18th Sunday After Pentecost
2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15 Psalm 11 2 Timothy 2:8-15 Luke 17:11-19 Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, grace and peace to you from God who is powerful and gracious. Amen Hallelujah! I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart the psalmists exclaims this morning and goes on to extol why whole hearted thanksgiving is appropriate for God, Great are your works O Lord, Majesty and splendor mark your deeds, and your righteousness endures forever, you have shown your people the power of your works and so on and so forth, painting a picture of a powerful God capable of anything, one who should inspire awe and even a little fear as the Psalmist concludes “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” we start to become wise when we realize how little power we have, how limited our understanding of what God is capable of is. And yet, as humans we seem to frequently both expect great displays of power from God, and miss or almost miss them when they occur because God who is gracious and merciful and full of compassion rarely acts as we humans expect, namely in the same way that we would do something. In fact it’s usually the opposite, God frequently uses power in ways we least expect among the people we think don’t deserve it, that is the grace of God, forgiveness, mercy, salvation, given because of the goodness of God not because it is earned or deserved And we’re generally okay with that when that grace is directed toward us, but it seems to really upset us when others, especially our enemies are on the receiving end of grace as well. In fact that’s the key to grace It’s for everyone I was at fall theological conference earlier this week and Bishop Maas reminded us all that “It’s not grace until it upsets you” (he used slightly stronger language than that). God extending grace in the world Will invariably upset someone Take the story of Naaman, God’s grace and mercy are on display but in all the unexpected and dare we say wrong ways. Naaman is not an Israelite, in fact he’s spent a good amount of time waging war on the Israelites and has been successful enough to take captives as slaves, and yet it’s that small girl from Israel whose faith in the power of God suggests that the prophet in service of the God of Israel could heal her captor. And Naaman who must be really itchy decides to give it a try and sends a letter to the King of Israel, who thinks, this is a trap another way to provoke war why else would he write? but Elijah the prophet tells the king to let him come, and so Naaman comes in a great display of wealth to meet this supposedly great and powerful prophet, and what happens? Elisha doesn’t even come out of his tent, he sends a messenger telling Naaman to wash in the Jordan river seven times, and this upsets Naaman, he was expecting a display of power, a great show at the very least and all he gets is a messenger telling him to go wash in a piddly little stream, and he throws a temper tantrum refuses to do as Elisha instructs until his servants point out to him that if the prophet had told him to do something difficult he would have done it, so why not try doing the easy thing that was actually instructed. And seeing sense in that Naaman goes and follows the instructions and he is healed. He almost missed being healed, witnessing the power of God because the way God chose to work didn’t seem powerful enough, let alone the fact that from the perspective of Israel he was an enemy of the people of God, he certainly didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of the grace of God, and yet God acted with power, and grace. It’s not grace until it upsets someone. Equally potentially upsetting is our gospel story for today. Jesus displays the power and grace of God and even though it’s Jesus, it’s still not what we expect from God On the way to Jerusalem Jesus passes through a boarder region between Samaria and Galilee. Remember in the Bible Samaritans are the stand in for everyone that we think doesn’t deserves the grace of God. So Jesus is traveling through Samaria, the proverbial wrong side of the tracks and he is doing it intentionally, there was a route from Galilee to Jerusalem that avoided this region As Jesus approaches a village in this borderlands ten people with leprosy approach him, in a place that is already on the margins these are the marginalized, those with leprosy were excluded from community life, they were taught to keep a safe distance from everyone because they were considered religiously unclean. and even more than that, logic of the day said that these people were sick because they were being punished by God for something they had done, even God doesn’t like them they were told the people with leprosy call out to Jesus for mercy. And Jesus see them. and responds with mercy, he heals them, not with some flashy display but by telling them to go show themselves to the priests, And as they go they are made clean. These people that conventional wisdom says do not deserve the grace of God And then one out of the ten sees that he has been healed, he recognizes God’s mercy at work in Jesus and he turns back praising God with a loud voice and thanks Jesus. And the punchline of the story is that the one who gets it is a samaritan, a leperous Samaritan, two strikes against him and yet he is the one that returns and praises God. Now to be fair if I was one of those other nine and I saw I was healed I would continue to follow the directions of Jesus precisely, he said go and show the priests and that’s what I would do, which makes it all the more upsetting that the one who is praised is the one that doesn’t follow through on the instructions. See how easy it is to be upset by the grace of God? And yet This is our God, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, love so great that God became human, and walked among us preaching and healing even though God knew that it would eventually lead to a brutal death on the cross because that way of life would be so upsetting to those in power, or at least what passes for power among humanity and even then death could not contain God and on the third day Jesus rose from the dead. All so that we would no longer be tormented by the finality of death. This is our God, the one who offers mercy first and asks questions later, Who extends grace to all, even and especially to those who don’t deserve it, grace that often goes unnoticed by us and upsets us when we do, grace that causes us to proclaim Hallelujah! I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart. Amen
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AboutPastor Emily Johnson preaches weekly at Christ Lutheran. These are manuscripts of her sermons given at Christ Lutheran. Feel free to engage with them in the comments section of the blog. Archives
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