As a child, I can remember the story of the ten lepers, only one of whom returned to thank Jesus.  It was usually mentioned around Thanksgiving, or anytime they wanted to teach us to be more grateful!  I have recently reconsidered what meaning we find in this story, especially considering it as a part of the healing ministry of Jesus, as well as comparing it to some of the material we find in the Old Testament prophets.

My wife and I were recently on vacation in Ireland.  It was a celebration of having been married for one year—twelve months of enjoyment for me, and about seven and a half happy months for her.  We had been given a very generous gift, a voucher for a stay at a castle in the West of Ireland, which served as inspiration for our journey.  We drove the four hours required to get there from Dublin, through towns and villages, passing sheep and cows at every turn, remembering to stay on the left side of the road as we got caught up in the emerald scenery. 

When we arrived at the castle, tired of sitting in airplanes and cars, we put our things in the room, and headed off down a small, winding road, into the village of Cong.  About half way down this short path, we came across a beautiful country church.  We walked around it, trying to look in through the stained glass windows, but it was locked.  I assumed that it was a Roman Catholic parish because we were in Ireland, but Alison insisted that it was the likes of most Episcopal churches.  As we were leaving, we were surprised by the sign out front (Alison probably less than I was): Church of Ireland—Anglican/ Episcopal. 

I was curious about this Protestant outpost in the only remaining Roman Catholic stronghold in the western world, and so I asked our concierge when we returned.  She was a bright, friendly girl with curly red hair, probably named Maggie O’Flannigan.   She said upon our arrival that she was well-versed in Irish history, and so I expected that this would be an easy answer.  I inquired about this Anglican/ Episcopal Church of Ireland, and as soon as I finished my question I wished I hadn’t asked.  Her cheery face grew dark and gray.  It wasn’t like she was trying to fight back tears exactly, but maybe just a little disdain or hurt.  Just as I began to excuse my question and walk away, she began to answer. 

As she spoke, she lowered her voice as if she were embarrassed and didn’t want people to hear what she was talking about.  Her history lesson boiled down to a rather simple premise.  England had oppressed the Irish for nearly 500 years.  They came in, took over the land that her ancestors had farmed for centuries, squelched the Gaelic culture and language, and turned the Irish into peasants in their own land.  Soon, after the Anglican reformation, the English also established the Episcopal Church of Ireland as the official church of the land.  They claimed that they were releasing the people from oppression at the hands of the Roman Catholic Church, but the Irish didn’t buy it then and, based on her own reaction, they weren’t buying it now.  For me, I realized that you cannot both oppress and liberate at the same time.  “It really has very little to do with religion or theology,” she said.  “We were oppressed for so long; some wounds are just too deep.”

She was right.  There are some wounds in life that are too deep.  Some, as she claimed, represented centuries of repression and oppression, and it meant that quaint churches and otherwise decent spirituality still caused pain.  But there are others.  There are the Native Americans who were told that General Custer died for their sins, and all the profitable casinos in the world may not change the shame we did to their people.  There are the blacks who are told that their oppression is over, and yet all the equal protection under the law still leaves them wishing for something more.  There are the victims of abuse, rage, anger and privilege, even among us, who are told that we need to get over it and simply move on, and even when we finally find our lives changed, we aren’t able to go back and forgive the years of pain and hate that we felt.  Life is like that.  Some scars never go away.  Time heals the wounds… sometimes slowly… and we pray for an ever increasing supply of God’s grace to get us from there to here, and God’s grace does, as it so often does, but even when we get from there to here, we may still bear the scars. 

“Were there not nine others?” Jesus asked at the Samaritan’s return.  Ten had been healed, and only one came back.  Sometimes it is that coming back that is so hard.  It has nothing to do with gratitude, with the relief of knowing that we have made it from there to here, or even knowing that we are making it from there to here.  I am reminded of a scene from Forest Gump.  Jenny, abused as a child—molested and beaten—has grown into a vibrant, strong, and independent woman, but coming back to Alabama and to that house where she had once hidden from the wrath of a drunken father, she seems neither strong nor vibrant.  The pain and the anger are welling up inside of her again.  She throws rocks and brakes windows, but she cannot bring down the whole house.  And even if she could have brought down that old house, it would not have torn down the evil edifice erected in her heart.  As Forest puts it, “sometimes I guess there just aren’t enough rocks.”

I think that is where we find Jesus on this afternoon with the lepers.  He comes across a group of men, already discarded by society, who would throw rocks if they could, but all they are allowed to do is beg.  And so with a compassion befitting the holy Son of God, he heals them.  It isn’t an elaborate scene; he doesn’t reach slowly into his wallet so that everyone sees him give the bum a dollar.  He simply sends them on their way to wholeness.  Jesus wasn’t expecting a thank you as much as he was expecting them to be healed, to demonstrate the power of God at work in restoring these men’s lives.  He would soon learn what he must have already known, that there are some wounds that do not heal easily, wounds that leave scars and change people forever.  However, what matters in his story as well as in ours is that moment of resurrection.  To me, he did not heal them so that he could hear a ‘thank you,’ but so that they could walk in newness of life.

And for us who follow him, we must do the same.  We must look at those whom we help, whom we serve, whom we love, who never return to say thank you; we must look at them differently, through this lens of love, with the grace and humility of Christ.  Living out the lives to which we were called in baptism, being trees planted by the streams of baptismal waters that grow good fruit, part of our mission is to remember that we are not heroes.  We do not act out of love and mercy so that we may reap praise and accolades; we do it because people need the love of Christ manifested for them in their lives.  If they return to say thank you, we can praise God for the faith of someone different from us; but if they do not return, we can still remember that their liberation is not as much about us as it is the goodness of God demonstrated to others.  Allowing especially for the prejudice, pain, and suffering we do not see, we can remember that sometimes there just aren’t enough rocks.

I think that is where we find our lepers this afternoon.  They sit where they always sit, keeping their distance from any decent people.  They aren’t allowed to touch anyone, they cannot work, they are asked in effect not to love, and they can only beg.  And so they beg, as they watch their flesh eaten away, day by day, feeling more and more ostracized, feeling less and less like they matter.  Because they don’t matter.  Maybe once they did… until… that day when they started not to matter any more.  I don’t know if you and I can really identify with the pain that they felt, both physical and emotional, caused by an anomalous skin disease from antiquity, and maybe the sufferings of minorities and those in the third world today seem equally difficult for us to grasp.  Perhaps we cannot even see the wounds in the person sitting next to us, the years of abuse, the years of not mattering, a lifetime of self-hatred, of being asked not to love.  Maybe we cannot imagine that, but we can remember those days when our own lives seemed not to matter to anyone, and beginning in our own personal sense of pain we can begin to understand, and from there we can begin to practice understanding.

I hope we can also remember that day when someone showed love for us, when someone cared for us just enough to make a difference in our lives.  No, we may not be healed of leprosy, but we can testify to our own transformation by God’s grace.  In my own life, I watch every week as Christ is manifested for us in bread and in wine, as he is broken again and given to us, and not just as a reminder of God’s love for us demonstrated in Christ—although that would be enough—but so that we may go out and be the presence of Christ in the world, to live different lives, lives worthy of the grace and love God has given to us.

Sometimes we remember to say thank you, but every five year old has heard that saying thank you doesn’t matter as much as saying it like you mean it.  For us, it isn’t just a matter of “saying it like we mean it” as we teach our children, but of living different and resurrected lives every day.

Somewhere in the exile, after Jerusalem had been destroyed and everyone’s life had been torn apart, amid the oppression and pain, the prophet Jeremiah says it is time to build houses and gardens, to live again.  In his words to the exiles in Babylon, we can realize that there comes a point where, even in our pain, we lean instead on the healing power of God to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.  Even with memories of loss and destruction, as it was for those Israelites so many years ago, we too are called to build again.  We are called to rely on the grace and love of God as a trustworthy foundation on which we can begin to build the rest of our lives.  We could spend the rest of our lives making excuses for ourselves because of those dark days, or we can chose to move forward, anchored by the love we have been given in Christ. We can trust the words that the poet Robert Frost penned, “It will not do to say of night/ since night is what brings out your light.”