Healing & Thankfulness
This coming Sunday, the Gospel passage tells a story about ten lepers who are healed by Jesus. And only one of them turns back to praise Jesus and to thank him for the gift. Jesus appears to be surprised by this - and he asks, "Were not ten made clean?" It's easy, at first glance, to judge those nine who continue to go on their way. Surely we would never do that - we would all be the one who comes back and says thank you! Right? How could they not come back and say thank you to the man who changed their lives? Don't you think you'd run back to Jesus? Joyfully, breathlessly, tearfully - to thank him? It's pretty easy to judge them. And it's not entirely fair.
Imagine how excited those ten must have been. Leprosy was an incurable disease, a disease associated with sin, and a disease that meant certain death. On top of that, if you were a leper, you weren't able to go to worship in the temple, to live in the city, to be near your family. You would have lived an exceedingly isolated life in a colony outside the city with other sick people. It meant total estrangement from family, from God, from life as you knew it. So, just try to imagine for a minute what it would mean for them to suddenly be clean - wouldn't you want to run to your family? Your spouse? Your friends? Wouldn't you want to go buy food, go to the temple, sit in the sunshine in the center of town? How urgent and exciting it must have felt to all ten of them to go and grab life with both hands - to have it again.
And, of course, turning back to thank Jesus would have required them to do something hard. Not only would they have had to wait - even just a bit - to have that new life again...they would have also had to admit that they were healed by the power of God. They would have had to acknowledge Jesus, his power, his role, and their inability to heal themselves. Thanking Jesus would acknowledge their need for God's power, for God's healing. And it would have highlighted, in a moment of joy and triumph, that they were still just human - in need of God's love and mercy.
It's no wonder that only one came back. Only one had the spiritual maturity to accurately acknowledge her or his place in the world. Only one had the spiritual maturity to put first things first, to put God at the top of the list. Only one had the strength to celebrate and give thanks, to experience the truth of God's love that wraps around us because we need it.
Where in your life are you in need of God's love and healing? Where have you been slow to admit that you are not in control - that you, in fact, need God to act? Are there moments in which you have been loved, healed, held, and freed for which you have not turned back to God and given thanks? God heals us in body and spirit in order that we might know life abundant - and that life abundant is meant to bring us into the nearer presence of Jesus. There is a lot going on in us and around us these days - a lot of places where we need God's love, in our hearts, in our relationships, in the world around us. May you have the grace to seek this healing from the Source of Love, and may you find the strength within yourself to give thanks for it when relief comes. It's never too late to run back to him - joyfully, breathlessly, tearfully.
Know that you're in my prayers until we see each other again.
Faithfully,
Marissa +
Tags: Welcome from the Rector