We are a small Episcopal Church on the banks of the Rappahannock in Port Royal, Virginia. We acknowledge that we gather on the traditional land of the first people of Port Royal, the Nandtaughtacund, and we respect and honor with gratitude the land itself, the legacy of the ancestors, and the life of the Rappahannock Tribe. Our mission statement is to do God’s Will in all that we do.

Sermons

Sermon, Pentecost 18, Oct. 9, 2022 – Jesus and the Ten Lepers

Today’s scriptures remind us that faith and gratitude go hand in hand when we respond to God’s healing power at work in our lives. 

In today’s gospel story, Jesus is in the region between Galilee and Samaria, heading for Jerusalem.  Both Jews and Samaritans must have lived in the village that Jesus entered.  But even if they did live together in the same village, they probably stuck to their own groups.  After all, the Jews looked down on the Samaritans, and I would imagine that the Samaritans did not care to be around the Jews either.  

But all of them, both the Jews and Samaritans, avoided the lepers and stayed away from them.  Jewish law required that these people with a fatal skin disease that slowly stole away their bodies and finally their lives had to stay away from those who were well.  The lepers were avoided by everyone.    

A Samaritan with leprosy must have felt doubly cursed and outcast. 

Maybe the Samaritan leper in today’s gospel lingered in the back of the group as the others called out to Jesus asking for mercy.  The Samaritan must have wondered if this Jewish healer would extend mercy even to him, a despised Samaritan.    

Maybe he was surprised when Jesus did not cull him out because he was a Samaritan, unworthy of healing.     

But Jesus sees all the lepers  and tells them all to “Go and show yourselves to the priests.”  It was on the way to the priests that all ten lepers were made clean.  I suppose the other nine went to the priests as Jesus had told them to do, because they wanted the priests to examine them and to formally declare them clean.  With the priests’ blessing  they could return to whatever was left of their former lives.  

The Samaritan did not ever make it to the priests.  When he saw that  God had healed him, he needed no other validation.   He was free at last, and so he turned back to thank Jesus,  shouting out his praise and thanksgiving to God.     

Out of the group of the ten lepers, only the Samaritan recognized that God and Jesus were part of the same healing fabric of love and mercy that had just enfolded him and made him clean, and his gratitude knew no bounds.  

As the leper threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him, Jesus took note that the other nine had not returned to say thank you.    Only the Samaritan had made the connection that Jesus, the healer, was doing God’s work and had returned to give thanks to God for the healing he had received through Jesus.  

In the parallel Old Testament reading, Naaman, a commander in the Syrian army, cursed with leprosy, is washed clean when he follows the prophet Elisha’s instructions and bathes in the Jordan River.  

After his healing, Naaman returns to the prophet to say thank you before he returns home.   Like the leper that Jesus healed, Naaman realizes that the healing power that came to him through Elisha is the healing power of God.  Out of gratitude, Naaman becomes a follower of the God of Israel, the One who has brought him healing. 

But what about offering faithful gratitude to God when life brings hardships our way—when pain slows us down, or when we don’t get the physical healing we had hoped to receive, or when our lives don’t play out in the ways that we had expected.  

There’s one more person in today’s Old Testament lesson that I just have to mention because she is one who must be full of faithful gratitude to God even though her life has taken an unexpected turn and she has ended up in slavery. 

Although she only has a bit part in the story, without her, Naaman may never have been healed of his leprosy and come to know God. 

This is the young girl serving Naaman’s wife, who says to her mistress, “If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria!  He would cure him of his leprosy.” 

This young girl, unnamed in the story, has certainly endured hardship.  Imagine being snatched from your family, taken from your familiar surroundings into a foreign land, and then being made to work for the family of the commander of the army that has carried you into captivity. 

And yet, despite these hardships that have been imposed on her, this young girl willingly shares the information that will lead to the healing the person who is ultimately responsible for her hardships! 

Scripture doesn’t tell us anything else about the girl, but I believe that her faith in God and her gratitude to God that she was even alive allowed her to give thanks in her current circumstances and to be generous toward a person  that she could have chosen to hate.      

The girl sees beyond her own difficulties and sees and cares that Naaman is a person in need of healing.  She can see that Naaman’s healing will not only benefit him, but also his whole household as well. 

Wouldn’t you love to know more about this young girl and her story?  I would!  But scripture, as it does with so many of the people that inhabit its pages, leaves the details of this girl’s story to our imaginations. 

But her faithful gratitude, which has led to her incredible generosity toward her captor is obvious.    

That’s the kind of faithful gratitude I want, the gratitude toward God even in the hard times, that encourages me to share God’s merciful love with those around me. 

We have all endured rough times and find that gratitude can be in short supply when we are suffering.   

And yet—when we have faith that God is with us, then gratitude for God’s goodness will well up in us like a healing balm, even in the roughest times of our lives.         

Hank Dunn, a hospice chaplain, writes that “if there is one attitude that can sustain us through the most difficult of circumstances, it is ‘the attitude of gratitude.’  This is the ability to give thanks for the gifts in one’s life, not necessarily because of the hardships, but in spite of them.  In other words, we are not grateful that we have a life-threatening illness (or whatever the hardship is), but we are able to give thanks while we have a life threatening illness”  (or whatever the hardship is that we are enduring).  

Cultivating gratitude reminds us that a power greater than ourselves is at work in this world, a power working on our behalf.  We can depend on this power to sustain and heal us even in the hard times.  

Studies have shown that specific activities can help us to cultivate gratitude. The writers of  an online article about gratitude published by Harvard Health Publishing, Harvard Medical School,  list some common sense things that we can do to cultivate gratitude on a regular basis—to thank others who have blessed us by expressing our gratitude for what they have done; keeping a list of blessings we’ve received each day in a gratitude journal; counting our blessings; praying and meditating.  

And most important—to remember to give praise to God for our blessings, both great and small, to acknowledge God as the source of our blessings.  

So today, as a way of practicing gratitude right now, let’s pray together the General Thanksgiving found on page 836 in The Book of Common Prayer.   The Rev. Dr. Charles P. Price, a long time professor at Virginia Theological Seminary, wrote this beautiful prayer of gratitude for our current edition of The Book of Common Prayer.    

Let us pray.  

Accept, O Lord, our thanks and praise for all that you have
done for us. We thank you for the splendor of the whole
creation, for the beauty of this world, for the wonder of life,
and for the mystery of love.

We thank you for the blessing of family and friends, and for
the loving care which surrounds us on every side.

We thank you for setting us at tasks which demand our best
efforts, and for leading us to accomplishments which satisfy
and delight us.

We thank you also for those disappointments and failures
that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on you alone.

Above all, we thank you for your Son Jesus Christ; for the
truth of his Word and the example of his life; for his steadfast
obedience, by which he overcame temptation; for his dying,
through which he overcame death; and for his rising to life
again, in which we are raised to the life of your kingdom.

Grant us the gift of your Spirit, that we may know Christ and
make him known; and through him, at all times and in all
places, may give thanks to you in all things.   Amen. 

Resources:  The Book of Common Prayer 

Hatchett, Marion J.  Commentary on the American Prayer Book.  New York, New York:  The Seabury Press, 1981.  

Dunn, Hank.  Light in the Shadows:  Meditations while living with a life threatening illness.  Copyright 2005 by Hank Dunn.  

https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/giving-thanks-can-make-you-happier

Sermon, Pentecost 16, Sept. 25, 2022

Sermon, Proper 21, Year C 2022 Season of Creation

In today’s gospel, Jesus tells the dramatic story of poor Lazarus, starving and covered with sores,  and the rich man who ignores Lazarus in this lifetime. 

Both men die, and the tables get turned.  Lazarus ends up resting comfortably on the bosom of Abraham, and the rich man finds himself in Hades, where he is tormented in the flames. 

Barriers play an important part in this story. 

The first barrier is the rich man’s gate.  The rich man kept his gate shut.  Inside his house, he led a life of luxury, ignoring the needs of the world right outside his gate. 

The second barrier is the great chasm fixed between heaven and hell. 

This barrier keeps the rich man who is now in Hades from receiving any relief from his agony—Abraham tells him that “between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.”  My mind conjures up a huge dark space, so deep that I can’t even see the bottom, and so wide that the other side is invisible because it’s so far away. 

In Bible study, we talked about this chasm.  Is there a point at which God fixes a chasm that cannot be crossed?  Was the rich man doomed forever?  We know that God is a God of mercy and forgiveness.  But is there a cut off point to God’s tolerance of our shortcomings? 

But this story does not say that God put this chasm in place.  The chasm has been fixed, but by whom? 

In hearing this story again this year, I think this chasm has been fixed by the rich man.  The rich man’s closed gate became a chasm which no one passed through to help Lazarus and Lazarus could not pass through the shut gate on his own.  Too sick and hungry to do anything else, Lazarus lay outside the closed gate and died.   

And now the gate, which has become a chasm, unsurprisingly remains in place in the next life, (you reap what you sow and suffer the consequences of your actions).   The  rich man no longer has control.  The gate has turned into a chasm that he can’t cross.  Now he experiences the side of the chasm he wishes he weren’t on, one of deprivation and torture. 

Since this is the Season of Creation, we certainly could apply this story to our own relationships with the earth, and how we tend to shut ourselves off from the earth around us.  In our day to day lives, we go out of our houses, get into our cars, drive to where we are going, and go into another building. And then repeat to get back home, often never even setting foot on the earth itself.  Often, our eyes are closed to what is going on in the natural world.  Our hearts are shut to its agonies, many which we have caused. 

We forget that the earth has a life of its own and that we belong to the earth. 

The Church itself teaches us that we are part of this earth.  Our most profound Christian symbols are earthly—as we come into the Church we are baptized in water, we share bread made from ingredients that came from the earth and also from its creatures.  The bees make the honey that BJ mixes into our communion bread.  Our wine comes from grapes that grew on vines planted in the earth.

At our burials we hear these words, “We are mortal, formed of the earth, and to earth shall we return.  For so did you ordain when you created me, saying, ‘You are dust, and to dust you shall return.’   All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song:  Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” 

Jesus described himself with these earthly things—saying “I am living water,” “I am the bread of life,”  “I am the vine, you are the branches.”  Jesus belonged not only to God, but to the earth. And  Jesus himself reminds us that we are connected to the earth, and how essential that connection is in our relationships with God.   

I don’t even need to go into detail about the myriad ways that we are in the process of creating a chasm between us and the rest of life on this earth, one that we will someday no longer be able to cross.  Like the rich man, who wouldn’t open his gate and then found out that he couldn’t cross the chasm of his own making, we are in the process of creating something that we can no longer undo.  Even if we someday decide that we want to open our gates to the earth, many of the things that we have destroyed are gone or will be gone forever.  One example we are all aware of is the decline of the monarch butterflies, now on the endangered list, along with many other creatures that are endangered or already extinct. 

When my daughter Catherine and I went to Hawaii several years ago and visited a botanical garden, we saw a native plant of Hawaii that is being kept alive only by human beings, who must pollinate it by hand, for the moth that once pollinated this plant is now extinct.  And someday the plant will go the way of the moth, when human beings decide to stop pollinating it. 

I find myself easily discouraged by what is happening to the earth around us, wanting to look away, as the rich man looked away from poor Lazarus, lying at his gate.  How much more pleasant it was for the rich man to step over this problem in his path, to go inside and shut the door, and never give the tragedy at his gate another thought.  How easy it is for us to shut ourselves away from the ongoing environmental tragedies around us.

Today’s scripture reading from Ist Timothy provides some guidance for us on to how to keep our gates open, to avoid putting impassable chasms in place.  We will do well to keep these reminders in place, not only in our relationships with God and with one another, but with the earth itself. 

The first thing to remember is to rely on God rather than on ourselves.  We are to pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness rather than to focus on the what the writer calls “the uncertainty of riches,”  for loving money more than God leads, in the end, to ongoing pain. 

To live a life of faith is a challenge.  The writer describes taking up this challenge as fighting a good fight—“Fight the good fight of the faith.”  For if we fight the good fight of the faith, our relationships with God and with one another will grow stronger.

And as we live faithfully on the earth, we find ourselves fighting good fights—taking the time to engage with the earth and to  be proactive in our care for it, and to admit the ways that we benefit at the expense of the earth and to try to correct the things that we do that are ultimately hurting the earth and the creatures around us.  

The last paragraph of the reading of today’s lesson from 1st Timothy also has some great advice, not only for our relationships with God and with one another, but with the earth itself. 

The author says that we who are rich are to do good, to engage in good works, to be generous and ready to share, so that we can take hold of “the life that really is life.” 

For us Christians, the life that really is life is a life open to God, open to one another, and open to the earth.  Open gates, open hands, open hearts.

At the end of the story that Jesus tells, the rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus to the house of the rich man’s father to tell his brothers what has happened to him, so that they can be saved from the torment that the rich man is experiencing. 

But Abraham says that the brothers already have the message—all that they have been taught through Moses and the prophets. 

What ever happened to the brothers?  Did they somehow figure out what they could do differently, based on the information they already had?  We will never know, because like so many of the stories that Jesus tells, we are left hanging.  The story is open ended. 

We are like those brothers of the rich man. 

What will happen to us? 

Like the brothers, we need to be warned. 

But we’ve already been warned! 

Can we and will we do things differently, based on the warning signs already surrounding us? 

Can we and will we do things differently, based on what God tells us to do in our relationships with one another? 

Can we and will we do things differently based on how scripture tells us to care for the earth of which we are only a part?

As followers of Jesus, how can we be living water, the bread of life, and the vine, sustaining and bringing forth new life around us? 

And we must remember that  we are but dust, and think of what we can do to contribute to the lives of one another and of the earth which will go on long after we have died, but in what condition? 

What will we leave behind for our children and our children’s children?  Open gates, open hands, open hearts, bringing new life and  bridging the fissures that we’ve already started  creating? 

Or will we leave behind a chasm that has been fixed, so that even those who might want to pass over it cannot do so? 

God has provided us with all the information we need to keep our gates, hands, and hearts open to one another and to the earth.   

What we do with that good news is up to each one of us.