Sermon preached by the Reverend Nicholas Lang

St. Paul’s on the Green, Norwalk, Connecticut

The 20th Sunday after Pentecost - October 14, 2007

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Trinity who welcomes, embraces, and loves us all for who we are. Amen.

I was probably no more than ten years old when I saw one of the biblical movies of the time about the life of Christ. One of the scenes depicted the encounter Jesus had with the ten lepers, the gospel story we just heard. I recall in the distance the jingle of the bells they wore around their necks to warn others that they were nearby. As they came closer they began to cry out “Unclean! Unclean!” They were begging for food or blankets to keep them warm. Some were missing fingers. Their heads were hooded to cover their scarred faces. Years later, as a freshman in high school, I would be required to read a book called Damien the Leper which describes the missionary work of a young priest who lived in the leper colony of Molokai in the Hawaiian Islands. It provided graphic details about the dread disease and its victims. These would be the only two meetings I would ever have with lepers—on the movie screen and on the pages of a book.

Not so for the people who lived in first century Palestine. Leprosy was so common in those days that lepers had a prescribed social protocol. The Old Testament dedicated two full chapters teaching the temple priests how to diagnose diseases of the skin and how to determine who was unclean. The disease was contagious so that created great hysteria. Lepers were required to wear torn clothing and let their hair hang loose. They were required to announce themselves by shouting “Unclean!” when they approached the boarders of the town and forced to live in isolation far from the public eye.

Worse than the physical disfigurement and loss of limbs was the pain of their utter loneliness and the expressions of fear and disdain they would find on anyone who saw them. And they were obedient. They followed the orders they were given about the biblical protocol even that day in the region between Samaria and Galilee. Keeping the required distance, they called out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” Most likely, they hoped at best he might give them food or clothing or even a word of compassion. He did not touch them but gave one order: “Go and show yourselves to the priests.”

They knew exactly why they had to do that. It was the temple priests who would proclaim a diagnosis—clean or unclean, insider or outsider, member of the community or outcast. So off they went, but suddenly they noticed a transformation. The scabs disappeared, the feeling came back in their arms ands legs, the color returned to their faces.

One of them, however, did not follow the order. As soon as he realized that he had been healed, he turned back, cried out in praise and gratitude, and fell at the feet of Jesus.

Here is the twist in this story. This guy was a Samaritan—like the Good Samaritan in the famous parable Jesus told. Samaritans were despised by the Jews and considered ritually unclean. They would travel miles out of their way to avoid any contact with them. So this person was considered a foreigner and an outcast even though he was not still a leper.

You may have heard sermons preached about this story showcasing it as a paradigm about thanksgiving. I think that’s a bit off the mark. This is primarily a story about communities of people on the margins of life. It is about prejudice and about how the insiders exclude others from society. We don’t need to hear a story about something that happened two thousand years ago to recognize intolerance, narrow-mindedness, and bigotry. It is still alive and well and thriving in all corners of the globe, in our enlightened society, and in the church.

It has become the mission of this church to create an environment of radical welcome and hospitality, inviting everyone to enjoy that blessing, offering the guarantee that each person who walks through our doors will be given the freedom to be just who God created her or him to be, assuring all a place at God’s Table here. Today I stand before you as your rector and friend to ask your radical generosity in the coming year in the support of a mission and ministry that proclaims that message to all.

It is worth the reminder that there is a myth that St. Paul’s is a wealthy church. Folks hear the splendid music, see the number of clergy we have, the piece of property we own and this beautiful building. Let me dispel the myth quickly. The vast majority of our singers are volunteers and only two of our clergy are salaried. Much of what happens is also due to the hard work the part-time positions of a few other staff members. We have grown and continue to do so and that fact and the reality that one priest alone cannot provide for our needs, coupled with the wake-up call of my unexpected angioplasty in February, has led us to make the position of Associate Rector full time as of this past September. I implore you to support this necessary implementation by the level of your giving in 2008. And you all know the impact of the rising cost of fuel and electricity and St. Paul’s has not escaped that scenario. Our projected budget for next year will be in the neighborhood of $600,000.

It is your giving that is our lifeline, that turns on our computers, allows us to baptize and marry and bless your unions, keeps the buildings heated, gives us light, sends us to the hospital when you are sick, provides the pastoral care you need in difficult times, lets you hear good preaching, surrounds you with the most sublime music, makes so many events and programs happen, and guarantees that this place and its wonderful staff will be here when you need it to be.

And we do all that we do under a standard of excellence and guided by a vision that God has called us to be a beacon in a world that is too often a place of darkness and rejection—as it was for the Samaritan leper. It costs a lot—but I cannot think of anything more worth the money. The rector of a church nearby wrote these words in a communication to its members last year: “Boring, timid churches are cheap. They ask next to nothing of their members. Inspiring churches that seek to live a God-honored vision –and do it with excellence—are expensive. I believe you want this church to be numbered among the latter.”

“Why make a pledge,” I have heard asked. I give when I come to church.” And we deeply appreciate that giving, but a pledge is a promise to give back from the abundance with which God has blessed us. It is a fair proportion of your financial blessing given to do God’s work here and in the world. It arrives here regularly and consistently either by check in the offering plate or in the mail or by electronic transfer— even when you can’t be here. That’s the difference and it makes a huge difference for St. Paul’s.

Today we heard a story about ten people who were healed of an atrocious illness. Ten behaved like good lepers, good Jews and did what they were told. One did not. He was the double outcast so what Jesus did for him meant much more than for his peers. He was not ruled by his head—what the Torah, the law told him—but rather by his heart. He behaved not out of obedience but out of love.

Preacher Fred Craddock writes, “It is often the outsider, the stranger, the visitor who sees and appreciates and responds for countless gifts that we have come to take for granted. The visitor in my home talks with and enjoys the children I hardly noticed between coming home and reading my newspaper. The visitor thanks me my spouse for the meal I have eaten 1,000 times in silence. It is so often the stranger who notices and expresses appreciation for what familiarity has blinded us to.”

Stories like the one we heard today are stories about how God offers us a new vision. It was only to the Samaritan that Jesus said, “Your faith has made you well.” He was not speaking about leprosy when he said that—the man was already cured. Jesus was talking about a different kind of wellness. He was teaching us that deep-rooted human divisions are a much more serious disease than even leprosy. He was commenting on a society that would accept the nine but reject the Samaritan.

Theologian Paul Tillich once wrote: “We want to show you something we have seen and to tell you something we have heard…that here and there in the world and now and then in ourselves is the New Creation.” Here and there…now and then…in the world and in our lives, not all the time but enough of the time for us to know that God loves us and cares for us and wishes the best for each and every one of us. And no matter how terrible things may seem, God is there to help us and encourage us and to give us strength.

How often God breaks through right here in this sacred space lifting the veil between this world and the next. We gather together here every week to tell the story, to break the bread, to drink from the cup, to lift up our lives in hope, to discover the New Creation. And it is this community, this truly amazing community, that nurtures and restores us. The church is nothing if it is not its people serving and caring for one another.

Today Jesus has taught us in this story of ten lepers that we are healed not to stay the same but to live differently in that New Creation. We are healed to break down divisions in society that exclude people because of their race, age, nationality, sexual orientation, religion, or education. We are healed to destroy borders and fences and obstacles that create a class of insiders and outsiders. We are healed to battle ignorance and misinformation.

I proudly and enthusiastically ask your radical generosity in the pledge you will make to keep us keeping on doing church differently in the year ahead. What we do here is hugely important work and the world desperately needs to have the message we preach. I know first hand the difference that this place makes in someone’s life and I cherish the many stories you have shared about the transformation it has meant in your lives. It means so much to me that that I commit 10% of my salary to the support of this church community. I do that with great love for all that this community has meant to me. I do that because I believe passionately in this remarkable church as I believe the sun rises. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.