Preacher: Dana Cassell

Scripture: Luke 17:11-19

This summer, I started a weekly Sunday Dinner potluck. I’d wanted to do something like this for over a year – a standing, regular, weekly casual gathering of friends. I think the desire was born, in part, from not having a church community that I participated in regularly. And I’d wanted to invite kind of a lot of people. But my apartment, while not tiny, is also not really big enough or laid out in the right way to host a big group. 

As I was thinking about how to do this, my parents’ church was selling their building and disorganizing as a congregation. Mom and Dad were both very involved in all the work of that – Dad was the treasurer and Mom, an ordained minister, was sharing a lot of leadership and pastoral care. I suspected that my parents would enjoy being part of a low-key, regular Sunday gathering too. AND: they have a big house with a giant dining room table! I convinced them to host dinner every week.

I was kind of worried about saddling my parents with all the responsibilities of hosting a big dinner party every week – I didn’t want them to feel burdened with the tasks of setting up, cleaning up and taking care of all the details for 10-30 people. I knew my mom, in particular, would feel some responsibility and obligation to be a hostess.

As the weeks went on, though, we were all kind of surprised at how easy hosting dinner was. I went over early each week to set out plates and silverware. Mom left the insert in her dining room table permanently, so we never had to pull out more tables or chairs. And inevitably, every week someone would volunteer to rinse the plates and load the dishwasher. It was kind of amazing, actually, but I think Mom was still wrestling with that inner voice telling her she needed to be the hostess, taking care of everyone else since they were in her house.

We gathered almost every week through June, July and August, then took a break for September. Last Sunday, we kicked off another round of Sunday Dinner. Seven of us gathered, ate, caught up, and then our friend Tina started picking up everyone’s plates and taking them to the kitchen. Mom looked at her and instead of saying “Oh, Tina, you don’t have to do that! We’ll take care of it later,” just said “Thank you, Tina.” And then Mom looked at me, utterly pleased with herself and her newfound ability to sit and keep chatting while someone else cleaned up the dishes in her own house.

It can be so hard to be on the receiving end of mercy, can’t it?

I wonder if you’ve had an experience like that, where you were much more comfortable being the one who was serving, giving, dispensing mercy or care than you might be finding yourself on the other side of the equation. I know that I’d almost always rather be the one giving the care or the service than being the one who needs it, who receives it. I know how to act graciously when I GIVE something, but I’m not so great at being gracious when someone is meeting my needs.

It’s uncomfortable to be the recipient of mercy.

In the scripture passage we heard this morning, Jesus is traveling near the border of Galilee and Samaria, a liminal space where people of different nationalities and formation interacted. He’s passing through when a group of ten people with some seriously awful skin disease stop him on the road. Ten of them, together.

“Jesus!” they yell, “have mercy on us! Heal us!” And Jesus knows exactly how they’re suffering and exactly how to heal them, so he tells them to go and show themselves to the local priests. They all turn around and head that direction, and find themselves healed before they even arrive at the temple: skin miraculously returned to health, wounds shrinking and closing up as they walk.

One of the ten turns around immediately, goes directly back to Jesus and falls at his feet, thanking him and praising God. And, Luke tells us: he was a Samaritan. “Where are the other nine people I healed,” Jesus asks. “None of the rest could be bothered to return and praise God except this foreigner?!” And then he tells the Samaritan to get up and go on his way because his faith has made him well.

The detail about the man who turned around, thanked Jesus and praised God being a Samaritan is not random. You know the parable of the Good Samaritan, right? In Luke’s gospel, Jesus tells that story at the beginning of his journey toward Jerusalem. The Samaritan in that story is an unlikely character to be the one sharing mercy: unlike the Jewish priest and levite who see a beaten man suffering on the side of the road and pass on by without offering any help, the Samaritan – sworn enemy of the Israelites, someone who absolutely should not have been willing to help, picks the man up, bandages his wounds, carries him on his donkey to an inn and pays the innkeeper to make sure he has whatever he needs.

In that story, at the beginning of Jesus’ journey, he tells a story about how Samaritans – outsiders! Enemies! – are better at practicing mercy than the religious leaders of the Israelites themselves.

This time, here toward the end of Jesus’ journey, we hear another story about another Samaritan – an outsider! An enemy! – who knew far better than the nine other suffering and healed men who, we assume, were probably Israelites, how to RECEIVE mercy, too. When this guy realizes his skin condition has been healed, he immediately turns around and acknowledges that he has been the recipient of a great gift. He doesn’t just thank Jesus – he falls at his feet, praising God.

I wonder about those other nine guys who were so sick that they begged Jesus to have mercy on them and heal them, who were desperate enough to intercept this rabbi on the road and demand care from him. I wonder what was going through their minds when they realized – before they even got to the priests and the temple – that they had been healed.

Were they…embarassed? Did they feel shame about their previous neediness that prevented them from turning around and acknowledging what they’d received? 

Were they…entitled? Did they simply assume that they deserved the healing they received, that any Israelite could have enjoyed the same kind of transformative care if they just asked?

Were they…just so caught up in the delight and relief of healing that they couldn’t fathom turning back, lest it all turn out to be a dream?

Why was the Samaritan the only one who turned around and offered his genuine thanksgiving? What was it about him, his emotional state, his cultural formation, his spiritual understanding that allowed him to return to Jesus and confess his gratitude?

I wonder what our reactions would be if we were suddenly, miraculously healed of something that has caused us great suffering. I wonder if I, in particular, am too formed in the individualism and entitlement of middle-class, White American assumptions to be able to turn around and fall at the feet of the one who made the healing possible. I’m not sure.

I suspect that we might need practice in receiving mercy with grace. How do we behave like gracious recipients? How can we be both cheerful givers and grateful receivers? 

I think I’ll be mulling over my Mom’s hard-won “thank you” to Tina last week for a while. What else do we need to learn how to receive? And what does it mean for US to turn around, run back to the ones who have given it to us so freely, fall at their feet and offer our humble thanksgiving for the ways that we have been changed?

I think I’d like to challenge us all this week to pay attention to how we are receiving  – care, attention, healing, help, assistance, emotional support, logistical backstops. What mercy are you accepting? And how are you responding to it?

Maybe we can all find ways to fall at the feet of the ones who are saving us, day in and day out, humbly confess how it is changing us, and hear the same thing that Jesus told the grateful Samaritan: “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”