Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Year C RCL
October 13, 2019
North Fork Ministries
Gospel:
Luke 17:11-19
On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" When he saw them, he said to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, "Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" Then he said to him, "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well."
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So Jesus healed ten lepers. They were all made clean. One of the lepers, however, returned to thank Jesus and praise God. His faith, Jesus says, made him, not just clean, but well. What was there about this leper, let’s call him Lamech (Lay-meck), which made him different from the other nine? Luke doesn’t provide the back-story on Lamech, but I’ve been dreaming of him. Let me share with you my imaginings of the one leper in ten.
Lamech hadn’t always lived in this no man’s land along the border between Samaria and Galilee. He had once been a successful merchant in the Samarian coastal city of Joppa, trading principally in imported goods brought from distant Mediterranean ports. He had married well and his wife had borne him three fine sons. The Roman occupiers took their share of his profits, and he was expected to bribe the soldiers, but that was just part of doing business. The family had acquired a fine home and Lamech was respected in the community and in the synagogue. Lamech’s name means “poor or made low.” But his worldly success seemed to defy any predictive power his name might have possessed.
That is, until the sores began to appear… At first Lamech thought nothing of them. They materialized on parts of his body that were easily hidden by his robe. But his wife noticed, was alarmed, and she began to pull away from him. Then sores appeared on his face and the backs of his hands, and he could hide them no longer.
Leprosy was a name given to any number of skin diseases prevalent in the ancient world. Whatever physical form they might take, they were all viewed as highly contagious and the sufferer was considered unclean. It was assumed that he had done something wrong to deserve his awful fate. Lamech’s customers quickly disappeared and therefore his business did as well. His family and friends were compelled to shun him. And the Romans ordered him out of the city.
Lamech’s misery was almost incomprehensible. He had lost everything. The sores were painful, would not heal, and they constantly itched. He was taunted and spurned upon arrival at every village into which he wandered. Only the village dogs were drawn to him, and then only to smell and lick his sores. Eventually he fled to the wilderness, attempting to fill his shrinking belly with locusts and whatever edible roots and berries he could gather. His sole prayer was that he might die, seeing death as the only means of relief from his suffering.
And then Lamech stumbled upon a teacher. The teacher was not a leper himself, yet he seemed to have no fear of Lamech’s disease. The teacher had suffered. You could see it in his eyes and in his scars and his still misshapen body. But the teacher retained a smile and seemed to take great pleasure in the smallest things. The teacher would literally dance with joy upon discovering a fig tree with a few near-rotten figs left uneaten by the birds. And he wept, in compassion or joy, Lamech could not be sure, upon finding a rabbit caught in the snare he had set out the night before.
The teacher made his bed each evening on the stony ground in a clearing, so that hanging branches did not obstruct his view of the stars overhead. He knew the constellations and taught Lamech to name them. Lamech remained in the wilderness with the teacher for over a year, observing him, drawn to his spirit of gratefulness, his appreciation for every moment, his lack of regret.
One evening, sitting beside a small fire, Lamech had taken a piece of bark and was scrapping the scabs from his ever-present sores, seeking relief from the constant irritation. The teacher seldom offered direct advice, but this evening he shifted his eyes from the heavens, looked toward Lamech and said, “Be thankful, even for the sores.”
The next morning the teacher was gone. Lamech missed the teacher immediately. He had grown to love him and now he felt alone. But Lamech realized something else. He found that he didn’t mourn his teacher’s departure. It was as if the teacher had left the gift of himself behind. Lamech had learned from the teacher to feel pain, but without unnecessary suffering. Possession-less, he found he needed nothing. He realized that he was living in gratitude, not just for the few good things that fell his way, but even for loss and for the hurt that is always part of life.
Over the coming days, Lamech began to wonder whether the teacher had actually existed. The wilderness now seemed to him a great teacher itself, providing all the instruction he needed to live a full and rich live. Or maybe, he wondered, “Was the teacher within me all the while? How did my parents have the foresight to name me Lamech, for now I am indeed poor and made low, but from this place of poverty and lowliness, I have found joy.”
Taking his leave of the wilderness, Lamech encountered another leper. The leper was Jewish and as a Samaritan, Lamech would have normally avoided this ancestral cousin. Yet their common bond as lepers created an alliance and they traveled together. Lamech recognized his former self in the Jewish leper. And the Jew saw within the Samaritan the self he aspired to be. And others did as well. And the unclean in the territory formed a clan, each leper looking toward Lamech for hope and assurance that all would be made well.
Still spurned by those who regarded themselves as clean, Lamech and his growing band of lepers, Jew and Samaritan alike, all drawn to Lamech by his gentle smile and sense of presence, wandered together in the region between Samaria and Galilee.
And so it was on that day that the ten encountered the Christ on his way to Jerusalem. And it was Lamech, among the 10 lepers who approached Jesus from a distance, who first shouted, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!"
The Buddha would have called Lamech enlightened. Jesus just calls him faithful.
Jesus healed all ten lepers. And one of the ten was made well, “by his faith” Jesus tells us.
I think we imagine that it is easier to be thankful when everything is going well. And perhaps not so easy when life is bitter and hard. That may be true, but it’s when things are hard that we need thankfulness the most.
Ann Lamott says that her two favorite prayers are, in the morning, “Help me, help me, help me.” And at bedtime, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” I don’t know if it is possible to live a life of both humility and thankfulness, without first, like Lamech, being made low. Maybe it is. But somehow, someway, we all have to be brought to our knees.