Oct. 10 Sermon: Thanks and Praise
Thanks and Praise
Holy Covenant UMC, October 10, 2010
Rev. Kate Hurst Floyd
Luke 17:11-19
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Religious Imagery is thick in our culture.
It’s baseball playoff season and 4 teams are playing right now to determine who goes to the American and National league championships. On Friday night, as I was watching the Braves come from behind to triumphantly beat the Giants, my ears perked up when a commercial came on: there was classical music in the background, stirring up our emotions, images of inspired Phillies fans decked out in red, and a voiceover reminding us of the no-hitter game a few nights ago. Suddenly, the music slows down, and the announcer says: “We are no longer just fans: we are witnesses to a miracle”
Religious language.
The latest Starbucks campaign features a sign on their doors, with a steaming, soothing cup of coffee. Underneath it are the words: “Take comfort in rituals”. Starbucks has become our daily liturgy, beckoning us to familiar rhythms, to regular practices that provide order and shape to our lives.
And have you seen some of the US Cellular ads on the train? You can’t ride the brown line without noticing the white and blue signs that say “US Cellular Belief Project”. Or Us Cellular: Believe.
Religious imagery is everywhere: In fact, the cover of this month’s Oprah magazine provokes us with the question “What’s your true calling?”. As if Oprah is the one calling and the one who will help us discover our call.
As a culture, we crave this kind of religiosity: We’re drawn to ritual, to the wonder of miracles that surpass what we think is possible, we want to believe in something beyond ourselves, we’re searching for our call: where our gifts and graces meet the world’s needs. We are constantly surrounded by religious imagery, and it speaks to us on a deeper level. So we give (or are given) religious significance to many aspects of our culture.
In our text this morning from Luke, we encounter people living in a world that was also steeped in Religious imagery and significance. Religious significance governed the society and shaped every aspect of life. We meet 10 lepers who are living in a deeply Jewish culture, where the high priests determine who is clean and unclean, acceptable and unacceptable, who we can touch and love and include at our dinner table, and who we should exclude.
Lepers, people who had a very specific disease, were deemed unclean by the religious authorities. They had to remain on the margins of society. They were marginalized in many ways: they were kicked out of their families, they couldn’t work, so they had to beg for their livelihood—food, shelter, clothing. Lepers were at the total mercy of others. This is why we find 10 this morning all together—they had to stick by one another, roving around to find something to eat. Nobody was allowed to touch them or come very near, so the only people they had in the world were each other. But on top of all this, people ostracized lepers because they believed that their disease was a direct result of their own sins or the sins of their parents. That somehow they deserved this kind of life, brought it upon themselves.
Well, in the midst of this “religious” world, all these categories about insiders and outsiders, sin and disease, walks Jesus. We find him this morning traveling, and on his journey, 10 lepers cry out to him. They’ve heard about this Jesus and how he breaks all the categories of the world they know, the world that keeps them separate, isolated, and hungry. He sits down and eats with the “unclean”: prostitutes and beggars; he invites women to follow him and treats them as equals. He heals those who people say are beyond redemption. Maybe, just maybe, they hope and pray, he will free them too. Heal them from their disease so they can go back to leading a normal life, free from pain and stigma.
They don’t get too close, for years of being on the margins has taught them to keep their distance when they approach anybody. So they just call out, in earshot: Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!. Jesus sees them and he says to them: Go and show yourselves to the Priests.
So they did. And when they were on their way, they were healed. Healed of their leprosy! Can you imagine what they must be thinking and feeling…so weighed down for all these years and all of a sudden they can return to their normal lives. No longer outcasts. They can hug their parents, put their children to bed, find a job in the field and no longer worry about where they are sleeping or going to find their next meal. It’s a miracle, beyond anything they thought possible in their lifetime.
Why, we wonder, did Jesus send them on to the Priest? Well, the priests were the ones who officially deemed people “clean” and “unclean”. So even though they knew they didn’t have leprosy, they needed an official statement from the Priest to show they were actually clean. Then and only then could they return to their lives. Jesus knows this, knows the order of the society, and so he tells them to go on ahead to Priests. He heals them as they journey so that by the time they get there they will be ready for the religious authorities.
But one of them, a Samaritan (a foreigner, not a Jew), when he saw that he was healed, turns around on the road and runs back to Jesus. He prostrates himself at his feet and gives praise to God, thanking Jesus profusely. He gives gratitude to God with a loud voice.
This Samaritan is the only one to return, the only one to thank Jesus for the healing and to praise God. They are all clean, they are all healed, but only one is able to stop and to worship. To acknowledge the source of all healing, all goodness, all wholeness in the world.
It’s easy to give those other 9 a bad rap: to look at them self-righteously and shame them for not returning. But the truth is, they’re not so bad. First of all, they actually did what Jesus told them to do. They were following the rules of the culture: Going to the priest, deemed officially clean. And can you blame them for hurrying on their way? If for years you had been pushed to the outside of society and all of a sudden had a chance to be back in the center, to be welcomed by society and the world, wouldn’t you run to make that happen as quickly as possible? There’s no time to spare. They had a longing for religious participation and thought they would find it with the Priest.
We, too, have longings for religious participation: to be part of rituals, to find unconditional love and acceptance, to believe in powers beyond ourselves. We are quick to give thanks to the Phillies for a no hitter or our favorite college football team for making that last unbelievable touchdown; to believe, deeply and passionately and evangelically in our technology. To participate in rituals that are culturally acceptable: going to get a latte, feeling warm and comforted each day. And we do a lot of Oprah worshiping in our culture, especially here in Chicago. Believing she has the answers we need.
But how often do we stop and give this kind of love and praise to God? It’s not as culturally acceptable. How often do we find ourselves with the 9, following acceptable cultural patterns, instead of with the 1, giving all of our thanks and praise to God? It’s kind of embarrassing, in Chicago, in 2010, especially here in Lakeview, to be unashamed to thank God. To stop what we’re doing, wherever we are, and pray to God. What will people think of us? It’s easier to walk into Starbucks with everybody else in the neighborhood or to participate in the great ritual of baseball with thousands of our closest friends, worshiping a game.
Easier to read an Oprah magazine than to read the Bible.
Don’t get me wrong: There’s nothing wrong with coffee and baseball, using a cell phone and watching Oprah. There’s nothing wrong with the Jewish culture that lived according to divinely revealed laws. What’s dangerous is when we replace our love and worship of God with cultural rituals. When we believe that technology, consumerism, games, and individuals can save us. When we replace our worship of God with our worship of everything else. And something similar was happening in Jesus’ day: people were giving religious significance to categories that were in fact not ordained by God. They were worshiping the Priest and not God.
The Samaritan, an outsider, a non-Jew, a despised foreigner, knows the significance of worshiping God. So Jesus looks at him and says: Get up and go on your way, your faith has made you well. Some translations say: your faith has made you whole. All 10 are clean, but only one is well, is whole. Giving thanks and praise to God makes us whole.
**
Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero lived and ministered in El Salvador for nearly 40 years. As a young boy he was healed of a life-threatening illness and decided to devote his life to God.
Many priests, especially those committed to liberation theology and care of the poor, were upset by his appointment as Archbishop in February of 1977—in his career, Romero had not shown a particular passion for liberation.
But something changed in March when one of his good friends and a fellow priest was killed by the government. Killed for his commitment to the poor. Romero knew that his faith was calling him to make the world whole. His friend’s death led Romero to take up the cause of liberation—he spoke out against poverty, social injustice, assassinations, and torture. The significance of the government, of the nation-state, was taking on a kind of religious meaning for some in his country. People were worshiping the state and its power instead of God. He knew that the order of the government was not the order of God and he lived his life praising God through his actions.
As the government was oppressing the poor, Romero moved the masses he held, which were mostly for poor workers, outside into the streets. He publicly gave thanks to God in the center of the city, undercutting the government. The state was trying to give religious meaning to its power and oppression, but Romero, by worshiping God publicly, showed the world real religious meaning. He was unashamed to give thanks to God and a public witness that the poor and the religious wouldn’t disappear. That God was to be praised, not the oppressive government.
For his work on behalf of justice and love he was recognized internationally as he spoke out against the corrupt government in El Salvador. On March 23, 1980, he gave a sermon calling on Salvadorian soldiers, as Christians, to obey God’s higher order. To listen to God’s voice instead of the voice of the government. Called on Christian soldiers to stop carrying out the government’s oppression and violation of human rights. The next day he was celebrating Mass, presiding over the communion table. He was in the middle of the Eucharistic liturgy—if you were here last week, you remember that Rebecca taught us that Eucharist means “giving thanks”. Romero was giving thanks to God. And as he raised the chalice up to God, he was shot. Killed by a death squad whose job it was to orchestrate politically motivated assassinations.
Despite his untimely and tragic death, Romero’s faith made him whole. He lived a life that was a powerful witness to God’s justice and peace and continues to be a testimony to God’s power in the world. His statue resides on the wall of 20th century martyrs at Westminster Abbey, alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dietrich Bonheoffer. He didn’t let anything in the culture or government take the religious significance of praising God.
Devoting our lives to praising God won’t always be safe or easy. And we’ll be loved no matter what we do. But it takes recognizing this love and praising God for it to be made whole. Our faith in a God who loves and heals and brings justice makes us whole when we open our eyes to it in all that we do. When we act on that faith, as Romero did. When we fill ourselves up on God, not solely on the rituals of our culture. You know this, that’s why you’re here, of all places, on a Sunday morning—giving thanks and praise to God.
For the rituals of culture keep us safe and comforted but don’t help us save the world. And they will never ever save us. We look to Oprah and baseball and coffee shops, even our phones, to save us. To provide us answers and comfort. But the truth is, we don’t need answers, we need a place to bring our questions. We need space for mystery and wonder and awe. For love and power that cannot be explained. For grace that is beyond comprehension, infinite mercy in a finite world. We need to listen to God and live out of justice. Only God’s language can give us this wholeness.
Jesus came to show us true religious significance, who and how we should worship. And we can only recognize this truth and participate in this work by giving thanks and praise to the One who is beyond all human divisions. By going beyond what we know to be comfortable and easy and taking some risks. Willing to look foolish. To turn around from our straight paths and run back towards God. To stand in the streets with the Samaritan and Romero and say, with our voices and our actions, Praise be to God!
When we do, Jesus will look at us and say: Go on your way, your faith has made you whole.
May we go, may we praise, and may we participate in God’s saving work. Amen.
Tags: Kate
