A Travel Log in the Middle Space
Luke 17:11-19 (Ten Healed; One Returns to offer thanks.)
Today’s
Gospel story begins with telling us that Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem, and
was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. How interesting!
If
you were to look at a map of the land, you would realize that Samaria and
Galilee border each other; there is no “region between” them. Therefore, the “region
between” Samaria and Galilee, linguistically, must refer to a certain space in
the middle of the two, and yet there is none. The land Jesus and his disciples
are travelling is either one or the other: either Samaria or Galilee. We know
Galilee was the hometown of Jesus and his folks. At that time, Samaria was
treated as their enemy or foreigners, since a long time before the experience
of exile left its mark on both kingdoms.
The
encounter today between Jesus and the tenth leper happens in the middle space
where any traveller would or should expect tension between ethnic and religious
differences, between Samaritans and Jewish people, to be palpable. As well, the
traveller would also notice that it is a place where it is impossible to forget
that the two had once been as one blood and one nation. There, in the middle
space, in the region in-between, this travel log of Jesus and his friends found
in the Gospel of Luke chapter 17 records Jesus healing the ten lepers.
However,
today’s Gospel story does not only present the middle space in geographical and
racial terms, it also tells us how the society controlled the disease and
oppressed those who were born with it or developed a disability later in life.
In the time of Jesus – and for centuries after – leprosy was a dreaded disease.
It caused horrible disfigurement and there was no known remedy. Still worse was
the suspicion and judgement that leprosy was a divine punishment. The solution
at the time was to forbid sufferers from coming into contact with other human
beings. The lepers stood some way off as described in today’s story: “The ten
lepers, keeping their distance, called out, saying, Jesus, Master,
have mercy on us!” All kinds of apartheid, whether based on race, disease or
disability, are unjust. The fear of contamination cannot justify the
discrimination and social segregation completely, especially when religions
sanctify exclusion and separation in God’s name. The pain and suffering, the
psychological effect of the trauma on those who have been put away, is beyond
imagination.
I do
not know what to say about the other nine lepers who did not come back to Jesus
to thank him. I have no right to judge them. It’s not only because I never
lived at that time, and therefore, do not share the understanding of the era.
In today’s story, Jesus tells the lepers to go and show themselves to the
priests – for it is they who can decide whether the person is really cured and
therefore would be able to rejoin the community. Can we be so sure that the
reason the lepers did not go back to Jesus, to thank him and praise God was
their ungratefulness? After a long time of estrangement from families and
communities, how would someone’s mind work? What care should have been arranged
and offered so that they might find acceptance and belonging again; so that
they really truly know they are loved? Where and how does real healing - mind,
heart and body - begin even after the cure? To be truly healed, the whole
community is needed, to be part of one individual’s journey.
What
about the tenth leper who came back? Today’s Gospel tells us that he was a
Samaritan. He lived in the region between Samaria and Galilee. The tenth leper
cannot simply go to the priests to be allowed back to the community. He is a
Samaritan and might only meet with contempt from any Jewish priest. It is not
simple for him to take the same route which the others took. For him, the
situations have double swords – He was a leper and Samaritan.
The others may go to the temple to give thanks to God in the prescribed ways.
However, the last leper has no temple building to go to. Instead, he returns to
the one who healed him, gives thanks, and praises God’s grace in the presence
of Jesus. Jesus, to the last leper was the living body, the manifestation of
God’s true love. It is simply extraordinary that this healing story took place
in the middle space, in the region between Samaria and Galilee, and between the
Samaritan outcast and the Jewish “master”.
Standing
with the last leper in prayer and imagination, I think about him and
forgiveness. I wonder who should offer forgiveness in this story. The disease
is a health condition, never a sin. Never punishment of God. Who should offer
forgiveness? The religious authority who maintained the rule or those who have
been hurt by the condemnation of society and religion? Priests or lepers? Jesus
did not say, “your sins are forgiven.” Jesus’ words toward the leper was “your
faith has made you well”(NRSV), “made you whole(KJV).” Jesus did not assume the
role of priest. He took himself and the leper out of the oppressive, prescribed
process of being condemned and redeemed.
I
ponder how faith and forgiveness go hand in hand. I think about how our hearts,
our souls, our human minds move and work: how we thank someone, how we forgive
someone, how we take a risk to trust someone. How we understand someone. How we
love someone. Even though I may not find a direct relevance to today’s
scripture, the chapter I read from Thich Nhat Hanh’s book continues to come as
an important insight or a warm wave to my heart: “When we understand our own
suffering, it becomes much easier for us to understand another’s. Understanding
is a gift. The other person may feel understood for the first time.
Understanding is the other name of love. If you don’t understand, you can’t
love. If you don’t understand your son, you can’t love him. If you don’t
understand your mother, you can’t love her. To offer understanding means to
offer love. Without understanding, the more we ‘love’, the more we make
ourselves and others suffer.”
Could
anyone, especially those who have been hurt, truly thank another, without
understanding, without forgiving the past, without risking to love? Could we
thank someone who have wronged us? Why or why not?
Have
you praised God for the beauty of the Earth and the beauty in you and others,
especially in the season of fall? When you see the vibrant brick-red and yellow
leaves in the woods or the branches that start to go bare after wind and rain?
Last summer I was introduced to a book by my Korean artist friend who had just
published a book for children in which the changes of the season on a typical
Korean grass-filled trail was depicted in stunning green water colour. The
book’s title is “The Grass-bundles at the Yun-nahm Creek”. My friend chose to
begin the year, to begin the illustration, with the season of fall, then
winter, spring and summer, and her book ends in fall that comes again. The
stories in each page move very slowly, telling the readers, “Seasons come back
but none of them is the same. They do their utmost even through repetitions,
every time, all the time.” Personally, the words that struck me with insight
and beauty were these ones, which were the words in the first page: “Everything
began with the fall. The stuff, light like feathers, carry the beginnings of
the world one by one, little by little.” My friend was depicting that the seeds
flying and fallen in the fall, carried by the wind and rains, started
everything to be alive again.
Thanking
God, praising God, in the place like the middle region,
Thanking
God and praising God in such a time as fall,
when
bright and beautiful things eventually fall and lie on the ground, seem to me
the declaration of the new beginnings of life and of the world. Giving thanks
for the completion of certain parts of our life journey is a courageous and
extraordinary act. Because our life circumstances are often like the middle
space, the middle ground, the season of fall, when we cannot always thank ourselves,
another person, or even God. However, with giving thanks, the fall is when
everything starts to be alive again in the next season, if it is not now. The
fall is when everything begins. With seeds, as completion. With thanks, as the
new start. The tenth leper has just done that: Understanding. Forgiving.
Thanking. Loving. The last leper’s act was so wonderous to see that Jesus
called it faith, and the disciples wrote it in their hearts, in their travel
log, as a memorable healing story, while they continued to walk to Jerusalem,
passing through the region between Samaria and Galilee.
Reflective
Music: Beautiful Things
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoTXr8Yf1L4
Thank you, Golden Ears United Church, BC, for sharing amazing music!
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