The Grateful Leper
The Grateful Leper
Luke 17:11-19
Attention is a limited commodity for which so many forces compete. If you turn on the television or the radio, programming and advertising will compete for your attention. As soon as you go on the internet, everything you’ve ever been interested in can and will be used against you in the present. When you sit down in your car, you phone may chime or your driver assist system may beep or you may have just forgotten to buckle your seatbelt. Oops…did you drop your phone. Don’t you dare pick it up now! If you’re driving during the pandemic, there is the additional challenge of pedestrians walking in every direction, bikers ignoring every stop sign, and that one kid with the motorized skate board who is weaving back and forth. Oh yes… your spouse and your children and your friends wouldn’t mind a bit of attention, too.
Some of us pretend that we can multitask. Really, all the evidence that I have seen says that we actually can’t, at least not very well. What some people can do is shift their attention from one focus to the next focus faster than other people. Generally, though, when we try to pay attention to more than one thing at a time, we do worse at everything. We don’t perform any of the tasks as well. We don’t process things in a way that we remember them. Satisfaction levels go way down. My favorite 19th century Danish philosopher (there are so many to choose from, right?), Soren Kierkegaard, put the matter this way: “Purity of heart is to will one thing.” It seems that he was way ahead not only of his time but our’s, too.
The competition for our attention has led to a counter movement in our culture. As a lifestyle, there is more talk than ever about simplicity. Do we really need all the stuff we have? Do we need all the living space? What happens if I let go of all those expectations and am relieved of all that pressure? In terms of life-practices, there has been a parallel interest in mindfulness. There are a thousand different approaches and practices but they all involve saying, “No!” to the overload of external demands on our attention and saying, “Yes!” to creating some quiet space in our lives. You can meditate. You can pray. You can walk or run or dance. One way or another, though, you find a way to say to the world, “Okay…leave me alone for a moment here…”
I’ve said before to you that if we had the chance to actually meet Jesus what would strike us is his unrelenting focus and attention in the moment. He noticed people that everyone else overlooked: the bent over woman in the corner of the room; the tiny little man hanging from a limb on a tree; the child who was being held back by some well-meaning adult. Because attention is a limited commodity, he also didn’t pay attention to other things that everyone else attended to. He didn’t care much for the rich or the powerful or the “holier than thou.” While everyone else might have kowtowed to such folks, Jesus was too busy searching for the next person in need. A lot of what he said to people was essentially, “I know you think you know what’s happening here but I want you to look again…” He keeps challenging us to be in this moment, to pay attention, and to see that the people whom it would be so easy to ignore are in fact the folks we need to seek out.
This is where we find Jesus in our text this morning. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. We all know what’s going to happen when he gets there, right? Jesus had told the disciples what was going to happen, too. He’s going to be arrested and tried and crucified and die and then he will rise again. There’s nothing like a death threat to focus one’s attention, whether that threat is to you or to someone you love. In this case, Jesus’ predictions must have led you to feel that Jesus and you were in danger. As a result, you wouldn’t necessarily be taking everything in. Instead, you would be taking in anything that looked like a threat. Fear always limits our field of vision. Fear leads us to think of ourselves more than other
This is selective attention. (If you haven’t watched it yet, please watch this youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=selective+attention+test) Our fears or our pleasures or the wishes of someone we care about—any number of things can lead us to pay attention to some things and to ignore others. We all know that when we become interested in a particular car, it seems like we see that car all the time. We all know that when we’ve decided life is terrible, we will suddenly notice an onslaught of terrible things for us to use to support our case. We tend to find what we seek. We ignore things which don’t support our view. So, in the Youtube link, we don’t see a duck or a change of colors in the cups or an extra hand because we were too busy trying to pay attention to where the Hershey’s kiss was going. That was the priority. Then, we go back and watch the video again and think, “Good lord, how did I miss that?” This is why eyewitnesses are not nearly as reliable as we think because they, like the rest of us, tend to see what they are prepared to see.
In one sense, Jesus whole ministry is about inviting us to see differently, to pay attention to the things which the rest of life has taught us are not worth noticing. This is the lesson that he’s teaching us on the way to Jerusalem. Yes, difficult times lay ahead. Yes, it’s tempting to just focus on potential dangers. The thing is, though that there are more fruitful and faithful things to notice…like, I don’t know… that group of lepers over there!
That’s right, ten lepers, hanging out together. This would have been every person’s worst nightmare. Sure, when it comes right down to it, all of us are broken. But, come on…the leper’s brokenness is just so…right there, plain as day. They are disfigured. Everyone knows that they are unclean. That’s why they aren’t allowed in the towns. That’s why they have to yell, “Unclean!” when anyone draws near. You were supposed to pay attention just long enough—if you were feeling generous—to toss them a coin or a piece of bread. However, that was a lot easier if there were one or two than if there were ten.
Luke tells us that these lepers at least had the common decency (or had been harshly trained enough) to keep their distance. Of course, there may have just been a little calculation in that behavior, too. After all, they didn’t want to scare Jesus away. He was their only hope. Word was that he was a powerful healer. Word was that he cared. If you want to talk about attention, any leper worth their salt would have been watching like crazy for anyone who could improve their desperate circumstances. So, they kept their distance but they raised their voices, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” “Master…” that was what the disciples called Jesus.
Some might have thought it was that word, “Master” that got Jesus’ attention. Some might have thought it was the sheer desire to deal with these horrible creatures and get on with things. What we know though, (Thank God!) is that Jesus has a thing for people in need, especially the people in need whom everyone else has deemed virtually invisible. (Think of the homeless veteran sitting outside the Jewel or the lady pushing her shopping cart with all her earthly possessions in it or the slightly crazy, slightly frightening mentally ill person who is getting no help from anyone or any health care system.) Jesus notices the ten lepers because he is looking for them even more than they are looking for him. He is intent on not wasting one chance to show the world what real care looks like.
So, Jesus responds but in a very interesting way. He tells the ten lepers to make their way to the priests at the temple. What anyone in the crowd around Jesus would have known is that it was the priests who had determined that these people were lepers in the first place. From the first sign of that white splotch on their skin, the priest would have declared them untouchable and sent them outside of town. (There’s religion at its best, right?) And, it was only the priests who could declare them clean again, though it’s hard to imagine how anyone ever made it off the unclean list once you were on it. When Jesus sends the lepers to the temple to see the priests, he would have been following the law to the letter and potentially providing the priests with their worst nightmare: the chance that they might be “soiled” by actual human suffering.
The thing is that before they made it more than a few steps, the lepers were healed. Remember, we are talking about a life-changing, fate-altering event here. For the rest of their lives, their lives would be divided into before this moment and after. What do they do next? For ninety percent of that day’s lepers, we don’t know. Did the woman who was made clean go off to find her long lost children? Did the old man whose complexion was now as clean as a baby’s go looking for his old friends? Did they go as a group to the priests to receive the stamp of approval and cleanliness that no one ever received? They are given the gift of a whole new life and they are gone. They don’t look back, not for a second.
Then, there is the one, lone leper. Talk about someone who is paying attention! What do you do when your rancid skin is made clean as a whistle, when you are given a whole new shot at life? The leper knows exactly what to do. You stop whatever else is going on and in your best yelling leper voice, you holler: “Thanks be to God!” Then, you make your way back and you find this Jesus of Nazareth and you do what any self-respecting person who has been given a new lease on life would do: you throw yourself face first at his feet. You thank him, from the very bottom of your heart. (I’m sure that Jesus was smiling long before the man threw himself at Jesus’ feet!)
Here’s the other thing, though. Aside from being a leper which had cost him so dearly for so long, this man was also a Samaritan, a a hated outcast splinter group of Judaism. He was still cursed. . The others must have known that were it not for their leprosy, they had a shot at fitting in and being approved. Take away leprosy from a Samaritan and what do you have? You have a Samaritan. There’s still no place for him at the temple. There’s no cure for being a Samaritan at all.
Unless of course, none of labels that make a person an object of scorn matter. Jesus doesn’t see a group of lepers and dismiss them. He sees people who were suffering and he cares. Jesus doesn’t see a Samaritan. He sees a grateful, faithful human being. As I look around, the question isn’t whether someone makes me feel comfortable, or someone is like me. The question is, “Who is in pain here?” When I see the person in pain, I need to pray, “God, help me to actually be helpful here.” And when, in the end, caring action leaves both of us transformed, perhaps we both will drop to our knees and thank God.