Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Lent Reading Day 26

Healing the Ten Lepers:

Luke 17:11-19

This story speaks to me of gratitude. How many times do we encounter in our own lives the lack of gratitude...maybe it's others that don't express their thanks to us, or maybe it's us that don't do the expressing... Why is it that in our urban culture to demand things, or why is it that in our church communities were often super-humanly gifted at complaining or bitching about things....and yet we're so verbally-challenged in terms of expressing our gratitude to someone else either in words, a card, a phone card, or even an email? Why are the words, "I want..." and "I don't like....." so much easier to say than "Thank you for..."?




What's striking in this story is that it's a Samaritan that returns to say thanks to Jesus. The samaritans were the bad guys, they were the culturally inferior. Often our derrogatory jokes aim at blondes, polish people, or other cultural groups. For the people of Jesus' day and land the Samaritans were the butt of all the jokes, they were the ones always looked down upon as stupid, slow, out-of-it, rejects....so here is Jesus telling a teaching story to a group of good Israelite Jews and the "good guy" in the story, the only one to return to say thanks is a Samaritan! With all the cultural and historical differences between us and Jesus' world it's easy to overlook. We're often so smug about our own goodness, which goes hand in hand with a judgement (spoken or un-spoken) of others. Maybe you're like me...I'm quick to criticize the others who don't express gratitude assuming in the same breath that I always do...yet when I look closer, I too am quick to judge the Samaritan who is much more faithful than I.



I was working with someone tonight on a project and they asked me about Jesus, saying "he was a revolutionary, right?" We get so stuck on some cheesy picture of Jesus surrounded by sparkling white sheep and perky children falling all over him that we forget - or don't ever know - what he was really like. This parable points us to the truth....the people who heard it most likely didn't say "what a nice story about inclusion" - they probably were more pissed off than inspired, more likely they muttered "who is this guy?" not in admiration of his respect but in voicing their bitter discontent with his judgemental story. There's a reason why they wanted to kill Jesus.