Broken Gratitude

Luke 17:11–19 NRSV

On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

Does anyone’s family here have like a tradition at Thanksgiving of going around the table and saying what you’re thankful for? Yea? We don’t have a hard and fast tradition of that in my family. I don’t think. I don’t actually know to be honest. It’s been like two decades since I had thanksgiving with my own family so honestly who knows what they do. I’ve just been living like some kind of thanksgiving nomad for the majority of my life.

I’m just realizing this now. Like huh, that’s very interesting.

Anyway, what’s cool about that fact of my life is that I’ve seen so many different traditions over the years. I just keep ending up with new people doing new things at thanksgiving and I kind of love it. But when we get to the tradition of doing the “say one thing you’re thankful for” I can always tell it’s not terribly comfortable for everyone. Like some people are just so deep in their reflection and say really profound things. And you can tell some folks are struggling to find something. Like there’s guilt in being thankful for even the basic creature comforts of life.

And I’m at the place now where I’m really willing to encourage folks to name the simple things you’re grateful for, you know. Like if you’re grateful that your couch is comfortable and that your internet works most of the time, cool. Name that. If you’re grateful that you’ve got reliable transportation, go ahead. Let’s thank God for that.

I think we’ve somehow gotten so far away from being grateful for the mundane stuff in our society that have gotten into a mindset that has forgotten that we should be grateful. And when you forget that you should be grateful, what tends to happen is that we become entitled. And when we don’t get or have what we think that we should get or have we become bitter. We become resentful.

Bitterness and resentment are what seem to drive our society these days, at least they are what the news media would have us believe drives our society. And honestly, my experience has been that the world does just seem to be more bitter. At least we have the platform now to voice our deep seated disgust openly in the public thanks to social media.

Today marks the final sermon in a series called “All Your Mind” where we are looking at mental health through the lens of Jesus’s great commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself.”

What we are seeing is that the two most often neglected portions of Jesus’s command -- To love God with our minds and to love ourselves — are really the key to acknowledging, addressing, and recovering from mental illnesses.

Today we are going to take a turn into a different neighborhood. We’ve talked about depression, anxiety, and addiction already — and if you’ve missed any of those messages I encourage you to go on our website and check them out because they were really important — but we are going to take a turn into a topic that isn’t classified as a mental illness technically. But it is a condition that poisons our mind. It makes us ill. So I think it fits.

And the most important thing about it is that it is universally applicable and it really is a condition that can complicate our mental health in every way. Today we are looking at a condition called bitterness.

Bitterness is the opposite of gratitude right? If gratitude is a way of living that gives thanks for all that we have, then bitterness is a way of living and thinking that exemplifies our dissatisfaction with what we don’t have.

And listen, life is hard and it’s normal to be upset by losses that we suffer and by injustices that we face in life. Grief and disappointment are just a part of the human experience. Bitterness however is what happens when that grief and disappointment take root in our hearts, souls, and minds and become the driving force behind how we think and act.

To jump back to Luke’s story here about Jesus healing the lepers, I want to set the scene for you. Jesus is travelling, on his way to Jerusalem. At this point in the story this means that Jesus is making his final pilgrimage towards the cross.

Now you might be aware that Jesus’s life was spent really rubbing a lot of people the wrong way. There was a growing number of folks who had a bitter heart when it came to the subject of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was a truth teller — and the truth isn’t always what folks want to hear.

So Jesus was no stranger to the bitter heart, in fact his entire destiny kind of hinges on the fact that some bitter people are going to act in a way that takes him to the grave.

On the way to Jerusalem, Jesus passes through this region between Samaria and Galilee. And this is an important detail. This is kind of like no mans land. Like a neutral zone if you will — not that there was actual armed conflict happening — but it was like the neutral zone of a cultural war. Galilee was Jewish territory. Samaria was Samaritan territory.

These were like the Hatfields and the McCoys but with way more history and way more bitterness between them. See the Samaritans and the Jews used to be one people. A people called Israel. A people who escaped slavery in Egypt together, who recieved God’s covenant blessing and law together and Mt. Sinai. These were people who travelled in the wilderness and conquered the promised land together.

They settled and built cities and flourished under Kings David and Solomon together. They built the Temple in Jerusalem together and gathered there to worship God.

And then it all came crumbling down. Civil war between two rival kings — brothers no less — split the kingdom, the family — the kin-dom if you will — in two. One kingdom in the north who would call Samaria their capital and one kingdom in the south who would claim Jerusalem.

Over the course of hundreds of years and through the ever changing landscape of empires, these two people groups would grow further apart, and the bitterness between them would grow ever stronger. There was no love lost between them. Jews hated Samaritans and vice versa.

So on the way to Jerusalem — the site of Jesus’s cross that reconciled the world — Luke tells us that Jesus passed through the neutral zone. And what Jesus found in the neutral zone was a leper colony.

Lepers were people with skin diseases that forced them to be exiled from their communities. So they moved to the outskirts of society — to a place where no one would willingly go — they went to the area between Samaria and Galilee.

And in this place — low and behold — Jewish and Samaritan lepers lived together. See both still followed the Law of Moses which had stipulations about folks with skin diseases.

And for Jesus, this is like the place he wants to be. Everyone else would be apt to avoid this area — after all those people lived there, and not just the enemy of my choosing lives there but they are unclean! (there was a definite stigma and bitterness against leprous folks as well.)

But Jesus waltzes in and immediately they all recognize who is here. So 10 of them come and ask Jesus for healing, to which he is like “of course” and he sends them on their way. And the important detail to come is that one of these men is a Samaritan. But we will get to that in a moment.

You see in the midst of this bitter world that these folks inhabit — in the midst of it they kind of hold the key to unlocking the door to healing from bitter hearts. They recognize that healing is avaliable. They recognize hope. They recognize Jesus. And they ask Jesus for healing. And what they get in return is a command to go and show the world that their hope was well founded.

Jesus says go up and show the priests that you are clean — which would allow them to return to their families and to society. And they don’t ask questions. They just go. These folks had every reason to say “no way, I’m not going to those people.” After all — the priests were the reason that they were estranged from society. They priests were the ones who were responsible for kicking people out for being unclean.

But the men get up and they go, obeying Jesus. They go and reconcile with their communities.

And then, something amazing happens. Something that Luke’s audience should probably not be shocked by at this point in his Gospel, because Luke is always elevating the little guy. But still, it was likely shocking none the less.

One of the men returns to Jesus. A samaritan man. He praises Jesus and thanks him.

And this is where we often have some interpretive difficulty because like what about the other 9? Were they healed? Yes they were healed. But the one who returned, he takes this thing a step further.

The other 9, presumably Jewish went on about their lives. I don’t know what their thinking was. Perhaps a little entitled because of their status, or whatever. The focus isn’t on them. The focus is on this Samaritan man and what Jesus says to him:

Your faith has made you well. And the interpretive move that we need to make here is to shift from thinking about physical well being to spiritual well being. All 10 men were made physically well. They’ve all 10 been healed of their skin disorder. Shoot, they’ve all 10 been made socially well as they are now returned to their society.

But only one has been made spiritually well. The word Jesus uses for well is the word for salvation. Jesus says “your faith has saved you.”

Think of that. In the midst of a culture war where this Samaritan has been told his whole life that he is outside of God’s promise and plan for the world, that he is an abomination, that he is separated from God’s love — Jesus, the messiah of Israel, the face of God says “you are in my dude. You get it. You are my people.”

I think the leap that we need to make here is really only a leap in time. The cultures are different but the human condition remains the same. We live in a world that is divided between Galilee and Samaria. We just have different names for it. Red/Blue, pro this/pro that, etc. etc. you don’t need the list. It’s written on every wall in America.

We are a bitter people who can’t help but think that the other people are out. Beyond sanity. Beyond God’s promise. Beyond saving.

But look at us. This strange body of people called the church. Look at where we are. Do you see it? Do you perceive where I’m going with you? We’re in the neutral zone. The place where Jesus comes to heal. The place where it doesn’t matter what side of the aisle you come from… the place where we get to be surprised at the way that God reaches to the ones that the world and maybe even those silly religious people say are out and God says to them “your faith has made you well. You friend, you’re in. You’re mine.”

Listen the church is far from a perfect institution. It’s been a mess since day 1. But the Apostle Paul wrote these words in Ephesians 4:29-32

Ephesians 4:29–32 NRSV

Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

These here are the blueprints for overcoming a mind burdened by the poison of bitterness. We follow the example of the 10 — reaching out to Jesus for healing and then we go that extra step of the Samaritan man in praising God as the source of our healing. And then we follow Paul’s words and act in a new way.

We use our words in a constructive way. We build each other up. We bring each other in. We meet one another’s needs. We shut down the malice and gossip and other junk and we focus on forgiveness and reconciliation.

When we do this, we truly learn how to love our neighbors as ourselves. We truly learn what it means to Love God with our whole selves.