Pentecost 18 – 2022
Luke 17:11-19
Marian Free
In the name of God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Amen.
When we downsized, I gave away most of my library knowing that should I need to refer to any of my books, they would almost certainly be easily accessible in digital form. Failing that I would find them at the College Library. There are some books though, that I find impossible to give away. These are usually books with deep wisdom or insight, books that have enriched my life and to which I return again and again. I am particularly careful with such books and if I lose them I will search everywhere until I can replace them. One such book was recommended to me when I was still in theological college. Poor in Spirit – Modern Parables of the Reign of God by Charles Lepetit . It is probably irreplaceable.
Poor in Spirit contains fifty stories which recall encounters that have changed the lives of their writers. Some are set in a western urban setting, but most tell of experiences in third world countries, of people who according to Lepetit : “are hungry, marginalised, handicapped. They make a living by working too hard. They all have one thing in common: that of the heart.” The stories tell of generosity to a stranger, being blessed by a beggar and of receiving a gift from another, of praising God with an empty stomach and nothing to feed the children. Above all the stories tell of joy and gratitude and of the grace and hope that can coexist with the most dire poverty and in the most desperate of situations.
One story, “Socks or the Cinema?” comes from North Africa and was shared by Lisa. She begins: “They found him one morning lying by his bike under a leaden August sky. Death must have come suddenly. It was him alright in his usual blue work trousers, shirt, grey woollen cap and orthopaedic shoes. He had been struck by leprosy and cruelly. Most of each foot and all ten fingers were gone. It was torture for him to walk. His face was disfigured, but an extraordinary smile transfigured it. Yet those same eyes had stared at leprosy face to face. At the most terrible moment of the disease our friend had tried to drown himself. ‘But even the sea didn’t want me, and I was washed up on the beach.’
“Our friend would wear stumps of his hands raw, filling his customer’s bags with charcoal. He said: ‘Hunger is a terrible thing. Once I had no work, and nothing to eat. At last I said to myself: ‘I will just have to start begging.’ I had never learned how. I sat by someone’s door and tried to think what to call out, but all that came out was a cry because I began to weep aloud. I left in a hurry and walked all night. Then I saw a freshly baked loaf of bread that someone had forgotten on top of a little wall. I understood that God was watching over me.”
“One day he announced that he had a guest, someone with the same disease who cuts grass for sheep and sells it at the market. ‘Yesterday he returned with three beautiful coins. He had found them on the pavement.’ ‘What shall we do with them he asked?’ We thought about it. Then I said to him, ‘It is true that you need new socks. But this money here, we haven’t earned it. God has given it to us. Why don’t we go to the cinema? One needs a change of scene sometimes.’
“’So we went to the cinema, and we had a very nice evening.’”
My heart is always warmed by the extravagance and simple joy of the visit to the cinema – of the ability, from a position of desperation, to be able to show gratitude for an unexpected gift and to use that gift to bring joy and to be lifted out of one’s situation even for a few hours.
Luke’s account of the ten lepers provides few details, but those that are included are tantalising. Jesus is between Galilee and Samaria – in a sort of no man’s land. The ten leprous men also exist in an in-between place. They are separated from home, family, and community and from any means of earning an income. Their presence causes fear, even revulsion and if, like the man in our story they have leprosy proper, not another skin disease, their bodies may be slowly rotting, and their lives may be lives of constant pain.
One imagines that the situation may be even worse for the Samaritan – why else would he find himself among a group of Jews here on the edge of nowhere? Unlike the Jews he would not be welcome in the Temple in Jerusalem. Is it because he is the most marginalised of the ten that he returns? Is it because his people have no Temple that he must worship God where he finds him – in Jesus? We will never know. What we do know is that nine did what Jesus said, and went to the Temple and one, the outsider, came back gave thanks.
Much as we don’t like to admit it, typically, we are the insiders. For most of us everyday life is not a constant struggle and while the system is far from perfect, we at least know that there is some sort of safety net if the ground is pulled from under us.
I imagine that few of us know the sort of poverty experienced by those who comb through the refuse dumps outside of Manilla, those who are forced to beg on the streets of India, or those who are so desperate to feed their families that they will sell their daughters (or indenture themselves) into slavery. Many of us take for granted that we are housed, clothed and fed. In this country we are rarely confronted by the horrific conditions in which a majority of this earth’s population lives.
I suspect that if we had even the smallest idea of how the other half lives that nearly every moment of everyday, we would, like the leper, want to praise God with a loud voice and to prostrate ourselves at the feet of Jesus.
For what are you grateful and how often have you thanked God today?
Swallowsrest 