we have our salvation, this is the one who remains faithful no matter what, who respects our freewill, who promises that we will live with Him, reign with Him – all good stuff.
When we remember these things then that helps our faith. When we remember to read our bibles, to say a little prayer, to connect to God, whether we are talking to God about hope and fears or nothing much at all – when we do this then this opens us up to keeping the faith, to encouraging others to focussing on the key things that matter.
Clearly Paul is concerned about the ease with which we quarrel, even over little things where we think they matter but so often they don’t. So he calls us to correctly handle the word of truth. There’s a great book by Miranda Threlfall-Holmes called ‘21 ways to eat bread’ – that’s 21 different ways to read scripture – its excellent and shows that its not easy to correctly handle scripture, but its also not that difficult.
When we remember our faith, on a daily basis I suggest, then we remember that the God we pray to is the God who hears, who we call Abba, Father, who invites us to off load on to him our hopes and fears.
I want to suggest that this is how and why these lepers have got this far – that God has stirred up in them some sort of faith.
We see it every time someone walks by and actually does come in and does pray,
we see it every time someone asks for a Christening regardless of how detailed their theological appreciation is of this moment, something deep inside has called them.
So the lepers shout out. Jesus, Master, have … pity on us.
Some translate this Have mercy on us, others Have compassion on us.
The Greek works is in our liturgy where we translate it- Mercy – you might know it from the phrase – Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison – Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy – which is something we sometimes do as part of our confession. And it comes from here.
But with a little help from an author- Brene Brown, I looked up how she interprets these two words Pity and Compassion.
Compassion recognises and shares with the suffering. No one is immune to pain and suffering, but with Compassion comes more than just a feeling but also some sort of doing,
But to have compassion is not the same as saying ‘I can fix you’ but rather a recognition that you’re suffering and how can I help?
The epistle of James says its not enough to bless someone and say ‘Keep Warm’! We need to do something about it. – Compassion.
Whereas Pity tends to be just a feeling without an obvious call to action. It tends to be about one of us feeling superior as we pity the other. Its about Others, distant, separated from myself, ourself. It is not about sharing the load.
There’s nothing worse than feeling pitied.
Now, don’t bash your bible translations, very often we use these words quite loosely but there is an invitation to play here.
If the Lepers are genuinely shouting at Jesus – Have pity on us – then they are really not expecting Jesus to do anything, and they are in such a bad way that they’re prepared to suffer the indignity of being pitied, and they will take whatever level of patronising help might be offered at a distance. Wow that’s really low level of expectation.
But look at Jesus’s response. It is one of empowerment – Go, show yourselves to the priests – I would so like to hear the tone that Jesus used to reply – Go – it can be shouted in a Disgusted way or in an Encouraging way – I think it must have contained some sort of hope.
Jesus doesn’t first check to see if they have enough faith, check to see if they are the sort of nice people that we feel should be blessed, worthy, we discover that all ten are healed.
**You know that after you’ve received HC, there’s an invitation for you to come to the Side Chapel and for someone to pray with you. They won’t be offering medical or counselling advice, ‘have you tried this cream’ or any nonsense. If you wish to: share to whatever level you’re happy with – but also you can say – Please just pray for me – God will hear you and your prayers and you will be blessed through their prayers. **
The 10 – they Go as commanded. The reason why its important to go and see the priest is because there are times when having the right paperwork is handy. And the priest will give you, having checked you over, the paperwork you need to prove that you are actually now clean, and you may need to be able to prove that over the next few months as you come back into society.
So, it is actually really shocking that one of them runs up and goes for a feet-hug. And he’s just so bowled over with gratitude. He knows he’s been healed; Jesus knows he’s been healed, wouldn’t you love to see the faces of everyone else – because odds are on, they do not realise that he’s been healed so they will be scared and appalled and only when they realise that Jesus is okay about this risky hug, then maybe they will begin to rejoice as well.
Note that it’s the foreigner, the Samaritan, the outsider, who just comes running in for the feet hug. Perhaps he started the day thinking he’s the least likely to be blessed by God, and now that he’s seen that Jesus loves him too, he’s just filled with this love.
Some of you are still thinking that this is a sermon about some lepers being healed of their skin disease – but I don’t think it is – it’s about the gift of faith that has given them the courage to try – I bet they’ve tried everything already, I bet they have tried the latest medicines and they’ve asked all sorts of others to pray for them – but today they have received enough faith and hope so that they try once more.
So, the story starts with a healing of hope and faith.
The skin disease is healed but that does not mean that life goes back to normal – or at least for one person life does not go back to normal – he’s been transformed and infused with joy and gratitude and that has in turn renewed his faith and hope.
We carry such stress about with us all the time, and especially at the moment its so easy to be pessimistic, sarcastic and so on.
I’m not preaching blind optimism, but I am preaching about the importance of giving thanks to God for the blessings that you do see.
There will be a lot of blessings that you don’t see. But as you count the ones you do see you will get better at it.
I even listed them for a week. It was quite poor on Sunday but by Saturday I could see nearly double the blessings, I kept it up for another week and could see double again. I seriously doubt that anything new had happened in my life, but simply I was learning how to be more aware that God is with me, is blessing me and that Joy helped me to be a blessing to others.
This is the art, the sport, the muscle of a life lived with gratitude.
So try it out. Come and receive the blessing of Holy Communion, come and receive some further prayer. And pray to see the mercy, the blessings of Jesus in your life today. Amen.