Seeing makes all the difference

Written by Ed Kauffman

We all know the story, we’ve heard it several times already, but let’s see it once more, just to remind ourselves.

 (Powerpoint)

 So, where were the other nine?  It just so happens that we have some of those among us today, so let’s ask them.  (Before the service 9 people were given slips of paper with this written on it)

 You were one of those who didn’t return to thank Jesus.  What’s your excuse?

 I first heard this exercise used quite a few years ago at a Goshen College chapel, and the speaker, whom I don’t remember, commented that the most creative response he had heard to the question was a person who said, “you know, some time later I tried to find Jesus to thank him, and I saw one of his disciples standing by a fire and went over and said, ‘you’re one of Jesus’ disciples aren’t you’, and they said “I don’t know who you’re talking about! I don’t know the man’”.

 Well, it’s easy for us be hard on the nine.  But in reality, we probably shouldn’t be because there are some interesting points we often miss in this story.  For one thing, they were actually doing what they were instructed to do, namely, go and show themselves to the priest.  This is what Jesus told them to do, and what the law instructed. 

 Being a leper meant that one was unclean, and the only way to become “clean” was for the priest to declare you clean.  If you wanted to go back home, or reenter society in general, you had to be declared clean by the priest.  So, one can assume, the other nine continued on to the priest in order to continue their journey home.  We know nothing else about the nine.

 But we are told that the one who returned was a Samaritan, a foreigner. A Samaritan was not welcome in Jerusalem, nor in the temple. Perhaps as he was going along with the others he realized that showing up in front of the priest would get him nothing.  You remember the woman at the well who noted that Jews worship in Jerusalem and Samaritans worship on Mt. Geresene. 

 So the Samaritan disobeyed Jesus, didn’t go to the priest, and rather returned to Jesus to say thank you.  What happened along the way?  Well, I think Luke gives us some clues.  And it has to do with “seeing”.

 While the lepers cry out to Jesus, Luke says, v. 14 “When Jesus saw them..”, not heard them as we might expect,  and then the leper, “when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice.”   Luke, throughout his Gospel, emphasizes seeing as an important component of the Gospel.  Not seeing just as a act of looking at something and having the colour receptors in the eye fire off signals to the brain which gives us a picture, but seeing as comprehension, understanding, recognizing.

 Somehow this foreigner, perhaps because he was a foreigner, perhaps because he had no where else to go, perhaps…..  But somehow this one recognized, saw, that God was involved and began to praise God with a loud voice.  Seeing made all the difference.

 Several years ago, the staff I worked with in Central Plains Conference took a cue from your General Secretary, Jack Suderman, and visited each of the congregations in our conference.  One of the questions we posed to them was, “Where do you see God at work in the through you?”  And the responses were interesting.  In most cases, the responses began something like this.  “Well, we do vacation Bible school, and have a weekly Bible study, and a women’s group that meets.  We participate in the MCC Relief Sale, and Mennonite Disaster Service, and so forth.”  What we hear primarily was all the activity that everyone was involved with.

 But I remember particularly the response we got from one of our Native American churches, where we heard stories of God changing people’s lives, of deliverance from alcohol dependence, and of God’s activity among them.  In most places it took a lot of prompting to get people to begin to think about God’s activity. 

Where do you see God at work?  Or do you?  It’s easy to be thankful for all the bounty that we see around us.  And we should be thankful for that and not take it for granted.  But the story of the leper who came back challenges us to see beyond the material.  This Samaritan challenges us to look, to see, where God is at work, to recognize what others around us may not notice.  It reminds me of a favorite snippet of poem Jacob Enz, my OT professor liked to recite from Elizabeth Barrett Browning longer poem, Aurora Leigh.

 Earth’s crammed with heaven

And every common bush afire from God

But only he who sees takes off his shoes

The rest sit around and pluck blackberries.

 And when we do see God at work in and through us, it calls us to action.  To praise God, to give thanks, even to go against what everyone else is doing and disobey what seems to be the common path.  The Samaritan didn’t follow the rest of the group, he didn’t even do as he was told!  And for that, Jesus says to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”  Or more literally, “your faith has saved you”, made you whole.  While the others were made clean by the pronouncement of the priest, this one was made whole by his own faithfulness. 

 May we have the eyes to see God at work among us, and the faithfulness to give thanks and praise God for all that God has done, is doing, and will do in and through us.  Even if it makes us do some crazy things that we’ve never done before.

 (stand)

Prayer:  O Lord, give us eyes to see you at work among us. .  Forgive us for all the excuses we make. As you healed the lepers, heal us from our blindness and give us the courage to return to you with thanksgiving.  As we go from this place, may we go out with thanksgiving and praise to you for all your goodness to us.  Send us forth to be your messengers, ever ready to share the Good News with those around us, both in word and deed.

And now to him who is able to do far more than what we can even think or imagine, to him be glory both now and forever.  Amen.