“Unchained! Ungrateful?”

Palmdale Presbyterian Church

October 9, 2016  The 21^st Sunday After Pentecost

2 Timothy 2:8-15    Luke 17: 11-19

“Unchained! Ungrateful?”

Our Gospel lesson today opens with 5 words that are easy to overlook but are very important:  “On the way to Jerusalem….”  Earlier Luke told us, “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem [Luke 9:51].”  Luke wants to make sure that the reader of this story remembers that Jesus is on a journey from which he has never detoured.  Many things have happened along the way, but Jesus knows where he is headed, and why. 

In our epistle lesson Paul starts out by confessing that the journey Christ was on went to its necessary completion: “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—that is my gospel….[2 Timothy 2:8]”

Many events took place along the way to the climax of the journey on a hill in Jerusalem.  The Gospel is relating one of those events, but Luke wants you to remember where Jesus is going and why. That’s why we are here today!

If you are someone like me, someone who was born into a Christian family – I was actually born into a Presbyterian family! – and attended Sunday School and had all those attendance medals and continued faithfully through your life to attend church and try to live out the faith, then no matter how hard you try or how strong is your faith, you can sometimes take things for granted. 

The Gospels aren’t just a collection of stories showing the interactions between Jesus and the people of his day.  The Gospels are the story of Jesus’ undeterred journey to the suffering of the cross and the triumph of his resurrection.  That’s why we are here today!

When this story begins “On the way to Jerusalem” that is what Luke wants us to keep in mind.  That’s the lens through which we must see all that happens between Jesus and the people around him.  That’s the event in which our gratitude is rooted. 

Samaritans and Jews didn’t often mingle.  In fact it was prohibited.  As is so often the case even today, shared suffering often overcomes prejudice rooted in religion or ethnicity or race.  People who are suffering often find that they have more in common with others suffering the same burden than they have with friends and even family.  When we are suffering we seek the kind of comfort that can only come from someone who genuinely understands the things we are suffering from. 

One of the most disheartening things that can happen is when some well meaning soul says “I understand” when you know full well that there is no way they can possibly understand what you are going through.  I’m sure it’s one of the reasons why ministers are told to listen more and speak less when faced with other people’s suffering.

Luke tells us that there were ten lepers outside a village that Jesus was approaching.  As was their custom, the lepers were clustered together and they stayed out of the way.  They were probably standing off the side of the road, begging for food.  As Jesus approached they called out: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”  It probably wasn’t a request for cosmic relief from Jesus but simply a variation on “We will take anything that you can do for us.” 

Jesus offered them more than they could have imagined.   He didn’t wave his arm and they were suddenly healed.  He told them to do something, to act in a way that showed their belief in his power.  If they did what he told them to do, they would be healed.  The healing was dependent upon their faith, their belief, their trust in the power of Jesus. 

Back then leprosy wasn’t well understood.  It was thought to be incurable.  Under Jewish law, lepers were viewed as unclean, that is impure. They were prohibited from practicing the various rituals of Judaism.  The priests had the power to declare that someone was ritually pure, clean, and able to participate in their religion.  If that decision were made then the person was also able to participate fully in the community. 

So Jesus told the ten lepers to go and see what the priests would say about their disease.  The story tells us that as they went, as they followed Jesus’ order, as they acted obediently, as they demonstrated their faith, their bodies were made whole; their disease was cured!

If Jesus had given the ten a handful of coins or a few loaves of bread they probably would have said “thank you” right there.  Instead he gave them back their lives and they didn’t pause to say “thank you.” The10 were healed as they went on their way to see the priests.  Whether or not the Samaritan would even been allowed to see the priests, he was the one who turned back in gratitude to praise God and thank Jesus.

It was the outsider who recognized the magnitude of what he had been given.  It was the outsider who praised God and thanked Jesus.  It was the outsider who didn’t take this blessing for granted. 

When I was a child my family often asked me questions about what I was or wasn’t doing?  My mother was raised on a farm in County Down, No. Ireland.  If I made a mess – or more likely – if I didn’t clean up a mess that I had made - she might ask, “Were you born in a barn?”  I have one sister, and she’s older than me.  If I were being a nuisance she might ask, “When are you going to grow up?”  There was a question that almost universally meant one thing even though it might seem to be very broad: “Did you forget something?”  That usually meant that I had forgotten to say thank you to someone, usually someone from outside the family who had done something nice for me. 

Perhaps that last one is one that we need to print on the masthead of church bulletins:  “Did you forget something?”  Did you remember to give thanks to God for all that we have?  These past 4 days have left some people a little grumpy.  It’s hard to say thank you to God when you’ve been without electricity (and air conditioning) or without water for a couple of days.  It’s hard to say thank you to God when a tree gets blown onto your car.  It makes you a little grumpy.

Unlike Jesus and Paul, we tend to get distracted from our faith journey all too easily.  We tend to wander a little off course every now and then when we think that our faith is supposed to make everything right with the world for us.  We tend to take God for granted. 

When Paul was writing to Timothy, Paul was in prison.  He was treated like a common criminal shackled in chains.  But Paul never lost sight of what was important.  Paul never falters from the course of his ministry.  First things first:  “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—that is my gospel….[2 Timothy 2:8]”  Nothing else mattered to Paul.  Even when he too suffered the abuse of a great storm and was ship wrecked, nothing else mattered to Paul.  Everything else was just life’s incidentals. 

When things go wrong, we get distracted.  When things go right, we get distracted.  Sometimes we are so proud of ourselves for following the last 6 commandments but ignore the first 4.  We forget our obligations to God.  We feel no sense of gratitude to the God who loves us and who leads us to full life.  The God who sent God’s son to live among us, suffer and die for us and raised that same Jesus from the dead, did so FOR OUR SAKES.

God didn’t have anything to prove.  Jesus didn’t have anything to prove.  It was all done for our sakes. 

John Calvin said that gratitude is at the core of our faith.  Ignatius Loyola said that ingratitude is the root of all sin. 

Jesus didn’t have anything to prove by healing the 10 lepers.  He didn’t have anything to prove by suffering and dying.  He didn’t have anything to prove in overcoming death itself.  It was all done for our sakes.  That’s the central fact of our lives.  That’s the central fact of human history.  Everything else, no matter how annoyed something may make us, everything else is just incidental. 

Paul said: “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—that is my gospel….[2 Timothy 2:8]”  and no matter how many chains life puts on us or we take and put on ourselves, that Gospel is unchained. 

Jesus had nothing to prove.  It was all done for us – for you and for me. 

Did you forget something?

Amen.