Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne
2 Timothy 2. 8-15; Luke 17. 11-19
“He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan.”
Whom do you hate?
Gebhard Fugel, Ten Lepers Call Out to Jesus (1920), hangs in the Diocesan Museum of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, in Freising.
Do you hate Muslims?
Do you hate… Tories?
Do you hate Black people? Do you hate posh people? Do you hate Nigel Farage? Do you, well, want to make clear you’re not anti-Semitic, of course, but actually you hate the Israelis? Or do you hate sanctimonious lefty-liberals who have self-righteousness like other people have bad breath?
We all have a little bit of hatred for somebody or other tucked away in us somewhere. None of us is all-kind and all-loving all the time. We all form in-groups and out-groups—that’s just part of human nature. We can’t possibly know everything we need to know to make a judgement as to whether to trust somebody we’ve just met, so we all look for shortcuts to help us form a view of them. Although our higher aspirations rightly make us try to suppress these instincts, it’s not always easy to navigate the world without them, and they aren’t easy to control.
For the Jews of Jesus’ time and place, the people they hated were the Samaritans. Their religion was very similar to that of the Jews, but that just made the ways in which it was slightly different even more upsetting. Unlike the Jews, the Samaritans hadn’t been sent into exile by the Babylonians, but had always lived in the Holy Land— so as far as the Samaritans were concerned, they were the true descendants of Moses and David, while the Jews were the people whose religion had been corrupted by funny foreign ideas.
We all know one Bible story about the Samaritans – the Parable of the Good Samaritan. There’s also, in John’s Gospel, the conversation at the well between Jesus and the Samaritan woman. When we hear the Samaritans playing a starring role in a Gospel story, we know that Jesus is telling His followers that He is for the whole human race part of what He is about is breaking boundaries of nation and tribe.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus goes a lot further than that, for this Samaritan isn’t just a heretic, but a leper! Nowadays, we instinctively regard leprosy with a mixture of fear and revulsion even though it is a treatable disease and we know it isn’t transmitted by casual contact. Think how much more intense the fear and prejudice must have been then.
And there’s something even more profound here—this Samaritan leper isn’t just someone loved by God, Jesus uses him as a good example. He sets the standard of how others should behave. God people as they are, and saves people as they are, and often uses those considered worthless in the eyes of the world to confound those who think they’re better.
And what is it that Jesus wants us to emulate about the Samaritan? He is the only one of the ten healed lepers who praised God and who gave thanks.
Simply to be grateful for what God has given us should be fundamental to how we live our lives as Christians; to praise God for all that is good in our lives and which remains good even in the midst of the dark moments and the pain.
The Bishop of Salisbury made a point at Diocesan Synod yesterday which bears repeating: of all the people who have worshipped in this church over more than 800 years, we are the richest, the healthiest, and the longest-living. Yet so many people complain about what they lack rather than being grateful for what they have. Yet if we take time to be grateful to God, life somehow just works better.
All the secular self-help gurus say something similar—that if we live our lives being intentionally thankful for all that is good in them, then our outlook on life becomes much more positive. Living a life that is full of thanks and praise to God means living a life that is happier and richer. But is there something more to be said?
Let’s turn to our first reading, from St Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy. Paul wrote it towards the end of his life, and he was having a really hard time. Now, if you’ve heard much of St Paul, you’ll know he had been a pillar of respectability on two grounds – a pious and rather fanatical religious leader among the Jews, but also a Roman citizen, something he was obviously very proud of as he liked to remind people of it. Convicts were no more popular in the ancient world than they are today, yet here he is, this figure of pious respectability enduring the shame of being locked-up and all the ways that becomes much harder with advancing years.
Paul says this is something he is willing to endure, for one reason – as the cost of proclaiming the good news that Jesus rose from the dead. The Resurrection is what makes the huge loss Paul has endured in his social and material circumstances since his conversion worthwhile to him. As we writes in this passage, probably quoting one of the very earliest Christian hymns:
If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
if we endure, we will also reign with him.
In that light Paul advises his readers to avoid wrangling over words. We know that even in the first decades after Christ, the Church was already as beset by splits and divisions as it is now. Indeed Paul was involved in quite a few of them. Some of them were, and some of them still are, important. But all of them are put into their proper context by the enormous shift in our perspective that should come embracing Christ liberating us from death.
Nothing beyond these few sentences is recorded about the Samaritan’s life. We certainly don’t get any hint that he later converted to Judaism, or to Christianity, or that Jesus told him to do so. Instead Jesus tells the Samaritan, as He so often told people, that his Faith has made him well. Not being of the right religion; not even consciously making a declaration of Faith, but simply having Faith, something demonstrated by his thanks and praise to God. Paul, also, is not necessarily interested in the fine detail of what people believe. Instead he wants to cultivate an attitude – he wants people to have faith. that Christ has opened eternal life to them. It isn’t something one can earn, but through faith, you can learn that this free gift of God is already yours.
If you have Faith, then it doesn’t matter who you are, where you came from, or how many wrong turns you’ve taken on the way to get here. And be aware that the people who have most to teach you may be people you look down on—perhaps even people you hate.
Of course, everything of value in our lives is already a free gift of God. The Samaritan leper, reviled by those around him, should be the example to us across the centuries of how to be grateful to God for what we have. Try to live a better life, and be aware that the example for how to live better may be someone you think you should hate—and if you truly trust that Christ will raise you from the dead to live with Him forever, that should leave no space in your heart for hate.
And now to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and power, as is most justly His due, now and forevermore. Amen.
