Sunday 14th October 2007 TRINITY XIX
Fr David Cherry
II Kings 5 : 1 – 15c ; II Timothy 2 : 8 – 13 ; Luke 17 : 11 – 19
The collect for today : “O God, forasmuch as without thee we are not able to please thee ; mercifully grant, that thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts.”
Today, the cleansed Samaritan falls at the feet of our High Priest of a New Religion, a new covenant, the Covenant of a God who is faithful even though we are faithless.
What is God up to? What is he up to this God who –
as St Paul tells Timothy - remains faithful even when we are faithless;
this God who says he cannot deny himself – so closely are you and
I identified by Him as him.
On my desk and on the Information Table at the back of Church is an
invitation from Westminster Council to the Faith Exchange meeting on
Tuesday evening. The topic under discussion is Examining
Prejudice. It’s a hard one to engage in for one risks being
scandalized, having one’s head and heart enlarged.
And if the Gospel is not about risk then I am certainly deluded!
Here in the first lesson comes Naaman, in need of cleansing of his
leprosy, otherwise a man of dignity who is sure of himself and what he
thinks: “Are not the rivers of Damascus better than all the
waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?”
What is God up to? He takes the risk of a simple act and is
brought to wholeness : “Behold I know that there is no God in all
the earth but in Israel.”
The new-found God, you see, is a bigger God, a rather un-pin-downable
God. Don’t we all resist this God to some extent; shut up
in prejudice, fear, restricted by what is correct?
In the Gospel nine Jews are cleansed, cleansed of their physical
disease; and they rush off to have it validated by their priest so that
they can return to their people.
But there is another cleansing which hasn’t come home to
them. There is a cleansing, a washing and renewing of the mind
and heart which the outsider finds happening to him as he wonders off.
Jesus has said ‘Go show yourselves unto the priests.’
Please note : ‘priests’ in the plural. Are we meant
to see that while the nine cured Jews rush off to their priest to be
accepted again, the Samaritan has found his Priest in Jesus who accepts
him, yes him, a heretic Samaritan?
The cured Jews, you see, would have continued in their prejudice
against him, even though sharing his affliction. They
return to their society with its safe convictions. But this
Samaritan, like Naaman, on discovering that he is healed, undergoes
something more than a physical cure. The cleansing is more
transformative : he turns back, he turns around, he sees himself
in a new way – included in the community which was not afforded
him by the others.
Don’t you love the way in which the story is told to us by
Luke? “And one of them, when he saw that he was healed,
turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, And fell down
on his face at his feet, giving him thanks: and he - just wait
for it brothers and sisters - was a Samaritan.”
Scandalous. What is he up to? Remember, how scandalised the
disciples were when Jesus was en route to Jerusalem and then decided
that he would not go to Samaria; remember how the disciples interpreted
this as Jesus being with them in their hatred of the Samaritans; and
they ask him to call down fire from heaven on Samaria. And Jesus
rebuked them.
Today, the cleansed Samaritan falls at the feet of our High Priest of a
New Religion, a new covenant, the Covenant of a God who is faithful
even though we are faithless.
And here we are, in mass, exposing ourselves to the undoing of the
Gospel; risking ourselves being undone and remade, re-put together
again in a glorious hope of a surprising God. May the Sacrament of Holy
Communion we dare to receive at this Altar, bring us to the same
enlarged heart of thanksgiving with that stranger.
O God, forasmuch as without thee we are not able to please thee ;
mercifully grant, that thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and
rule our hearts. Grant this, O loving God, for Jesus
Christ’s sake. Amen