What Healing Looks Like

A sermon on Luke 17:11-19

[for an audio recording of this sermon, click here. Photo by Kyler Trautner on Unsplash.com]

I want to try something a little bit different today.

If you key into the details, the gospel scene that we just heard includes a surprising number of references to location or relative proximity.

And I think these references are indicating something important about what is happening, but they are easy to slide over as background information when we just read the story, so I would like to ask for some volunteers to help me block out the scene as it unfolds.

I need someone to stand in for Jesus, at least 2 people to represent the men who are healed, and then one priest.

(Put “Galilee” and “Samaria” signs on the two sides of the altar rail, and gather the volunteers. Position the “priest” by the Font, the “diseased” characters on the opposite side of the altar, and “Jesus” in the middle on the lower altar step.)

OK. I’m going to re-tell the story now, with some added stage directions and commentary to help us pick up these subtle context cues.

The story starts with Jesus travelling in the region between Galilee and Samaria… (you can extend your arms out to each side, to bridge the divide)

Notice how, right at the start, Luke is drawing our attention to the liminal space that Jesus is inhabiting. He is on a border, and one that is characterized by conflict… the Jews and Samaritans are suspicious of each other, with a list of offenses and accusations on both sides. It is a place inhabited by tension.

And Jesus travels between. Choosing to stay where the tension hums, rather sticking to a path of greater safety and comfort. That’s a deliberate choice.

Now the action starts: ten men with a skin disease approach Jesus, but they keep their distance. (You can take just ONE step forward).

They ask for Jesus’s help, but to do so they have to call out. (You can cup your hands around your mouths like you are shouting.) Their voices have to bridge the distance that their bodies are compelled to maintain.

They know better than to come close enough to risk infecting him, whether literally or ritually. Whereas Jesus has positioned himself between, those who desperately need his help keep themselves apart.

That is what makes Jesus’s instruction to them so interesting. He links their healing to an action of drawing near… but not to him. They must draw near to the one most likely to object to such a violation of boundaries. He tells them to show themselves to the priests. (Go ahead and cross the distance into Galilee to stand next to the priest. Priest – I will let you decide how you respond to this, the story doesn’t tell us, so use your imagination.)

It would be interesting to know what the priest thought, of course… one whose role was, like Jesus’s, that of bridging the divide between humanity and God, but who in doing so had perhaps conflicting responsibilities:

On the one hand, to nurture the faith and well-being of the community.

But on the other hand, to defend their own purity in order to be able to fulfill their ritual functions.

How did someone in this role confirm the evidence of a healing from a disease that they needed to be sure not to contract? Hmm.

I think it’s interesting that Jesus commands that encounter in his miraculous healing. Although he is the one who puts himself in the middle… between Jewish and Samaritan territory… between God and humanity… ultimately between life and death… Jesus does not choose to heal by touching in this story (as he sometimes does in others).

Instead, he tells the afflicted people themselves to cross (more than one) boundary.

They do and they are healed. (You all can be happy now – you are well! Feel free to give each other hugs, and all but the returning Samaritan can go on your way back to your seats).

The last scene in the story involves the initiative of the Samaritan who has been healed. He decides to return to Jesus, and not just back to shouting distance this time. This time he prostrates himself at Jesus’ feet. (Come up to where Jesus is standing. You don’t actually have to lay down on the ground, you can just sit on the step and reach your hands across the ground toward Jesus, we’ll get the picture).

It is a compelling picture in any context when someone lays themselves at someone else’s feet… but in this story, where distance and boundary-crossing has been such an interwoven theme it feels especially significant.

It’s a way for the man to express his trust in Jesus, not just as the miracle-worker who healed him, but as the fellow-human who saw him at a distance and invited him to cross that boundary.

Of course, he is vulnerable down there.

He could get kicked, or spat on, or stepped on.

He could be made to feel like he belongs on the ground, somehow beneath the one who stands above.

But, of course, that’s not what Jesus does. Jesus lifts him up, if not with his hands, then with his words, drawing attention to his gratitude and faithfulness… and in doing so he takes the final step closer in this story.

Jesus names the boundary, the category that still places emotional distance between the two of them.

“Foreigner.”

It’s a word often used as a weapon, but Jesus disarms it. He uses the label to which suspicions are attached, and then exposes those suspicions as lies.

The foreigner is the one who gives glory to God.

The foreigner is the one who has faith.

The foreigner is the one who comes close enough to touch Jesus, and Jesus affirms him for it.

(You two can go back to your seats. Thank you for your help).

I thought it was important for us to physically see the boundary-crossing that happens in this story because our current reality is another political context characterized by tension, and suspicion, and the instinct to hold ourselves at a distance.

A lot of that tension is specifically centered on “foreigners,” as well, which makes this story particularly timely.

At an historical moment when many who claim to speak for Jesus are seeking to perpetuate lies about God’s intention for America to be a “white” nation, it’s relevant to remember how Jesus (who himself was brown) chose to cross boundaries, and reject divisions, and praise the faith of the foreigner.

But immigrants (or those assumed to be immigrants) are not the only group being targeted for separation and suspicion, nor is the instinct to keep at a distance restricted to one group, or even to one side or another of any of our current divides.

It’s a natural reaction to times of tension and conflict to want to back off.

To stay where it’s safe, or where everyone feels familiar and like-minded.

To avoid the space between, where the tension is ever-present and likely to ignite and any moment.

But I think Jesus’s behavior in this story presents us with two challenges to that instinct.

The first is about where HE chooses to go.

He chooses to stand in the gap. To be approachable to those who are hurting so that he can see their need and intervene for their healing.

The second challenge is about how he affects that healing.

He conscripts the priests – the religious people who, on their own, were staying on their side of the border, safe and separate.

Jesus does not let them stay removed from the needs of the people on the other side. Because separation is not the calling of those who do God’s work in the world:

The calling is to bear witness.

The calling is to draw near.

The calling is to be part of the work of healing.

That is the calling for all of us in a time of division, and suspicion, attempts to keep us separate.

It’s not safe, or comfortable, or guaranteed to work.

But one thing is certain. It is where we will find Jesus, and where he will call us faithful.

Thanks be to God.