2 Timothy 2.8-15, Luke 17.11-19
The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity, 9 October 2022
Austwick (Harvest)
“Come, ye thankful people, come, raise the song of harvest home.” [2]
And so here we are, raising our harvest songs; giving thanks to God again for the earth and its goodness, for the air that we breathe, for the shelter of our homes, and for the food on our tables.
Especially, at harvest-time, for the food on our tables. We are genuinely grateful that ‘all is safely gathered in’. Our hearts are truly thankful that ‘God our Maker doth provide for our wants to be supplied’. So that we can eat today.
Even though we’re living through hard times, we’re still here being thankful; and that is admirable, for it takes some doing to be thankful in hard times. It’s difficult to be thankful when life feels hopeless, lonely or unfair.
Take this story for example. From a harsh, hopeless place on the edge of society, ten lepers cry out in despair. They’re living through the hardest of times, outcasts. Lepers had no place in a society which regarded them as unclean. As Jesus makes his way through that forbidding area between two mutually hostile communities Samaria and Galilee he hears their cries, comes to the lepers and answers their prayers.
Notice that there’s two parts to Jesus’s healing. He said “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And then, as they went, they were made clean.
So first of all their physical condition, their leprosy, was healed. And then they went to the priests - who had the power to validate their healing and allow them to get back into society.
The priests had the same sort of power as housing officers have, to give homes to the homeless, or employers jobs to the unemployed, or parole officers release to prisoners, or immigration officers legal status to refugees. Just like this, priests were the ones who could inspect a leper and say, "Yes, you are clean now, you’re free to get back to your friends and family and start over again".
Which is doubtless what those nine Galilean lepers did; having being absolved by the priests we’d imagine them quickly returning to their family and friends, their homes and beds. Maybe it was because they were so relieved that they’d have a bed to sleep in and a meal to eat that night that they simply forgot to go back to thank Jesus for it all.
For it takes some doing to be thankful in hard times, when the relief of simply surviving soaks up all the energy of people who are struggling.
Which makes the Samaritan leper’s actions all the more remarkable. For he was the outsider of the group, tainted like the other lepers by his skin condition - but in his case also by his race. It’s likely that the reason he came back to Jesus was because unlike the others, this man could not go to the priest. As a foreigner, he was prohibited. The priest wouldn’t see a Samaritan, still less absolve him.
So the Samaritan found himself in a strange place halfway between healing and wholeness. Like a refugee given legal status as a citizen but unable to find work, or a homeless person still unable to get onto the housing ladder, or a rehabilitated prisoner whose parole hearing has again been postponed for many months, this one leper found that Jesus' instruction left him in limbo.
But he came back to Jesus thankful nevertheless; the only one of the ten who did.
The Samaritan had no absolution to return him to society. So why was he thankful unlike the others? Was it because he realised that he didn't need what the priest could offer. He didn't need society's absolution. He didn't need the legal status or the freedom of the city or the job opportunities which the others would get. At his lowest ebb, with no-one else to help him, this man realised that all he needed he had been given. He saw that he had been healed; he knew himself to be loved and valued by God.
He remained the poorest of the ten and the most vulnerable by far; despite Jesus’ healing the Samaritan was still alone in this hostile land. But he who returned to thank Jesus had found a deep, everlasting spiritual freedom, amazed by the power and willingness of Christ to make him fully whole. In a place of limbo but full of faith and hope.
I imagine that he didn’t stay in that place of limbo in the wilderness between Samaria and Galilee. Think of the direction of his travel. He’d turned his back on Galilee to return to Jesus, and so he was now facing Samaria. He was on his way back home, perhaps in trepidation about what he’d face when he got there, but despite that, in thankfulness, and in a faith which had already restored his health and so could also restore his life.
Although this man still had no food on his table - indeed, he still had no table, no shelter - nevertheless his heart sang in thanksgiving that ‘God our Maker doth provide for our wants to be supplied’. So that he had hope that day. There’s a long-lost English word which well describes this man’s experience: “respair”, R - E - S - P - A - I - R, which is both a noun and a verb, meaning the return of hope after a period of despair. [3]
Today marks the start of both World Homeless Week raising awareness of homeless people; and Prisons Week, a week of prayer for prisoners and their families, victims of crime, chaplains and prison staff, police, probation and the judiciary and organisations supporting people on release.
And this may cause us to double-down on the gospel we have heard, and to ask, is this a story for our hard times where so many people are experiencing loss of income, loss of status, loss of home and lack of food, and are being confronted maybe for the first time by the hostility and stigma which the comfortably-off reserve for those who are struggling?
Is this a story for all who are failed and sidelined by our society’s laws and mores?
Is this a story for all who here and now are journeying through deepening despair?
If so, then may this story also encourage even those of us at our lowest ebb that it is nevertheless possible, with thankful hearts, to experience respair, to move from despair towards a place of hope. To make a faith journey forwards with Christ at our side, giving thanks to God.
Even so, Lord, quickly come,
bring thy final harvest home;
gather thou thy people in,
free from sorrow, free from sin,
there, forever purified,
in thy presence to abide;
come, with all thine angels, come,
raise the glorious harvest home. [4]
Notes
[1] This talk draws on The one who came back - a talk for Prisons Week preached at Keasden, Clapham and Austwick, 2109, The one who came back preached at Sutton Montis in 2016, and originally at Christ Church Norris Green in 2004.
[2] Come, ye thankful people, come: hymn by Henry Alford (1844).
[3] Nancy Friedman, Fritinancy: Word of the Week: Respair. Prisons Week 2021 online event: A Discussion on the Theme of Respair [Video].
[4] World Homeless Week; Prisons Week.
[4] Come, ye thankful people, come: hymn by Henry Alford (1844).
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