St George's Cathedral, Cape Town

A sermon preached by the Reverend Terry Lester on a reading from St Luke for Healing Sunday, 14 October 2007

Luke 17: 5 – 10

I am not sure if we are packing too much into today, the 28th Sunday of the Year. Today we are observing Healing Sunday - the gospel reading from St. Luke points to the healing of the ten lepers. Today is also the second Sunday of our Stewardship Campaign, which aims at getting us to think about our response to God's goodness and generosity. Last week we focused on volunteering and we were asked to consider giving time to one of the 42 ministries here at the cathedral. Some displays are still up and I urge you who may have missed last week, to go and browse with an open mind and heart and listen for the prompting of God's Holy Spirit.

Today's gospel introduces us to leprosy, a dreaded skin disease which manifests as welts and discolouration of the skin. It was and 'in your face' condition. In the New Testament period leprosy was a severely stigmatized disease. Those affected were forced to live their lives on the margins of communities, at the outskirts of towns and villages - leaving them near enough to beg for the basics but far enough so as not to pose a health risk or threaten the healthy. Lepers had to call out in order to alert people to their presence. Jesus' encounter with lepers, as recorded in the gospels, was seen by those who witnessed it as either fool-hardy or just plain dom! Crazy!

Both Mark in chapter 1 and Luke in chapter 5 of their gospels tell of Jesus' encounter with a leper and of Jesus touching him. We are unsure whether this story from chapter 17 in Luke refers to the same episode, which Luke retells with other detail included, or whether it is a separate healing.

The reason commentators suggest that it is the same healing is because the additional material doesn't help much; it tends to complicate the matter. It suggests that the other nine are not doing the right thing - which they are - following Jesus' instruction to go and show themselves to the priest. Samaritans also had priests, they just didn't have to go all the way to Jerusalem to see one! Maybe it was a short journey to find a priest for the Samaritan and so he could come back sooner! The Jewish lepers had so much further to go!

So what do we make of it all? We in this city and at this Cathedral church are very familiar with leprosy. Our Cathedral has as a Chapelry on Robben Island called The Church of the Good Shepherd. That church was built in the late 1800s by lepers for lepers as a place of worship. Five other churches were also built, representing a large chunk of the Christian denominations of our city, with three serving the female lepers and three the males. Ours served male lepers.

Lets imagine what a conversation between the Roman Catholic priest and the Anglican priest must have sounded like as they swapped congregants: "I'll swap you five Catholic men if you'd give me ten Anglican women!", says Father Flanagan. "Are you out of your mind?" asks Revered Wright.

"Ah, but they're good Catholics! Can you say the same about yours?" comes the retort from Father Flanagan.

Lepers were removed from the island in 1931 and the Catholic Church destroyed!

Not only were lepers separated from society, but on Robben Island they were also separated from each other - brother from sister, husband from wife, father from daughter and sent off to separate churches. Six churches in a small area and with a small group of people! How was this practice by God's church in relation to these poor souls in any way honouring the Jesus of the gospels? How was the treatment any different to that meted out by communities like those Jesus encountered between Samaria and Galilee?

The marginalising of children of God, who imprinted them which His image and endowed them with his spirit, and placing them at life's perimeter is contrary to God's will and Jesus' example. The Leprosy Mission no longer uses the term "lepers" they speak instead of those who suffer from leprosy - which is a move in the right direction so as to avoid defining a person only in relation to a disease.

The tragedy of the story of Robben Island and the colony of leprosy sufferers who lived there is that each church will have used the horrendous plight of these poor people as a focus for those in the home country to send money and support the valiant efforts of those at the rock-face of Christian mission in the colonies. It serves as a check to us on how we use the suffering of others to raise money for our good causes.

Even though everything was done on the island to keep men apart from the women, tour guides on the island are quick to point out that a significant number of children were born to the leprosy sufferers on the island! So you thought that accounts of immaculate conceptions were confined to Palestine!!

The healing miracle of those suffering from leprosy as told by Luke is a wonderful account of how Jesus understood his mission. It was about bringing in from the outskirts those forced there by their own sense of unworthiness, real or imagined. Jesus restores their sense of worthiness as they take up their place in the life of the community as well as the community of faith.

It serves also as a challenge to those who have stopped believing in a Father who cares and a God of miracles and invites them to live expectantly with the God of grace. When the faithful say, as we are wont to say: "As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be!" We are saying that the same God who has revealed himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier, is still on the throne! It is not a statement about the status quo never changing or of resigned hopelessness!

Jesus is clear that the Father who sent him into the world, sent him to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour. Sending these lepers off to show themselves to the priest is sending them into the heart of the religious and political capital of his day. Jesus was returning them to their Father's house where even hired servants had more than they could eat! Their Father will come running out to meet them, embrace them and call for the fatted calf to be killed because those who were as good as dead, are alive! Those who wished themselves dead, have hope for tomorrow. Who will tell the story of those denied a human touch and kept apart by God's representatives on that island? I wonder what it felt like for them when they stole those moments for themselves and fleetingly enjoyed the warm embrace and loving touch of another human being, flesh on flesh, body touching body. Their hearts pounding and their bodies shaking and knowing in every fibre of their being that they are not just a disease, not just doomed to live life pitied if not almost despised, that there is more to them than just their skin!

Those who have taken time to read about HIV and Aids, know that one of the key battles those facing the disease have to overcome is stigmatization. Because of society's attitude, those who have the disease are scared to disclose their status. Stories by too many tell of banishment, threats and even assault and death. The challenge, it seems, is how we start to relate to people without any labels, no matter what that label may be, because we are more than any label and nothing and no-one should seek to deny all of what we are.

The gospel story tells of this Samaritan who returns with thankfulness and gratitude - the Greek uses, "eucharistew" - "thanksgiving" Our translation says, "Give praise to God". Jesus commends his grateful heart and suggests that his gratitude serves as authentication of his faith.

Albert Nolan, in his book, Jesus today, says this about gratitude: "The person with a grateful heart appreciates the gratuitousness of everything in life. Nothing is taken for granted. My very existence is a gift. I did not create myself. There is no way I could have earned or deserved or merited my human existence. Everything I have is gift."

Gratefulness is an alternative attitude to all of life. It enables us to see the world right side up. The grateful heart is a manifestation of one's true self. Nothing sidelines the ego more effectively than a grateful heart.

"To be a saint," says the spiritual writer Ronald Rolheiser, "is to be fuelled by gratitude, nothing more and nothing less."

And, according to Gustavo Gutierrez, the liberation theologian, only one kind of person transforms the world spiritually, someone with a grateful heart.

The practice that moulds and shapes one's heart toward gratefulness most effectively is the daily practice of praying prayers of thanksgiving. What we need is not the occasional prayer of thanks when something exceptionally good has happened to us. What we need is continuous daily prayers of thanksgiving. As St. Paul says, "Pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances."

One writer defines prayer as "grateful living" and Meister Eckhart once said, "If the only prayer I ever say is Thank You… that is enough." To be a eucharistic community is not just about how open we celebrate the communion - how often the body of Christ touches our body in the bread and wine but also how open we touch the untouchables. May God our Father who has brought us into his family recognize us by the fact that we are a eucharistic community living by gratitude and thanksgiving! Amen.

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