On the Other Side of the Wall

October 14, 2007

            This week, as we heard from Peter and Estela Hudy about the school in Bolivia where our Volunteer-In-Mission team traveled in 2002, I couldn’t help but think of the question one of the teachers from the school asked me when we were there.  She asked how we, in the United States, can live faithfully in light of all of our possessions.  This wasn’t the first time I had been asked this same question.  While serving on a denominational board with a pastor from the Congo, he expressed the same sentiment.  This man who either walked or rode his bike for miles and miles between his churches… this man whose wife and family lived in Belgium to insure their safety from civil war… told me that people in his congregation regularly prayed for us, knowing how hard it must be to remain faithful when we have so much.   Most of us don’t really understand their concern.  We, after all, are praying for them as they live their lives in relative poverty.  We pray for them to have lives like ours.  We, who have so much, wonder how they, who have so little, can keep the faith in the face of their need.  Today I am wondering what we can learn from their faith?

A couple of weeks ago, when I stood up here and preached on the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, I confessed to you that I had successfully avoided that difficult story from Luke’s Gospel for more than thirty years!   This morning I stand before you and confess that I have preached on the story of the ten lepers on many occasions – maybe even too many!  Ten lepers were cleansed but only one returned to give thanks – where are the other nine?  This story has afforded me many messages on the importance of giving thanks but today I am wondering if I have been faithful to the text.

            The truth is, we do have plenty to be thankful for and stopping long enough in our overly busy, important lives to thank God for all that we are and all that we have is important in our spiritual development.  But stopping to give thanks is not what caught my attention as I read this passage from Luke’s Gospel.  Today I am hearing that this is not so much a story about thanksgiving as it is a story about an outsider.  Today I am wondering what we can learn from those who most of us here would consider on the outside when it comes to God’s goodness.

            As we recap this story from Luke’s Gospel we must remember that Luke was directing his story of the life of Jesus to those on the outside of the early Christian movement.  He was writing for the Gentile community… those people who were not a part of the Jewish faith community.   In this passage we see that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem and was passing through Samaria.  To many of us reading this Gospel account today, we might think this would be like traveling north on Interstate 5 and passing through Albany on our way to Salem.  As Duck fans though, this would be more like traveling Highway 99 and passing through Corvallis on game day when the Beavers beat Cal!  Jesus was going through Samaria… a despised area… the home of the Samaritans who were enemies of faithful Jews.  If we pay attention to biblical history we learn that many years before, when the Jews were in exile, the Samaritans stayed behind and settled in the Jewish homeland.  The hatred and bitterness between the Jews and the Samaritans was no laughing matter.  It went far beyond allegiances to an institution and right to the heart of God’s promise of land and with that land,  the promise of abundant life. 

            So, in the middle of Samaria… in the middle of that hostile, foreign territory… Jesus met a gang of lepers and they called out to him “Jesus, master, have mercy on us!”  Again, knowing some biblical history will help us understand the impact of this Gospel story.  In the book of Leviticus we learn that people with leprosy were, by law, outcasts.  They begged on the outside of the city gate and sifted through the scraps at the city dump.  To be in leper in Jesus’ day was to live in absolute poverty.  To be a leper in Jesus’ day, was to not only suffer physical pain from the disease itself but also the psychological, social, and spiritual pain of living on the margins of the community as well.   If we read the book of Leviticus we also learn that a person with leprosy was required to cover their lips and announce in a loud voice, “Unclean! Unclean!” whenever other people came near. 

            According to Luke’s Gospel,  when the ten lepers saw Jesus they called out to him and he heard their pleas for help and told them to go show the priest that they were clean… that they were saved from the disease that had held them captive.  Again, the law set forth in the book of Leviticus required that, in order for a person to be officially restored to a place on the inside of community, he or she must first present himself or herself to a priest to be certified as clean.  So that is what the ten lepers did… but one stopped and turned around and came back to Jesus to say thanks.  But then Jesus reportedly berated the other nine for doing exactly what he had told them to do.  And as we hear this Gospel story, many a good preacher has grabbed hold of what we believe is ingratitude on the part of the nine (who most likely were simply trying to obey the rules so they could finally home) and then offer the admonition for us all to be like the one in ten, living a life of gratitude to God. 

            But today, I am not hearing a story about the ingratitude of the nine.  Today, I am hearing a story about the one. In The Message, Eugene Peterson calls this one who returned to say thank you an “outsider.”  Today I am hearing that this as a story about an outsider giving thanks and wondering if there is good news for us in the Gospel. To borrow the words of Will Willimon, “…maybe Jesus is making a point, not about ungrateful Samaritans… maybe he is making a point about us, we insiders.  We have been given so much.  But when you are an insider… you tend to expect things and what was once a gift becomes a right.  And who gives thanks for their rights.?”*  This morning, I am wondering what we insiders can learn from the one on the outside?

            Several weeks ago, John and I went to see the movie “Outsourced.”  It is a story about a telemarketing company which out-sources its call center to India.  I don’t often include current movies in my preaching because I don’t like to spoil the plot for anyone who is planning on seeing the movie.  But I am going to break this unwritten rule and talk about a scene in the movie which speaks to what we, who think of ourselves as insiders, can learn from those we often place on the outside.  If you are planning on seeing this movie and hearing about it goes against your need for surprise, put your fingers in your ears and repeat the word rhubarb over and over again until your neighbor taps you on the shoulder to let you know I’m done!

            In the movie a young executive is sent to a remote community in India to work with the local people on their accents, their understanding of U.S. culture, their marketing skills, all in the effort to sell faster and therefore more.  When he arrives in the village he expects to find a nice hotel room but instead is offered lodging in the home of a relative of the local man who is in charge of the call center.  Wanting to simply get in and get out of India as quickly as possible and without any impact on his own life, he is not excited about this living arrangement.  We see him eating his breakfast on an enclosed patio off his room, pushing the food around and leaving most of it on his plate.  As he prepares to leave for the call center, he notices as a servant quickly takes his tray with the leftovers of his breakfast and instead of returning it to the kitchen she places it on top of the high wall surrounding the patio.  Within a few moments, the tray disappears.  After several mornings in a row of the same routine, the man decides to bypass the servant and puts the tray on the wall himself. 

As this story within the story is going on, the man is trying to get the workers at the call center to become more “American” in their ways in order to insure the bottom line – higher profits for the telemarketing company.  To keep from telling you the whole story, I need to go back to the tray on the wall.  After several mornings of putting his own tray on the wall, the young executive finally climbs high enough so he can see what’s on the other side.  And there on the other side of the wall is a sea of humanity living in community.  There on the other side of the wall is a joyful energy.  As he looks over the wall, the man who has been the recipient of all his breakfast leftovers, beckons him to come over to the other side.  In what becomes a transformative moment he does.  He follows the man through a maze of people and shacks and life until they arrive at the man’s own home and his invites him to sit down at his table for breakfast.  There he is treated to a banquet spread on a simple cloth on the ground with hard boiled eggs and cakes grilled in a Volkswagen hubcap and the laughter and love of a family sharing together.  I will not divulge how the movie ends but simply say that when this man who thought of himself as an insider with nothing to learn from anyone else… when he climbed over that wall, his life changed and he was, to use the language of the Gospel, “changed from the inside out.” 

            What is Christ trying to teach us today about living lives with gratitude and thanksgiving?  What walls do we need to look over to the other side to learn a lesson of faith?  What will an outsider teach us about living faithfully as followers of Jesus Christ?  The words of Paul to the early Christians living in Rome challenge us to follow… “So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering.  Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for God.  Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit in without even thinking.  Instead, fix you attention on God.  You’ll be changed from the inside out.”  Romans 12:1-2 from The Message

*From a sermon in “Pulpit Resource”