Forgiveness and Gratitude.

Luke 17:1-19

I.

            Jesus teaches his disciples to adopt a circumspect, humble, gentle, and grateful trust in God.  One thing for which Jesus has no tolerance is a self-righteous, superior attitude towards our sisters and brothers in the gathering of disciples.  Rather, he preaches and exemplifies repentance, forgiveness, acceptance, gratitude and love.

            When Jesus says we should not cause another to “stumble,” he is later echoed by the Apostle Paul, who does not want the freedom of strong Christians to undermine the faith of weaker Christians.  Paul says it is better not to use your freedom at all, if using it offends another Christian.

            Jesus says it is better to die by drowning than to weaken the faith of another believer.  One way we weaken others’ faith is by our hypocrisy.  For instance, if we come to church each Sunday and learn about forgiveness, non-violence, generosity, gentleness, integrity, and fairness, but then we are observed during the week doing exactly the opposite, a person might feel themselves justified in holding that this Christian thing is a lot of nonsense, just a smoke-screen or window-dressing or pretense. 

            One of the big reasons the church is in such trouble today is that people who might be inclined to love and follow Jesus, are turned off by the contradictory witness of Christians.  Many Christians are good at talking about God’s love, but their actions are full of fear, anger, violence, exclusion, judgment, and condemnation.

            Jesus tells his disciples, “Be on your guard!”  He means that we need to guard against the self-righteousness and hypocrisy, carelessness and superiority, in ourselves.  Even to the point of continually forgiving, that is, releasing, a sister or brother from the consequences of their own bad behavior.  As long as a person is still authentically on the journey of faith, we must not hold it against them when they fall short.  As long as they keep repenting with sincerity, that is, as long as they show their mind and actions changing, we are to work with them and love them through it.  We are to realize that we too are on the same journey and we do the same backsliding and regressing.  We fail at faithfulness and rely upon God’s forgiveness all the time, and we have to extend that forgiveness to others.

            So both of these commandments from the Lord have to do with attentiveness and care for the faith of our sisters and brothers in the gathering.  We are to see things, even ourselves, from their perspective.  We are to consider how our words and actions might strengthen or undermine their discipleship.  Because we are all in this together, and we need to support and encourage each other and hold each other up, keep each other safe, and always be ready to welcome each other.  We are to give people second, third, fourth, and even more, chances.  We are to leave no one behind, and give no one an excuse to leave our communion.

II.

            This is a tall order for human beings, and the disciples are right to ask for Jesus’ assistance.  “Increase our faith!” they say.  “Help us better to trust in God; enable us to turn our lives over to God so we can live the way you teach us to live.”

            To which Jesus says that to trust in God is to share in God’s will and power, even to the point of willing a mulberry tree to be uprooted and planted in the sea.  I don’t think he means something like what Yoda can do with The Force, but that to trust God is to be dissolved into God’s will.  And if we will that a mulberry tree be planted in the ocean, it will happen only because and when our will is completely at the service of God’s will.  If we trust in God even a little – Jesus uses the image of a mustard seed, which is famously tiny – then God’s power is allowed to flow through us and into the world.

            Jesus is not concerned about the replanting of any mulberry trees.  He is saying that even though we might need an electron microscope to see it, the disciples do already have enough faith, enough trust in God, to be forgiving and gentle to each other in their life together.

            Then Jesus introduces an illustration drawn from household life in his time.  He says that his disciples ought to have the same attitude towards God as slaves to their master.

            Now, Jesus nowhere endorses or approves of slavery.  At the same time, the institution of slavery was extremely common in the world for thousands of years, up to merely 200 years ago.  It was simply a fact of Jesus’ economic existence.  He doesn’t answer the questions he puts in the mouth of the slave owner.  His hearers would have been bitterly aware of the fact that no master would be so kind and graceful as to invite his slaves to his dinner table. 

            But the slave owner is not the example Jesus lifts up here.  It is of course the slave.  He says we are to be as transparent in our obedience to God as a slave is to a master.

            Now to us Americans that is either non-sensical or offensive.  From our historical standpoint, slaves have every right to try to escape from or rebel against their masters.  It is not Jesus’ purpose to comment on this institution here.  He simply makes the point that our obedience to God should be implicit and automatic.  We are entitled to take no credit for our trust in God, for it is by God’s grace alone that we do have this trust. 

            It’s like when someone helps us in some professional capacity, and when we thank them they say, “No need to thank me; I’m just doing my job.”  Or when someone commits an act of heroism and they say, “I only did what anyone would have done in my place.”     

            The attitude that Jesus is looking for here is for us to say: “We are nobodies; give God all the glory!  We do what we do only in obedience to God, through the Lord Jesus, by the Holy Spirit.”

III.

            Then comes this incident where ten lepers approach Jesus.  Luke tells us they are in a kind of “no-man’s-land” between Samaria and Galilee.  Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem, and he enters a village with his entourage, and these lepers yell from a distance up the street, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”  They couldn’t get any closer to Jesus because leprosy is highly infectious.  There are ten of them.

            Jesus calls out in answer to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests,” which is what the Bible says that lepers were supposed to do to certify that they were healed.  So, they are supposed to show this implicit trust in Jesus by turning around and seeking a priest, even though they were not yet healed.

            As soon as they make this decision and begin to show that they do trust Jesus, that is, as soon as they start making their way to the priests, they are all healed.  Nine of them continue following Jesus’ instructions.  They keep going on their way to find priests who can certify the cure according to Scripture.

            But one of them disobeys Jesus.  He turns back around, praises God in a loud voice, and throws himself down at Jesus’ feet in gratitude.  This man is not a Jew like Jesus, or a Galilean; he is a Samaritan.  Jews and Samaritans, of course, famously do not get along.

            Jesus does not rebuke the man for his disobedience.  His leprosy does not come back because he didn’t carry out Jesus’ instructions.  On the contrary, Jesus commends him.  Then he mildly criticizes the other nine lepers who do obey him.  “Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” he asks. 

            The Lord is always making the point of including the outcast and undermining the self-righteousness of his own people.  He is also saying that it is more important to thank God than to obey even his own instructions overly strictly.

            Then Jesus says to the man, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”  It moves me when Jesus says this, as he does repeatedly when he heals someone.  When he says, “Your faith has made you well,” he is saying that we already have within us the ability to trust in God and be open to God’s saving, healing activity.  So just as he told his disciples that they already had enough faith to do as he instructs them, here he tells the leper that he too already has enough faith within him for him to be healed. 

IV.

            Somewhere Jesus teaches that whenever we pray to God for something, we should act as if we have already received it.  Because we have!  God’s grace and gifts and power and blessing are all out there, all around us.  We live in a field charged with God’s goodness.  And the only thing keeping us from accessing this truth is our own ignorance and the blockages it creates.  For one thing, we don’t ask.  We prefer to deal with an illusory world of our own making than with God’s true world of beauty and goodness.

            We have to rest assured in the truth of God’s love, blessing, and goodness.  We have to trust and believe in that reality so profoundly that we celebrate and give thanks even before we experience and perceive it ourselves.  For it is only when we trust in it that we begin to perceive it.  This is the way it was for those lepers; only when they trusted Jesus enough to obey did the healing come to them.    

            This deep knowledge and awareness is the basis for everything else.  With this knowledge in our hearts, we gain the humility and sensitivity necessary not to cause a sister or brother in the faith to stumble.  We know how fragile faith is, and how difficult it is to remain open to God’s truth all the time.  All we can do is forgive and keep forgiving, and hope that eventually the message gets through. 

            With this knowledge in our hearts, we have the patience and strength to forgive another, over and over.  We can see the unconscious schemes people use to block God’s life coming to them.  And we know that no amount of human duplicity or violence has the power to change what is ultimately true.  So we become by God’s Spirit agents of forgiveness, agents of freedom and release, representatives and witnesses to God’s saving love at work in the world.

            With this knowledge in our hearts, we are empowered to obey God’s Word automatically and naturally, letting God’s energy flow into us and through us into the world, without fanfare, without seeking credit, without much effort.  Because the obedience of God is more a matter of letting go of our resistance and clearing out our blockages, than of making a supreme effort with all our might.  We turn our will over to Jesus, our Lord and Savior.

            Finally, it comes down to forgiveness and gratitude.  We let go of the hurts, the resentments, the impatience, the desire for retribution.  We forgive, we release the judgment and the evil we harbor against another.  It is when we let go of that, that we are able to receive the grace of God and give thanks for it.          

V.

            In fact we give thanks for what we have been given by releasing it.  God does not give us things to collect or hoard, but to give away.  When the Samaritan leper is healed, he doesn’t just go about his business.  He returns to Jesus and praises God with great thanksgiving.  In other words, the orientation of his life has shifted dramatically.  He goes from being part of a circle of afflicted lepers, whose whole life is defined by their disease, to praising God and entering into the circle of those who trust and follow the Lord Jesus.  Now his life is defined by the miracle of healing, his release from sickness, his gratitude, and his discipleship.

            We too have to look up from our introverted dwelling on our own afflictions, misfortunes, failures, and disease, and see that our healing and wholeness comes in trusting and obeying Jesus, and giving thanks to him in new lives of generosity and gentleness.