Time We Learn Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7, Luke 17:11-17

There’s something about hardship that brings people together;
something about shared misery that has the capacity
to wipe the slate clean of all those pesky little superficialities
we are so prone to cling to.
Like being stranded in a small plane on the tarmac for three hours.

Whenever I fly I do what I can to get an aisle seat
and then I hope that my seat mate will be a thin, elderly man
who will fall fast asleep against the window as soon as he buckles his seatbelt.
I’m very good on a plane at putting out vibes that say “Leave me alone.”
I’m not usually so unfriendly, but there’s just so much at stake.
Open the door even a MILLIMETER to some people
and you’ll end up listening to a dissertation on variables in cardboard density
pursuant to custom box construction

I was on my way to see my friend in New Hampshire, flying from Dulles to Manchester.
The tiny prop plane was unusually crowded for that flight
and I ended up sitting beside a woman whom I took to be of Indian descent
dressed in a sari, a red dot on her forehead, and smelling faintly of curry.
She was looking straight ahead when I sat down, avoiding eye contact.
“That’s just fine with me,” I thought to myself,
buckling my seatbelt and getting out the book I’d brought to read.

It was raining, and the plane backed away from the terminal
so it could be logged in officially as an “on time departure,”
but then we sat. And sat. And sat.
Finally, after about 45 minutes, the captain came on the loudspeaker
and told us that an instrument light had come on
and a mechanic was on his way to check it out.
We sat. And sat some more. The woman next to me who was also reading,
sighed and looked up.
I sneaked a glance at her out of the corner of my eye.
She looked worried.

After an hour and a half, we were all getting restless.
Chatter in the plane increased.
Every now and then someone would say out loud, “This is ridiculous!”
After two hours my seat mate sighed again.
I was bored with reading. I decided to risk it.
“Are you on a tight schedule?” I asked, looking straight ahead.
“Yes.” She replied. That’s it. “Yes.”
“Wow, little Miss Chatty Cathy,” I thought to myself, and went back to reading.

But at 2 ½ hrs. I was bored again. And hot.
“Do you live in New Hampshire?” I asked.
“No.”
I waited. She was quiet. That bugged me.
But then, after a minute, still looking straight ahead,
she said in heavily accented but clear English, “My son lives in Hanover.”
That piqued my interest because I was going to Hanover.
Knowing that my doctor friend in Hanover has Indian colleagues.
I asked, “Is your son a doctor?”
A little spark came into her eyes, and with some surprise she said, “Yes, he is.
“He’s a cardiologist at the Hitchcock Medical Center.”
“I’m going to see a friend who is a cardiologist at the Hitchcock Medical Center.” I said.
For the first time in the nearly three hours we’d been sitting
practically on top of one another, our eyes met.
Suddenly this foreign looking, foreign speaking, foreign smelling woman
became a person of interest to me and I to her.

It wasn’t long before the plane finally took off,
but we hardly noticed because we were engaged in conversation.
She lives in Annapolis, knows of the school my son attends,
has connections in North Carolina,
comes to conferences at UVA.
The flight to Manchester took no time, it seemed,
and we chatted until it was time to de-plane.
“Enjoy your visit,” she said. “You, too,” I replied.
Then we walked into the Manchester terminal and went our separate ways.

There’s something about hardship that brings people together;
something about shared misery that has the capacity
to wipe the slate clean of all those pesky little superficialities
we are so prone to cling to.
We are very good at making foreigners of each other,
but, given the chance, we are also able to connect on a deeper level.
That is the message at the heart of Luke’s story of Jesus healing the Samaritan leper.

The story appears to be similar to all the other healing stories in the gospels.
But on more careful examination there’s a significant twist.
Jesus is KNOWN for his willingness to give attention
to those in his society that most people shunned, or at least ignored.
But anytime there’s a Samaritan in the story, we know the stakes are raised.
The addition of a religiously tainted Samaritan to the mix
always increases the “cringe” factor for a Jewish audience.
It adds a component of xenophobia, a disorienting challenge to the status quo.

This story of healing is different from others,
because the cleansing of at least nine of the lepers seems to have little or nothing
to do with their faith.
All they ask is that Jesus’ have mercy on them –
toss them a coin from a distance,
maybe a scrap of bread for their supper.
Faith comes for one of them only AFTER cleansing,
and with it not just freedom from symptoms but wellness, wholeness, shalom.

There’s something about hardship that brings people together;
something about shared misery that has the capacity
to wipe the slate clean of all those pesky little superficialities
we are so prone to cling to.
In the Jewish world, Samaritans were less than dogs;
a group who traced their lineage back to the northern tribes of Israel
who were left behind after Assyria conquered Israel and took some into exile.
They were always a minority and they didn’t help their case
by asserting that Mt. Gerazim and not Jerusalem was God’s favorite place to be.
The GOOD Jews of Jerusalem found plenty to hate about the Samaritans
and, well, every group needs another group to blame for everything that goes wrong.
Certainly the Samaritans hated the Jews for being so…so…JEWISH.

But when a debilitating, mysterious, contagious disease enters your life
you learn really quickly that friends are few,
and it kicks you off whatever rung of the ladder you happen to be on
sending you straight to the bottom – Jew OR Samaritan.
Or, at least that’s what happened in Jesus’ day
before antibiotics were discovered offering a fairly certain cure.
So the ten, mostly Jews probably, but at least one Samaritan,
found that the stupid little walls of religion or heritage they so easily erected,
the petty differences they used to set themselves apart from one another
got in the way of their survival.
So the walls came down.

And then, one day, Jesus came.
“Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”
Jesus took one look and he told them to go show themselves to the priest.
That’s what you had to do to be restored to the community after you’d had leprosy;
go show yourself to the priest and prove you were no longer unclean.
Ten went, their hearts in their throats,
and as they went their limbs were strengthened,
their flesh was restored.

Ten went, but then something dawned on the one Samaritan.
With leprosy he had been part of the group,
knit together in their common struggle,
not caring one whit about religious or cultural affiliations.
But once they met with the priest the barriers would be thrown up once again,
the petty differences among them would be noted, highlighted, trumpeted,
printed on a huge banner and strung between two tall trees -
who their parents were, what neighborhood they lived in,
did they speak Greek or Aramaic?
Were they Jews or Samaritans?

So, the Samaritan didn’t go to the priest.
He came back instead to Jesus – giving thanks and praise for the cleansing,
but more than that.
He came back identifying himself as one who was not content
to return to the way things were;
not interested in making foreigners out of fellow human beings any more.
“Weren’t there ten lepers,” Jesus asks.
“I coulda sworn there were ten.
“Oh well, get up,” he tells the Samaritan, “Your faith has made you well.”
But not just WELL. The Greek word translated here could also be translated “saved.”
“Get up,” Jesus says, “Your faith has SAVED you.”

Misery is the great leveler. Hardship has a way of bonding us together.
But the Samaritan found out that we don’t have to wait
for suffering to motivate us to find in each other our common humanity.
We don’t have to make foreigners of one another
until a common struggle brings us together.
Scratch the surface of any human being
and you’ll find there more that makes us similar than different –
a hunger for respect, a need to feel connected,
a friend and a son who work together at Hitchcock Medical Center!
When there were only a couple hundred million people on earth
maybe this wasn’t so critical for human beings to understand,
but now that the population of the earth is 6 BILLION strong and growing
it’s time we learn.