First Presbyterian Church of Watertown

Jeremiah 29 and Luke 17

“One Out of Ten”

The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

October 14, 2007

            We’ve moved a few times in the last twenty years.  Each time we’ve moved no matter how much we would try to divest, give away, throw away somehow we have more stuff than we came with.  Each time the truck has gotten bigger.  Some of this is the growing number of Garrys.  Yet, sheer number cannot account for our volume. 

Another fascinating part of each move is finding our furniture anew.  It may be the same couch, the same chair, the same table, but in a new home, a different place of the country, the furniture looks different.  What worked in Ohio didn’t fit in Washington; what was good in the Pacific Northwest seems out of place in the North East.  Different houses made the same furniture seem new or strange even.

The passage we read from Luke is like this.  The reference to the kingdom of God, knowing the signs, and the furtive reference to Noah is in Matthew and Mark, but in the Gospel of Luke it comes across differently.  The same words, same warnings, same references, yet in Luke it like old furniture in a new house. 

Part of this is accomplished with the story of the ten lepers.  At first glance this is just a cranky story.  At the end of the gospels Jesus gets cranky.  Where he put up with the Pharisees in Galilee early on in his ministry, in Jerusalem close to the cross he calls them vipers and hypocrites.  Walking around the Sea of Galilee he chastises the disciples for being slow, but on the night of his arrest when they couldn’t stand watch as he prayed, when they fell asleep, his words come across as betrayal and dissolution.  The story of the ten lepers has this feel.

Jesus tells the lepers to go to the priest and show themselves.  As they walk away they are healed- the skin clears of the disease.  One of the ten returns to give thanks to Jesus for the healing.  Looking up, Jesus says, “wasn’t there ten of you?  Where are the others?”  Now it doesn’t say, and Jesus filled with anger, or with great indignation Jesus asked, but it’s kind of built into the question.  You ask such things with squinting eyes and disappointment in your voice, “weren’t there ten of you?  Where are the others?”

And to add insult to injury, the only one who came back was a Samaritan.  This is a red flag in Luke; this is part of his peculiar voice- all things Samaritan.  This whole story is peculiar to Luke, even without the Samaritan detail.  With it though the story becomes like someone waving a red flag a few feet away.  Luke is trying to make a point.

The point is simple, the Samaritan wasn’t supposed to be healed, wasn’t supposed to be a believer.  The Samaritans were the outcasts, less than human, and certainly far less than a Jew in good standing.  A Samaritan leper is about as low as you can go.  So that the other nine didn’t return to say thanks is a rather blatant insult; that the only one who does is a Samaritan suggests there is no punch being pulled here.

The story would have been cranky enough without the question, “where are the others?” but with the one who returns being a Samaritan, this is really bad.  From bad to worse applies here.  This is much more than a bad hair day; this is a cultural meltdown.

In a sense the story of the ten lepers is the new house for the furniture of apocalyptic sayings.  Where in the other Gospels Jesus is just trying to dispel the curious from trying to read signs into the times, here there is a whole different image. 

It would be easy to make the cranky image the point.  Look God has given so much and we are so unappreciative.  This isn’t a hard message to offer or to draw from the passage.  With all that we have, with all that we’ve been given, even our days of greatest praise we are prone to complain, prone to grumble, or to just not get it.  Like kids who want to know how many bites of squash they need to take in order to get dessert so are we.

This isn’t hard to see in the story.  It isn’t hard to see in us.  Just this week I sat down and looked over the attendance numbers for September.  They were positive, but not exciting.  A 3% gain.  That’s our norm.  Then I went back a few years to see the trends.  All was the same.  100 people come in August and 150 people come in September.  Nice increase until you realize we have 550 members.  Then I saw a number that caught my eye.  Once in the last seven years did we see a Sunday with over 200 in attendance during a September.  Can you guess which one it was?  The Sunday following September 11^th in 2001, on that Sunday we shot up to over 214 folks. 

This is expected and good, but it’s also deflating.  Even in a national tragedy we cannot gather half of our folks.  This is the crankiness in the passage.  It’s there.  I thought there were ten of you is the same as saying I thought there were 500 of you.

While I do believe Jesus was being a bit cranky here, I don’t believe it was the point.  And the reason for it is Noah.  Noah at first blush has some really cranky parts too.  The story of Noah and the flood can be read that God just woke up on the wrong side of the bed and decided enough was enough.  It can be read that way.  But there is another way to read the story of the flood.  There is a legend about Noah that suggests a different view and I find it very helpful for our passage.

The legend is that Noah roamed the earth for 120 years before the flood.  He was God’s messenger about the impending doom before he was ever the crafter of the ark.  The legend is good because it is all about patience and forbearance and the flood being more than a capricious act or about being cranky.  120 years is fair warning.  I mean most parents only count to three; God was willing to count to something like 37 million. At least I think that is what my calculator suggested in terms of seconds in 120 years.

120 years is a good amount of time.  It’s hard to keep at something for a generation, let alone three.  When you put this image of Noah next to the ten lepers something interesting happens.  Rather than this just being a story about people not being thankful, or that we just don’t get it, instead the story of the lepers becomes an image of Jesus knowing what it means to be with us.  This is an image of what it means for him to be our savior and for his ministry to be more than a magic trick.  Healing the ten lepers was a great fete, but his message, his church, his mission were bigger.  And yet, they are not.  In some ways the one out of ten is the very image of what it means to step into the chaos of our life and brokenness and stubbornness and all those things we would rather not be.

Not long into ministry I was blessed with a friend who taught me a great deal about this.  He taught me not to be resigned or happy about one out of ten, but also not to be discouraged.  I’ll say that again.  He lived a restless pursuit of the kingdom of God where one of out ten was not acceptable, but he also lived with a kind of Noah like wandering where he never gave up.

His name is Tim.  He’s a Methodist pastor and a former YWAMmer.  That means, he is a bit of an itinerant, holiness-loving, nut.  Tim and I met up doing mission trips to Mexico.  His charisma drew a large crowd on these trips.  We usually took about a hundred and they were always an adventure.  Mostly because Tim’s idea of planning was to “see what the Lord would do.”  Some might consider it reckless or poor preparations, but there was a kind of openness, a sense of letting the Holy Spirit be the guide I have always admired.

While in years since leading my own trips I have sought more structure and more of a schedule, I have tried to keep the sensibility and humility I learned with him.  With Tim you never knew what was coming.  One night I saw this in spades as we headed out to a hole in the wall church on the outskirts of one of the barrios of Juarez.  When we pulled up the church looked abandoned and far too small for our group.  And then out of this tiny church poured amplifiers and electric guitars and speakers and drums.  Within a few moments what had been nothing more than a shed with a cross on it became a blaring feast of music.  We were in the midst of an outdoor community concert. 

I would like to say this was a plan, but I have spent enough time with Tim to say it was not.  And then in the midst of this neighborhood concert a bus pulled up and fifty yellow shirted Koreans got out.  They filed in, sang two songs, and filed back on the bus.  As they did I discovered they were Korean Presbyterians from Canada on a tour of Mexico.  With anyone else I don’t think I would have believed it, but with Tim it was just part of the trip.  And then fifty Korean showed up doesn’t sound strange when Tim is involved.

More than just the openness to see life as an adventure, tough, what I really found with him was how much bigger the world is than I could have imagined.  The problems, the poverty, the sinfulness and the chaos we brew came into sharp relief during the time I spent with him.  All of sudden the church, with all its complexities and challenges, looked really, really small when compared to world around us.  The idea of making a difference in a community of faith, which before had seemed quite difficult, to offer faith and hope to those who believed had seemed daunting, now it looked quite doable when compared to the hard scrabble of poverty in Juarez and the idea that the church needs to just spill out into the community.

Just as the church looked different, so did my image of God.  In the midst of world, beyond the stained glass and the committees and the enormous freedom to just be with people, in the midst of the world I could see God abiding within the chaos, the fragmentariness.  Where before my ideas of God were all structured around the life of the church, now they came into relation with the world. 

Tim’s years as a missionary on the streets of Amsterdam had provided an amazing sense of God’s presence and willingness to ask the humiliating question: I thought there were ten of you?  He had spent many years and a whole lot of rejection as a young missionary.  Yet, rather than dissolution or crankiness what emerged was a readiness to keep going and with joy. 

I thought there were ten of you?  That Jesus would ask such a question, truly ask it with a sense of deflation, is a crazy image of God.  With Tim though I grew to find it a deep solace, even joy in such questions. 

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Jesus was happy with one out of ten (and if the truth be told I am not happy with one out of three), but it doesn’t mean he gave up or grew bitter.  There is a kind of crankiness to the honesty, but with the images of Noah there is also a kind of long view, a kind of restless pursuit that never gives up.

Sometimes people will ask me questions regarding our mission work.  What they are really trying to do is goad a recognition that no matter how many houses you build in Mexico or schools in Malawi, no matter how many interns you have in the summer or dollar dinners in the winter you serve things will still be a mess.  They are trying to suggest, one out of ten is not good.

Of this I too am certain.  If you have seen the barrios of Tijuana then you know the modest homes we build will not revolutionize their economy; if you have seen the extreme poverty of Africa you know we could pour millions into even small places and not make much of a difference.  Things will still be a mess.  One out of ten is a mess.  And yet, such is the mess God is willing to enter and not just enter, but fight the fight.

For some reason this fills me with joy.  I am not sure just why. The idea that Jesus asked “and the others?” needs to be seen with a little crankiness, but just a little.  Remember the writer of Hebrews says it was for the joy set before him that he endured the cross.  This section of Luke is when Jerusalem is getting close.  And with Jerusalem comes a cross. 

Making a difference, proclaiming the good news to the world, healing the broken, befriending the friendless, lifting up the down trodden, challenging the chaos of sin these are all things we are called unto as the church.  We are supposed to be these things as the resurrected body of Christ.  It would be nice to suggest we are mopping up the floor or that we are gaining, but sometimes it looks like one out of ten isn’t all that bad.  Rather than gain, sometimes it feels like we are losing.

I don’t ever want to become complacent let alone bitter.  One out of ten, though, can be the place where such things like that start in us.  And then along comes Noah.  With Noah the one out of ten becomes an incredible image of God’s love.  Where we might give in, quit, get really cranky, Jesus steps up, steps forward, and offers an even greater blessing, salvation.

Again, I am not sure as to why I find such great joy knowing the willingness of God to be in the midst of chaos, even our brokenness, but I do.  It’s not a god way up there; it’s God way down here.  And that is always good news. 

So don’t give up.  When you feel deflated, less than victorious don’t delude yourself into believing one of out ten is success, but don’t forget Noah and the long walk of a 120 years.  Remember and step back into the fray. 

We are the church.  We are the body of the one who abides in the midst of suffering and even shame and then offers salvation.  Amen.