"From Duty to Delight" - Sermon for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

From Duty to Delight
Pentecost 18 – Lectionary 28
October 13, 2019
Grace, Waseca, MN
Luke 17.11-19

In last week’s Gospel reading, Jesus’s followers asked for more faith, something we agreed was a reasonable request given Jesus’ demands on us. Jesus answered with two parables, one about a mustard seed and another about doing one’s duty as servants. We hypothesized that Jesus was trying to help them imagine that they already had enough faith and that the issue was not about having more. In fact, we wondered if Jesus was telling them that they already had what they needed to live the kingdom life and that their believing would grow by doing what is expected as a follower of him. Though I didn’t use the term last week, as a Christian there’s a sense of duty we have that comes as a response to what God has already done for us.

However, I ended the sermon by saying that there is also room for joy and praise in the Christian life, but that we’d leave that for today. Here we have these in the story of Jesus’ healing of the 10 lepers. Before we explore joy and gratitude in the Christian life, It’s helpful to remember that lepers in Jesus’ time suffered any number of skin diseases, not all of which we’d classify as Hansen’s Disease. They could have had eczema, psoriasis or even mold or mildew. Regardless of the particulars, they were outcast from society and forced to live on the fringes of their communities. Ironically, they were also reliant on that same community to help them survive, usually through begging.

It’s also helpful to remember that the Samaritans and the Jews of Jesus’ time were mortal enemies. Jews considered Samaritans to be “half-breeds,”-pardon the term-not really Jewish. Even so, both groups looked down on the other as false worshipers of the One True God. So, for Jesus to be around a leper would make him ritually unclean and unable to worship in the temple. To be with a Samaritan would make him doubly so. To make matters worse, consorting with both would be considered scandalous.

When the 10 lepers cry out for mercy, they may have just been begging for money; we don’t know what they were asking. Yet, Jesus gives them more. He tells them to go show themselves to the priests, which was a necessary requirement for reintegration into society, including worshiping in the temple . Dutifully, they do exactly what Jesus orders them to do and are healed on their way, no doubt anxious to get back to their normal lives. Yet, suddenly one of them turns around and comes back to Jesus, loudly praising God in the process. Why does he do so? I think it’s because he sees God’s healing presence in the midst of the awfulness of his life. In doing so, the Samaritan leper moves from duty to delight in his relationship with Jesus.

There is much about the Christian life that involves duty: we love others because God first loved us. We forgive others because we have been forgiven. We pray because God tells us to ask him for what we need. We give of ourselves, our energy and our money because we are committed to being a member of a particular community of faith. But we also experience deep joy and delight in these things when we see God working in, with, and through us. Even when our personal and communal lives don’t go as we plan, we look for those places where God meets us in the messiness of life and see how God works in ways that astonish and surprise us.

One of the reasons we gather together is to help each other see God’s working and share the delight we experience. You see, as important as it was to the lepers to return home to their family, friends and livelihood it was just as important to the community who were anxious to welcome them back. As the poet John Donne as noted, no one is an island; what happens to one of us affects us all. That’s one of the many reasons why what we do here—what God does here—is so important. This week I invite you to find where God is working and delight in his presence. Amen.