Gratitude before Shame
It was a simple "Thank you."
The Samaritan leper, got up and said thank you for being healed.
Jesus blessing allowed that the all the lepers
wouldn't be excluded them from the community anymore.
Once they were unacceptable. They might have looked like monsters.
Then, he sends them to the priest.
Leprosy is a visible illness.
It truncates your limbs, often disfigures the body.
In scripture, the word "leprosy" refers to almost any skin disease,
or disease that would immediately be apparent to an outsider.
Because of their misfortune, these men were social pariahs,
excluded from the temple, punished by God,
considered contagious.
They were diseased, and people thought
those who touched them, hung out with them,
partied with them, could catch the disease as well.
What do we do when people are diseased and contagious?
We quarantine them. These men had to be quarantined.
A quarantine is preventative medicine, letting people ensure
that the ickiness of others doesn't spread or wash off upon them.
I want to make the first observation that
there is a difference in anthropology between illness and disease.
Disease is the physical condition; illness is the social meaning.
Cancer is caused by a break down in the immune system,
but cancer patients can feel the break down of the social system,
their disease separating themselves from other people.
AIDS is a physical disease, but those who have AIDS are often shunned.
But what is true about both illness and disease, is that we can catch both.
So there is a desire, to stop the disease at the very beginning,
quarantine what could become troublesome.
Keep something from going viral, of harming others, or of
even becoming ... popular.
Separate the diseased from those who are uncomfortable with the sick,
with one without ease, those now dis-eased in the presence of the diseased.
We know we are the company we keep, we imitate those around us, so
be sure you hang around the right company.
Illness and quarantine, is a natural history of shame.
Those quarantined don't feel like they are helping others.
They are ashamed of their disease,
and they probably thought they deserved it.
Shame is at the root of what Jesus is transforming here,
and within the parable are some clues as to how he's
dislocated the culture's hold on it.
Now, I sometimes wonder where there is shame these days. Everything is public in this day.
Its easy to find out about one another.
There seems to be little shame.
It's not all bad.
Technology makes many things become public,
liberating us from seeing cancer as a shameful disease;
and for those of us who are progressive,
disease itself does not exclude us from the common cup.
But there are some consequences of shame that remain.
The fear of shame is one of the roots of violence;
The fear of being shamed, discovered, revealed, this is deep and powerful stuff,
those things we keep hidden from others.
we will do much to protect ourselves.
So Jesus implicitly offers a choice,
let it just be revealed, rather than the consequence of violence.
Some are relieved by shame by social acceptance.
That's what most of the lepers get, the priest offers that.
A return into the system. The rules are not changed.
But Jesus just lets them know they are back in.
But the Samaritan, who returns, out of gratitude,
gets another word from Jesus.
"your faith."
Jesus says to the Samaritan, Your faith has made you well.
The other lepers, they just needed to get approval from the priest,
from the guy in charge, to be invited back into the game by the rule maker.
But the Samaritan had a double whammy, even if he was healed,
he would still be on the outskirts, he would still be in a position
that would always be a position of shame,
of illness, simply by the nature of his tribe,
his blood, the social conventions that managed his otherness.
Jesus switches the location of the social dynamic,
not exactly ending the rules, because the rules are always there,
but placing the worth directly, in the Samaritan's hands.
Rather than simply social convention the Samaritan's confidence was the root of
his reconsidered illness.
It is now not social convention,
it is now not merely the priest,
it is not merely the trendsetter,
it is not merely the producer,
it is not merely the media maker,
the work of faith, of healing,
is relocated back into the Samaritan.
The work of being brought in, is located in his hands.
It is not the faith of the priest, it is not the faith of the powerful,
it is not the faith of the king, or even of the tradition itself,
it is your faith.
It is the Samaritan's faith,
that has made him well.
Now we know that faith
is often a confusing word,
elusive in practice, hard to pin down conceptually.
Even a non-believer has some belief in something,
some emotion or confidence in something he has
not proven himself.
One can believe that the sun rises and sets,
that our earth is round,
that people can be good, or bad, or
move according to their context.
But the gospel invites us to consider that
faith comes as a blessing - a blessing of love
but the first experience of that blessing,
our first response, is one of gratitude.
A deep thankfulness that we are alive,
that we have some choices, that we can state who we are and what we can be,
that we can dream and hope, that we can have a vision of ourselves worth having,
that our vocation, our professions, our relationships,
are ones that give us joy and happiness,
We call out these things to Jesus when we are... suffering.
Thank you for them.
And he affirms us.
Yes - your faith.
This is the location of your faith.
What you already have, what God has already done for you.
This is where we have that sense of grace,
not merely even in the religions that
guide us, keep us safe,
protect us from what is frightening from the world,
that is other nine, but whatever faith you have that has made you whole,
Your faith.
It is not too much to say, that the words Thank you
is where our prayers should begin.
And perhaps for us, here in White plains, it is worthwhile to consider all we have,
our abundance, our wealth, greater than most of the world,
our safety, our lack of violence, when we have the luxury of counting our treasures,
this is one way of understanding grace.
For even the free and poor know, to give thanks for breathing,
And we also know that those who live in modern day hells,
deserve our active response to end their misery.
Thinking in terms of gratitude is the opening of freedom from shame,
the counting of our blessings the foundation of being able to hope
and recreate the kingdom of God.