Sermon Cliff Note: Claiming Freedom

SCRIPTURE Luke 17.11-19

On the way to Jerusalem, Jesus often finds himself in the in-between places with the in-between people.

That’s the kind of place where these men and the people like them are forced to live . . . in the place where no one lives, because, very simply, in their own cultures, they are no one.

So complete is their exclusion that even when Jesus approaches them, they keep their distance . . . even as they seek his help, they withdraw themselves from him.

Jesus, when he saw them, and in response to their cry for his help, orders them to go and show themselves to the priests.  And they do.  All of them went.  All of them proceeded out of the no-mans land together . . . all of them obeyed Jesus . . . and in their trusting obedience, which, as far as they knew, placed them in the very real danger of being killed by the guards of their borderlands . . . they went . . . and in the going, they were healed, made clean . . .

They weren’t healed by a simple word from Jesus . . . in this case, it seems Jesus wanted them to understand that their healing was their freedom . . . they would know that in their heads, but they had to know it with their feet as well . . .

They had to understand that their being made whole again meant that they were free and that they were free meant they were made whole . . . the lesson of freedom is one that we humans can only know in our feet . . . for our heads will keep us captives every time . . . captives of our old fears. . .

And here, perhaps, is the lesson of the tenth leper . . . the one who turned back . . . the one who actually went back into the no-man’s land of his own captivity, but as a free man . . .

The other nine kept going in the direction that took them as far away from their prison as they could get.  The healing is enough for them . . . and really, who can blame them? . . . they aren’t just healed of a dread disease, they are restored to their community . . . Jesus’ command that they go to the priests is in accord with the law of their time . . .before they could go home to their families, they had to be judged to be genuinely safe to the community by the priests. Who can blame them for not turning back in their haste to get home?

But by keeping on their course, they remained as captive to their disease as if they still carried the sores on their bodies . . .

Only the tenth man knew that he had been freed from all of that . . . only the tenth leper knew he was a leper no more . . . only the tenth man knew he had been freed from the fear and bondage of living in prison . . . for friends, only a free man dares to revisit the site of his own imprisonment and proclaim it to be holy ground . . .

Only a free man turns back to his prison in order to give thanks for the very freedom he now enjoys . . .

Ten were healed, made clean, that day, but only one was made whole . . .

Jesus can heal us, but it remains to us to claim the freedom that healing brings . . .

Jesuit priest John Kavanaugh thinks about it all this way, “And Christ, having healed ten, saw something greater in the one Samaritan who made time to come back, fall at his feet, and praise God. He saw the splendor of a human heart that believes it is loved, that accepts the gift. Such faith . . . is the gift back to God, so enchanting that God would die for love of it.”


God would . . . and God did . . . Let us claim this truth for ourselves and live as the free people . . . the beloved people we are.  Amen.

SermonCliffNote: Stewarding God's Shalom

SCRIPTURE: Proverbs 3.5-12; Romans 12.1-2; and Romans 14.7-8

Stewardship is the idea of taking care of something that belongs to someone else.  It may sound odd to name our own health as ‘belonging’ to someone else, but the fact is that even our health, our own very well-being, not only resides in God, but belongs to God.  This is as true of our health, our wholeness, as a congregation as it is of our health, our wholeness, as individuals.

Stewarding our congregational health must be intentional.  We’ve got to think about it.  We’ve got to act out of knowledge, not ignorance.  We’ve got to study the problem and understand it or our efforts at solutions are not just a waste of time; we’ll actually end up doing the opposite of what’s needed and be worse off than we were when we started.  We’ve got to be intentional; we’ve got to do the work of study.

Secondly, we must understand that memory is just memory. Memory is not sacred.  Only God is sacred.
We owe no duty of stewardship to the past.  We cannot betray the past – it isn’t possible, for the past is just that – past, gone.

We can learn from the past; but the past has no need of our homage, our honor.  When Jesus said to a would-be follower, let the dead bury the dead, he wasn’t being metaphorical.  He was speaking a literal word of advice to the young man: the time to follow me is now, not later.  You have to let go of the old ways if you’re going to follow where I’m going.  And what you’re delaying for isn’t bad; it’s just unnecessary.  And it’s getting in the way of following me.  And every chance doesn’t come around again.  Being a good steward of our health means knowing when to let go of the past; when to accept and even embrace change – not for its own sake, but because it’s time . . . because to do otherwise is to live a lie – the lie that the past is still present.  A good steward knows when to let go.

Finally, being entrusted with something means we actually have to take care of it in the present – all the time.
To ignore my own duty to be intentional in thinking about the problem; to stay stuck in my memories; to fail to take good care of what I have: all of these mistakes mean that I become a bad steward of that which was entrusted to me, even if it was something for my own use or benefit.  It means that I hurt myself and others.
But when I do the reverse: take the time to understand the true problem; not hold myself captive to my memories; take care of even the broken thing that I have, wonder upon wonder, life unfolds and I enter into the sacred space of being a co-worker with God.