Give Thanks

This sermon was delivered at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 14, 2007.

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Psalm 66:1-12
2Timothy 2:8-15
Luke 17:11-19

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

In English and creative writing classes, teachers encourage students to learn and use synonyms. By using a word that means the same thing as another word, a writer can add a little spice to an essay or a story. Some words add a little nuance that others lack. So using synonyms adds color, texture to a piece that is missing if you use the same word over and over again.

For example a word that I have used six times so far, is word. Make that seven. If I had used the word (and that makes eight) expression it would have meant the same thing, but would have added a little flair. If I had used utterance it would have changed the meaning because an utterance is a spoken word. Speech is another synonym that I could have used, but that would throw even more of a curve ball into the mix because speech can mean either the ability to speak or a speech can be a whole bunch of words connected together by a theme or a concept.[1] When using synonyms, great care has to be taken because the wrong word can change the meaning of a sentence entirely. Meanings can be added or lost.

On the other hand, some words that seem synonymous aren’t. This is what happened to me with this gospel reading. This passage, the healing of the ten lepers, is well known. Ten are healed, one returns to give thanks, Jesus asks questions he doesn’t expect anyone to answer, and the one who returned is told to go. But this “Reader’s Digest Condensed Version” lacks the full expression of the language. When I first looked at this reading, I thought the phrases “were made clean,” “was healed,” and “made you well” pretty much meant the same thing. But they don’t, not in this story. In this narrative, these phrases that seem to be synonymous aren’t at all.

Let’s pick up the story from the fourteenth verse: “When Jesus saw them, he said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were made clean.” Luke very specifically uses the phrase “were made clean.” There’s a lot going on in this little phrase. The first thing it says is that they did not make themselves clean. They did not hop in the shower with soap and shampoo. The verb here is passive, they were made clean. They did not make themselves clean, they were made clean by something else, or more correctly someone else.

There is an even deeper meaning to this “being made clean.” This cleaning includes the ritual cleansing necessary so that the lepers could present themselves to the priests.[2] And since the approval of the priest was necessary before a leper could rejoin polite society, this was an important step. This cleaning is what makes them right with the community and allows them to resume their lives.

Continuing at verse 15, “Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed turned back.” In the church setting, when we think of being made clean, we think of being healed, but Luke was careful to use two different verbs in these two verses. The word used in this verse speaks to the physical aspects of the healing.[3] The leper noticed that the skin rash that had made him unclean and exiled him from society had vanished. Physical healing had been accomplished. Of course, this physical healing would have had to precede going to the priest who would declare that the leper had been made clean physically and ritually.

Let’s skip to the last verse of our reading, after the single leper turns back to Jesus praising God with a loud voice. “Then Jesus said to him, ‘Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.’” This seems pretty straight forward in English, made well is like physically healed and even like being made ritually clean. But the people who heard this story in the first century would have heard even more. Because of the word Jesus used, they would have heard that the man was free of disease, and more that he had been saved from death. Even more than physical death, the word Jesus used here meant that the man had been saved from spiritual death.[4] The word used here is the one used for saves, as in Jesus saves. Jesus told this man, this former leper, this Samaritan, his faith has saved him.

Jesus heals us; Jesus takes from us the unclean things that we absorb into our bodies and our lives and makes us clean, holy, and presentable. Still there is more to our healing.

Something theologians say over and over again is that we are saved by grace through faith. What this means to me is that God freely gives us the gift of grace. We are the recipients of a gift that we could never purchase. We cannot earn the gift of grace; we can never seize the gift of grace. We can’t even guilt the Lord into giving this wonderful gift; it can only be given freely and lovingly. But by our faithful response to this glorious generous gift of God’s grace, we accept the relationship Jesus offers and become partners with the Lord in his ministry.

The ten lepers all received Jesus’ freely given gift. By this gift, their bodies were healed and they were allowed to return to their lives. But one of them, just one of them, the dreaded Samaritan, turned and gave thanks to Jesus for the healing he received. And by his response, his faith, he alone was saved. This one Samaritan leper was saved by grace through his faith, a faith shown in the act of turning from his new life and returning to Jesus and loudly giving thanks to God.

We are called to do as this man has done. We are called to turn from our daily lives and give thanks for the grace and the peace and the bounty that is ours through the gifts of our Lord Jesus Christ. This doesn’t mean that life will always be easy or pleasant; there are times of trial. There will be times when we will be like the lepers, needing the word of the Lord to heal us, to restore us. There will be times when we are shunned like a leper, or even worse, like a Samaritan leper, the outsider among outsiders. But the word of the Lord is always present with us. The grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ is always with us and calls us to respond faithfully.

Faithful response comes in many ways. Today we come together and share the joy of welcoming two new faces to this part of the body of Christ. Today Leah[5] faithfully responds to the call of the Lord joining this congregation, this part of the body of Christ. Today we as the congregation will faithfully respond by welcoming Leah.

Today we will celebrate one of the most joyful events in the life of the church; today through the grace of God we celebrate the baptism of Leah’s daughter Tasha. In baptism, we, the entire church of God throughout creation, welcome Tasha into the family of God. Today we as the people of God will also respond by telling Leah and Tasha that God and God’s people are present in their lives too.

There is joy and celebration in these glorious events. And by the grace of God freely given, and our faithful response to this grace, we are made well. We are saved. We are called to faithfully respond in many ways. We are called to respond with our time. We are called to respond with our talents. And yes, we are called to respond with our tithes. But right now, let us joyfully turn back to Jesus and offer God the sacrifice of praise with a loud voice. Alleluia! Amen!

[1] The MicrosoftWord 2003 Thesaurus lists the words expression, utterance, and speech as synonyms for word.
[2] Translation to “katharitzow,” A Greek English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Earlly Christian Literature, Third Edition. Revised and edited by Frederick William Danker based on Walter Bauer's Griechisch-deutsches Wörterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments und der frühchristlichen Literatur, sixth edition, ed. Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland, with Viktor Reichmann and on previous English editions by W.F.Arndt, F.W.Gingrich, and F.W.Danker. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2000, electronic version in BibleWorks, version 7.0.019b.4, 2007.
[3] Translation to “iaomai,” Ibid.
[4] Translation to “sosow,” Ibid..
[5] The names have been changed