“The Exile of Disease”

Luke 17:11-19

A sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley

March 13, 2005

University Baptist Church

Minneapolis, MN

 

 

 

            We have now reached the fifth Sunday in Lent.  Throughout this season we have looked at the theme of exile.  We have looked at the exile of secrets, the exile of hopelessness, the exile of despair, and the exile of selective solidarity.  Next week we will look at the exile of betrayal on Palm Sunday followed by the exile of the cross on Good Friday.  That’s a lot of exile.  It is because there is a lot of exile out there.  There is a lot of pain out there.  There is a lot of suffering.  There is a lot of injustice. 

And if we are to truly address any of these things, like Jesus would have us do, then it makes sense that we look at each of them.  They inform how we look at our lives.  They inform how we interpret the Easter resurrection, because they remind us what we seek to be resurrected from.  Today, we will look at the exile of disease.

            When we think of disease, we think of doctors and ailments and aches and pains and chemotherapy and kidney stones.  We think of depression and distemper.  We think of schizophrenia and kleptomania.  We think of influenza and affluenza.  We can name and list plenty of diseases.  But let’s not only think of it as an illness.  If we are all supposed to live at ease in our lives, then a disease is anything that keeps us from being at ease.  The great healers of our day say that real healing is a matter of restoring someone to wholeness.  Wholeness is the balance between mind, body and spirit.  Our physicians deal with our physical imbalances.  Our psychiatrists and counselors deal with our mental imbalances.  Us church folk ought to be able to deal with our spiritual imbalances.  But if any one of these is out of balance, we are not functioning at ease.  We are dysfunctioning which leads to dis-ease.

            Think about the places in our world that are out of balance.  Think about the places in our lives that are out of balance.  If we’re honest about it, there are plenty of them. 

            Think about the people in today’s scripture.  There was a whole lot that was out of balance about them.  The scripture is very clear about the ways in which they were diseased in a diseased society.  Ten people in the village were lepers.  Now, Biblical leprosy could refer to whole range of skin diseases from eczema to psoriasis to full blow leprosy to just a rash.  But they were all called lepers.  They were lumped together, like we lump together as mentally ill whole swaths of people.  But the disease had to do with the community.  A leper was not allowed to be a full participant in the community life.  They were ostracized.  They were feared and prejudged.  They had to wear signs around their necks and yell “unclean, unclean” whenever they walked by someone.  How humiliating.  Because if someone touched an unclean person, they were unclean, too.  The only person who could make them clean again was the priest who lived in the synagogue.  He was the one who could restore the person to the community. 

So the “lepers” called to Jesus from afar, so as not to make him unclean.  They said, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”  They did not say “heal us”.  They said, “Have mercy on us”.  Apparently, no one else had mercy on them.  Jesus did not go and heal them physically.  He told them instead to go and show themselves to the priests.  And they went and were “made clean.”  Again, it does not say they were healed.  It says they were declared to be clean.  They were restored to the community. 

Think about the times when you have been ostracized by a community.  It’s hell when it happens.  It grates at your soul.  You feel like you have a sign around your neck.  People treat you as if you are dangerous. 

How would it have been to be restored?

Pete Meyer was a youth group leader at the First Baptist Church of Granville, Ohio when I was working at the University a thousand years ago.  He was well-liked by the youth and the congregation.  But when the church became more active in its welcome of all people regardless of sexual orientation, it was more than he could take.  He very publicly left the church.  A dozen years later, he visited the pastor.  With fear and trepidation, he came by to confess that he had been wrong in his judgements.  He wondered if the church would take him back.  The pastor said, “of course”.  But Pete wanted more than that.  He wanted to restore himself to the community.  He asked to confess his sins before the congregation in a testimony and to write a confessional newsletter article.  He repented of his part in the disease that had broken his heart with that church community.  He was tearfully and joyfully welcomed back.

I recently saw the movie, “The Motorcycle Diaries”.  In the movie, a young med student named Che Guevara traveled around South America with his best fried.  They found themselves at a leper colony on the Amazon River.  On one side of the river lived the physicians and the nuns, the healers of body and spirit.  On the other side of the river lived the lepers, shunned by their families and humiliated by the so-called healers.  Che immediately refused to wear gloves, touching the lepers and knowing them as people, as individuals.  His work amongst the lepers caused him to look more critically at the world in which disease is rampant.  And much of it need not be.

We need healing from our disease.  We need to restore that sense of community that will make us whole again.

The one person who came back to thank Jesus was a Samaritan, an outsider, a hated person who likely did not trust the priest too much.  Dr. Luke reminds us through the Samaritan’s thankful response that we all need to remember that healing is not just of the body, it is of the community, too.  Part of the healing that Jesus came to do had to do with loving our enemies and praying for those who persecute us.  It mean that Jews and Samaritans need to get along, which is a lot like saying Kurds and Sunnis and Shiites need to get along, Palestinians and Israelis need to get along, reds and blues need to get along, fundamentalists and progressives need to find a way to get along.  Jesus came to all of them, just like Jesus comes to all of us.

Back when I was serving my first church in Hartford Connecticut, we started holding monthly interfaith healing services for people affected by AIDS.  It was early in the pandemic when we were losing a generation of people and too much of the church had turned a blind eye to it.  We gathered together and prayed.  On a number of occasions, I was honored to be in a group of clergy and lay people that stood at different corners of the sanctuary to pray for people who came to our station.  Some came weeping.  Some came alone.  Some came with family and friends.  Some came numb.   Some never went to church.  I laid hands on a church member, Pierre one evening.  A Haitian immigrant, he later got up the guts to tell me that he had HIV.  But he also swore me to secrecy. 

He specifically told me not to tell the people in the church for fear that they would shun him.  What I didn’t realize at the time was that Pierre was actually healing me by offering me a window into his life.  I worked harder after that time to make sure that no one was ever treated in such a way as to be considered an outsider in a church family.  I have variably succeeded and failed at that task in my ministry.

We are a people in disease.  We need to find places where we can be restored to physical health, mental health, spiritual health, emotional health.

In a few minutes, we will invite you to consider those places where you have disease.  We will invite you to pray about them.  If you choose, we will also invite you to come to a healing station where you might receive a healing hand and a personal prayer from a few of the ministers among us.

Remember, friends, that whatever is happening in your life, whatever you or your loved ones might feel ill at ease about, God knows it already.  And God is ready to hear your needs and restore you to health.  That health might not mean that all of your disease goes away, but perhaps when we bring it to God and surround it and bathe it in the love of this church community, then we might find some more ease with which to face the world. 

Sisters and brothers, in the midst of disease, never forget that there is a balm in Gilead, there is a place where the wounded are made whole, there is a person who does not judge you, and there is a healing river.  Jesus said to the Samaritan, go your way, for faith has made you well.