Some people have this kind of relationship with God. It is a contract. I do something for God; God does something for me. If I am good, God will reward me -- with blessings, good fortune, salvation.
It’s like the deal the composer Salieri made with God in Peter Shaffer’s famous play, Amadeus.
Salieri has this mercantile picture of God. If we work hard and do our part, God will reward us.
Salieri prays to God:
Salieri worked hard, became a good composer, and all seemed well until the day he heard the music of the impudent and infantile Mozart -- who had a dirty mouth and seemed to have little reverence for God. Hearing the music threw Salieri not only into a fit of murderous envy but into a spiritual crisis. He addresses God once again.
He had made a contract with God. Now he thinks God has broken the contract.
II
Let’s go now to the gospel story. Jesus is traveling between Samaria and Galilee. Samaria, the land of foreigners who do not follow the Torah of God, and Galilee, where good observant Jews do follow the Torah. The ancient geography marks the geography of the soul. Jesus is traversing crucial spiritual terrain here. Don’t misread it as between Judaism and Christianity. The gospel goes deeper than that. The issue is between the spirituality that thinks it has a contract with God and the spirituality which throws itself on the mercy of God. It is between those who feel they have a rightful, earned place in the blessings of God and those who live among the disinherited. On the one hand is the deacon in Updike’s story who feels "too much at home here" in his church. On the other hand is the person who despairs of his life, her life, and feels there is no God who would ever come to help.
Jesus is brave to walk that no man’s land in between these two; he does so he can bring God to both. One can be as untouchable in one’s perfection as in one’s uncleanness. As Jesus crosses over the border, he meets ten lepers who cry out to him "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us."
What is it that forces that cry from your lips? Where do you feel unclean, separated from humanity and life itself? Is it your skin, your weight, your illness, your debt, your failure, your lies, your relationships, your terrible decisions?
We live with a splitness of self. There is the "ideal self," the perfect self we want to be and pretend to be. Then there is the "disinherited self," the self we stuff way down, hide from ourselves and others, the self that lives in secrecy and in hiding. There is a spiritual assumption at work in the split self: that God can only love the perfect self, the ideal self. So we hide the other self, damn ourselves for it, and keep our distance from God and from any real intimacy with others. "If they knew all about me, they would condemn me, they would cast me away," we say. "Jesus, Master," the lepers say, keeping their distance, "have mercy on me."
III
When Jesus hears their cry he issues a command. "Go, show yourselves to the priest!" We might expect a little TLC from Jesus at this point, a little therapeutic empathy: "I feel your pain." But Jesus wastes no time and simply issues a command, "Go show yourself to the priest."
It is a startling and curious command. They are not yet healed, but they are commanded to act as if they are. You were supposed to show yourself to a priest after you were healed, so he could de-brief the miracle and authenticate your healing.
Jesus says, Go now, don’t wait till you think you are healed. Go now as if you already are. Pascal said that that is sometimes how faith acts: we need to act as if we believe; then the faith will come. The line from the anthem voices the same truth:
The text says, "And as they went, they were healed." We all have what Thomas Merton called a "hidden wholeness." Despite all the unwellness on the surface, there is a hidden wholeness deep inside. That’s where Jesus wants to take us.
"Go, show yourselves to the priest" is a way of saying, The wholeness is already there. Deep inside. Trust it. Believe in it, even if you can’t see it or don’t feel it now.
IV
That’s Part One of the text. But now we have Part Two. One of the lepers returns to
Jesus.
What he does is praise God and thank Jesus. He praised God with a loud voice and fell at
Jesus’ feet thanking him for being God’s instrument of healing.
There the leper embodies the wholeness of faith and the faith that makes us whole.
Faith is action, obedient action: acting as if we believe, acting with faith in our hidden wholeness. Hearing and doing what Jesus asks.
But faith is far more than that. It is also praising and thanking. Praising God with our minds and thanking Jesus with our hearts. We were made to love God with our minds and with our hearts. Therein is our healing, our wholeness and our salvation.
The wholeness of faith involves will and mind and heart. Paul Tillich talked about the "voluntaristic distortion of the faith" which is faith that is all "will," behavior alone. He talked about the "intellectualistic distortion of the faith" which is faith as all "head." And he talked about the "emotionalistic distortion of the faith" which is all "heart," all emotion. The wholeness of faith, the faith that makes us whole, involves all three – mind, heart and will – acting, praising, thanking. So Jesus looks at the leper and says: "Rise, go your way: Your faith had made you whole." All ten were cleansed, made well. But this one we made whole. It is a point to ponder. All ten were cured, but only one was made whole. Can we be cured but still not be whole? Can we be whole but not be cured? I ran head on into that truth Wednesday night as I met Joe Martin, paralyzed except for his eyes with Lou Gehrig disease but a person of amazing wholeness.
V
Now the last movement of the sermon. Jesus asks the leper: "Were not ten healed? Where are the nine? Has no one returned but this foreigner?"
The text underlines the difference between this one who comes back and the other nine by saying: "Now he was a Samaritan!" and by Jesus saying, "Has no one come back except this foreigner?"
The surface distinction is that the nine were Jews and this one was a Samaritan. But the real spiritual distinction is not between us and others, but between the Pharisee in each of us and the Samaritan in each of us.
The Pharisee in each of us believes in a God of contracts: If I am good, then God will love me and be good to me.
The Samaritan in us feels disinherited, utterly dependent on the mercy of God.
Perhaps this is why the nine do not come back. They’d done their part – going to the priest; God had done God’s part – healing them. Contract fulfilled. Who’s to praise? Who’s to thank?
But the Samaritan knows himself outside any contract or contact with God. If there’s a contract, he’s broken it. If there is any contact, it would be judgment. So now his heart floods with praise and thanksgiving. He is healed: And he is whole!
There is this Pharisee and the Samaritan in each of us. The ideal self and the disinherited self. The perfect self we want to be and pretend to be. And the disinherited self which goes in hiding when we can’t be perfect.
Jesus comes to say: You don’t have to live as a divided self.
What God wants is not a perfect self or disinherited self, but your real self: your wonderful and flawed real self. It’s your real self that God loves, and it is your real self that can move toward wholeness, because it lets God touch all of you You can take responsibility for your real self for the first time because you own all of you, the all of you loved by God.
CONCLUSION
What if all life is a miracle? What if everything we have is a gift?
What if you believed you didn’t have to be perfect to be whole? What if you lived as if God really did love you, exactly as you are, and that there was a "hidden wholeness" down deep inside waiting to be opened like a gift. . . with ribbons.
Then I think we would be like that leper running back to praise God and thank Jesus. Then our Thanksgiving holiday would be filled with grateful wonder. Then the presentation of our offerings and pledges could be a sacrament of joy. Alleluia, Alleluia.
Then this table we will soon share would truly be a Eucharist, a thanksgiving, the feast of the grace and goodness of God, given, given to us and all the earth.
1. Peter Shaffer, Amadeus (New York: Harper and Row, 1980), p. 8.
2. Ibid, p. 47.