Joelene and I love spending time at the
beach. For years while we lived in Spokane we would spend a week
every August in Cannon Beach, OR. I had been there several times
before we met, and then began taking her with me.
Cannon Beach is a cute little tourist
town about an hour due west of Portland. It's home to two famous
rock formations – Haystack Rock and the Needles. It has “singing
sand,” sand that squeaks when you walk. It's home to the largest
and longest-running sandcastle contest in the Northwest. And it is
the official terminus of the Lewis and Clark expedition. For me,
it's a place of quiet healing and rejuvenation. Walking through the
surf, flying a kite, exploring beach and stores, watching the sunset,
and late night bonfires, along with the smells and sounds of the
ocean, always did my soul good. And Joelene has her own memories and
special places there.
The interesting thing is that neither
of us grew up by the beach. I moved around a lot as a kid, and my
parents liked to camp and hike. So we spent time at various
campsites in the Cascade Mountains. Joelene grew up in Wenatchee,
surrounded by the Cascades. But we both find ourselves drawn to the
beach. This is actually typical of people out west as we often say,
“People from the mountains escape to the beach, and people from the
beach escape to the mountains.”
There's some truth to this. It's not
that we don't, or stop, seeing the beauty around us; but that it
becomes oh too familiar. When you see all 14,410 feet of Mt. Rainier
on a daily basis it tends to lose some of it's majesty. Or out here,
where we are surrounded by the history of our country, how many of us
have stopped to read the plaque about the Battle of Funkstown?
Sometimes it takes an outsider to
remind us of the beauty around us. We either want to show off our
neck of the woods, so we play tour guide, finding a new beauty
ourselves; or the visitors point us in new directions that re-open
our eyes so we can see what's around us.
Today we have the healing of the
lepers. Jesus, in the Lukan procession of events, is on his way to
Jerusalem and his Passion. A group of ten lepers approach and beg
for mercy. Jesus tells them to go and show themselves to the
priests, and it is while they are on their way to do so that they
were made clean. One, a Samaritan, returns to give thanks.
Before I get too involved, here are a
couple of things for you to think about in your own personal
studying/reading of scripture: 1) Did the instruction to go to the
temple priests apply equally to the Samaritan foreigner as it did to
the other nine Jews? And, 2) Why does Jesus seem upset at the nine
Jews for doing exactly what he commanded? As I said, you can ponder
those on your own.
One of the things I want to point out
here is that all ten were healed, but only the Samaritan returns to
give thanks, and only the Samaritan was “made well.” Jesus tells
the Samaritan that his faith has made him well. The word that is
translated here as “made well” shows up in a few other places in
Luke and is translated as “saved you.” For the Samaritan, his
return to Jesus has literally saved him.
This story of the nine Jewish lepers
and the one Samaritan leper is the story of the mountains and the
beach.
By virtue of being Jews and descended
from Abraham, the nine lepers were part of God's chosen people. They
were the beneficiaries of God's presence and grace that were poured
out upon them. The Samaritan foreigner, according to Jewish law and
custom, was not. He was outside the requirements of Judaism, and as
a foreigner, was generally despised by the Jews.
The Jews, despite being lepers, lived
with God at the beach. When Jesus brought the healing presence of
the beach to those ten lepers, nine of them were oh so familiar with
it that it was almost expected that God would do this for them. Like
the rich man from two weeks ago, they had become blind to the majesty
and presence of God.
The Samaritan, however, had lived his
whole life in the mountains. When Jesus healed him, it was as if he
saw the beach and ocean for the first time. His eyes were newly
opened to the splendor and majesty of God. And it is that first
experience of God working in his life that ultimately saved him.
As Christians and Episcopalians we just
might be in the same boat as the nine lepers.
As Christians we have been adopted by
God through our baptism. To paraphrase Paul, “We have been grafted
onto the tree of God.” Through being called by Christ, our faith,
and our baptism, we also are part of the family of God. As
Episcopalians we are part of a particular branch of that family tree.
We are overly familiar with the liturgy and the BCP. And we may
have become oh so familiar and blind to the majesty and presence of
God in our lives. We've been at the beach too long.
But every once in awhile we can have
our eyes opened. A visitor to the church who experiences the beauty
of this place for the first time. A seeker who finds a dignified
beauty in the liturgy, or becomes moved by everything that goes on
here. Those people are the Samaritan of today. Those are the people
who see the beach for the first time. And those are the people who,
because of that first beach experience, are not only healed but
saved.
The stories of both the rich man and
Lazarus and the ten lepers of today remind us that it's oh so easy to
become blind to the world around us. The rich man was blind to the
needs and presence of Lazarus. The nine lepers were blinded by a
comfortable familiarity with God.
This is our beach. These are our
mountains. Today's story is reminding us that the presence of God is
right here in our midst. Let us not, like the nine lepers, become so
familiar with the presence of God that we become blind to the majesty
of God. Instead, let us be so present in, and so aware of, our
Worship, Welcome, Service, and Encouragement that we, like the
Samaritan, have our eyes opened to the majesty and presence of God
that we are not only healed but are made well.
Amen.
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