Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Beyond Mechanical Obedience”
Delivered by Reverend Dan De Leon
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Psalm 111; 2 Timothy 2:8-15; Luke 17:11-19
We seldom realize that we are not appreciating someone else’s perspective until it’s too late. It’s only after the fact that we notice how we have neglected someone else’s situation, someone else’s values, someone else’s etiquette, someone else’s strong opinions. We cross a line, we step on somebody’s toes, we put our foot in our mouth and all we can do is take a word from Homer Simpson and cry out, “Doh!”
You prepare a wonderful spread of barbecue for your guests, only to discover later that some of them are vegetarians. You say to the birthday girl, “I can’t wait to see you at your party tonight,” only to find out later that it was supposed to be a surprise party. You invite your Jewish friend and your Agnostic friend to a community-wide fundraising dinner for a charitable organization, and a local minister offers a prayer from the podium where he says, “O precious Jesus, we thank you for this meal set before us tonight, and we ask that you bless it to the nourishment of our bodies and our bodies to thy service, we pray in the name of Christ Jesus, our risen Lord and savior. Amen.”
We mean well, but we don’t always take into account the viewpoints and familiarities of people close to us. When I was in college, I invited my friend Jake to attend worship with me at First Baptist Church. And on that particular Sunday, they were observing a baptism. Well, Jake was not a very religious guy; in fact, his only association with religion was through the Episcopalian private school he attended for a few years. All he really knew about baptism was the sprinkling thing.
So, Jake and I sat up in the balcony of this big Baptist church with the organ blasting and the congregation singing. And Jake was a good sport. He went through the motions, she sang the hymns and all that. But then the minister and another guy dressed in a white robe waded into the baptismal pool at the side of the sanctuary. This was run of the mill for me, but it was completely foreign to Jake.
Jake said, “What’s going on?” I said, “It’s a baptism.” Jake said, “Oh, OK. I get it. You guys actually get it the water for the sprinkling. Not so messy that way.” I said, “Well, kind of…” And before I could say anything else, the minister places his hand over the guy’s face, leans him back and plunges him under the water. Jake’s eyes go as wide as half dollars and he jumps up out of the pew like it was some knee-jerk reaction from shock. And Jake says to me, loud enough for the whole balcony to hear, “The minister’s drowning that guy! Somebody’s got to help him!”
I calmed Jake down pretty quickly after that, but I learned my lesson from that incident: Don’t take people’s perspectives for granted. And don’t take your own perspective for granted. We extend a hand of welcome and hospitality to strangers, but even in those innocent intentions, we tend to neglect where our guests are in their lives. We overlook the perspectives of the very ones we are trying to welcome. We don’t meet them where they are, and it’s all because we take our own perspectives for granted.
I shared a story Wednesday night about how our 41st president did this on July 26, 1990. George Herbert Walker Bush was in the Rose Garden surrounded by a sea of joyful onlookers, all of whom had physical disabilities. The president was about to sign the Americans with Disabilities Act. And standing right behind the president was the Reverend Dr. Harold Wilke. Wilke was a United Church of Christ minister who was a champion of disabilities awareness activism in public education and church settings. And Wilke was disabled himself. He was born without arms. But he led an active life and a fruitful ministry that now found him in the Rose Garden overlooking the president who was signing the ADA into law.
The president was confident in this good work, and it showed on his face as he smiled and scribbled his name on this civil rights legislation. He was so happy that our country was doing a good thing, and then he turned around and, without thinking, handed his pen to Rev. Dr. Wilke…who had no arms. The president, representing the interests of the American people, had the most welcoming and hospitable of intentions, but he had overlooked Wilke’s perspective, because in a moment of jubilation he had taken his own for granted.
But Wilke heard the laughter from the crowd at the president’s honest folly. And he lifted up his leg, received the pen from the president with his toes, and said in a hearty voice, “God bless.”
This same hearty “God bless” is what the Samaritan, cured from his leprosy, says to Jesus in today’s Gospel account. This is a story about healing and salvation. Ten lepers—one of them is a Samaritan—keeping their distance from the crowd on account of their uncleanness. They cry out to Jesus, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” And Jesus replies, “You know what to do. Go show yourselves to the priests!” And they obediently go.
On their way to the priests, they are made clean, these ten lepers. They present themselves to the priests, because that’s Jewish custom: You’re made clean, so you present yourself and your cleanness to the priest. That should be the end of the story, right? It’s a miracle story. It’s a healing.
But then one of the ten reappears. The Samaritan, the one who is unfamiliar with Judaism—this foreigner reappears in the story, catches up with Jesus and says, “Thank you.” You can almost hear him panting from exhaustion and excitement, catching up to Jesus and leaning over with his hands on his knees, and looking up at Jesus saying a hearty ‘God bless.’
The foreigner, the outsider, the one who’s perspective isn’t taken into account when Jesus says, “You know what to do. Go present yourself to the priests!”—this one returns to Jesus to say, “Thank you. God bless.”
And Jesus looks over the Samaritan’s shoulder and says, “Where are the other guys? Where are the other nine?” But Jesus eventually shrugs it off and looks again at the Samaritan and says, “Your faith has made you well.”
Now, a quick detail about this: the verb that reads, ‘made you well,’ is literally translated to mean, ‘saved you.’ Jesus says to the Samaritan, “Your faith has saved you.” It’s a story about healing and it’s a story about salvation. Do you ever notice that the church is our shared story of healing and salvation?
Well, let me back up: Why do we come to church? In a sense, we’re all here for some kind of healing to take place. We suffer from a social void or a social incompleteness, so we come to church. We suffer from guilt over a lack of spirituality or an inconsistent or even non-existent relationship with God, so we come to church. We suffer from too much busyness, too much chaos in our lives with work, school, kids, family, so we come to church to just sit here and relax for a few minutes. We might even suffer out of overwhelming sympathy for the world’s social injustice and war, so we come to church hoping for some comfort—for some good news.
We suffer, so we come to church to be healed. Some Sundays we get our miracle cure; some Sundays we don’t, but we keep coming back to get that healing. Or, in the case that I have been frustrated with for years, we go church-shopping until we find that place that will always heal us. Here’s a fact: that church doesn’t exist. Hang onto that for a second.
Professor J.A. Findlay writes in a biblical commentary, “Faith is more than mechanical obedience; it is love in action.” What if we come to church to be healed, but we never taste salvation? What if we’re only in the first half of the story from Luke, which is really kind of boring? Ten lepers call out to Jesus for help. He tells them to go to the priest, and they go, and we assume that they are healed. End of story. So boring.
Thank God there’s more. “Faith is more than mechanical obedience; it is love in action.” Are we coming to church out of some blind obedience and just going through the motions? Are we being healed but never really tasting salvation? Maybe we need for the Samaritan to reappear in the story, like he does with Jesus, and for that Samaritan in our midst to remind us that there’s more to church than just a weekly healing. Maybe we need to be reminded of how often we take our faith perspective for granted with a wakeup call from an unlikely church visitor, like my pal Jake, yelling from the balcony. Maybe we need an armless UCC minister like Harold Wilke who’s been everywhere from the public school classroom to the White House Rose Garden to waltz in these church doors and give us a wakeup call, like he did to the 41st president, with a hearty ‘God bless.’ Maybe we need a taste of salvation, because faith is more than mechanical obedience; it is love in action.
Whatever reason you have for being here this morning, it’s good. In your own unique way, you’re here to be healed. But now that we are here, don’t we want to journey together toward salvation; that same kind of salvation that Jesus was telling the Samaritan about? “Your faith has made you well. Your faith has saved you.” That could be us.
So, this morning, let’s share a wakeup call, and let’s look at church as more than just a place to come for the occasional healing. Let’s look at this church as a place where we can share our faith journeys together; a place where we can all taste salvation along the way. A sure way for us to taste that salvation is to appreciate other people’s perspectives: to appreciate where others are in their lives. And we do this by first appreciating and embracing and understanding where we are in our own lives—never forgetting the blessed charge that comes with this beautiful healing.
Here’s an example. You can find healing in the pages of the Bible. Why do you think it is so graciously placed in the bedside tables of our hotel beds? So you turn to the New Testament and you decide you’ll find some healing for your urge to be a good Christian by memorizing some scripture before you start your day. That takes obedience. And obedience finds healing. But where is the salvation?
It’s one thing to spout of the words off the Bible: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Galatians 5:22.” It is quite another thing to apply those words to your life and to become part of God’s ongoing story that goes beyond the pages of scripture. And as you apply that rich resource of God’s Word to your life, you come to discover that you actually are capable of living your life in accordance to what this God requires of us: to offer hospitality to the stranger, to serve the alien, to welcome the oppressed and the marginalized, to love the poor and the widow and the orphan. And while we are about this kind of obedient healing, we come to discover that the very ones we are serving and welcoming and loving are the ones who offer us salvation.
As we go from this place, may live by more than just the mechanics of obedience. May we live our faith by putting love into action. We might make some unlikely friends along the way who would offer us a taste of salvation. Amen.