SEEKING VALIDATION, October 10, 2010

Jeremiah 29: 1-10
Luke 17: 11-21
Our readings this morning are about SEEing, LOOKing and WITNESSing what else may be occurring. For our lives are so busy, our routines so established, we rarely take time to ponder, to be grateful to validate that we have been blessed, and to Seek Validation for what God may be doing.

Years ago, there were commuter trains that connected every small town and village with major cities. So it was that a minister from the City was supposed to preach here in the village, and found on the rail schedule that he could take the train from Syracuse to Buffalo, stopping at Skaneateles arriving just in time for the leading of worship. But to his shock and horror, once he was on the Sunday morning train and had bought his ticket, he learned that on weekends the train did not stop at every station. The Conductor told him not to panic, that he would inform the Engineer that after cresting Marcellus hill they needed to slow down, though they could not stop. However, the Conductor cautioned, the last person to jump from this moving train had broken both ankles from the sudden impact of going from a moving train to a stationary landing. To compensate, the Conductor had him go to the end of the train car and run as fast as he could, being certain that as he leapt from the open door, he would pirouette onto the landing running in the same direction as the train. The train began to slow only slightly as the Conductor gave the preacher the signal and he began to run through the open car toward the waiting door, at the critical moment he leapt in a beautiful pirouette midair, landing in a run to slow his speed as the train pulled away, when suddenly, a hand reached out and pulled him back on board the train. Aghast and bewildered, he asked what happened, when a voice described “I saw you running after the train and knew you were going to miss it, so I reached out and gave you a hand. You're welcome!”

WITNESSing only from our own perspective, without Validating what we See, we can miss what God may be doing all around us. Do we read the paper and Internet as World News and Local News and Stories of Interest, or do we see through the circumstances looking for what God may be doing in our midst? Can we have the humility of the Prophet Jeremiah to see the possibility of God using circumstances for our benefit that seem against us?

No one would wish intentional harm upon another, and yet only in those times in which we are truly vulnerable, broken, do our shells crack enough for the spirit of God to enter in. Can we see one another? Not the facade that there are people down the pew, or so many cars in our way for when we want to get out. To see beyond the shell and husk of another to realize that the exchange student so bold and full of life to share their culture with us and experience our culture all around them, may be extremely homesick and alone.

Faith and gratitude are inextricably interwoven. When we see ourselves as Self-Sufficient, with no need to be thankful to anyone else, we have no room for God, let alone other people. We imagine ourselves as being self-made, having worked for everything we have received. But what if, we opened our perspective like Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickins' Christmas Carol, witnessing that all through life there have been others who cared for us, that in fact our lives have been utterly dependent upon the goodwill and compassion of others. We went to class each day, but our mothers had made certain we had a good breakfast and cookies when we came home. A teacher, a coach, a neighbor, an employer, showed interest in us, perhaps it was a part of their job, but the right word at the right time validated and changed us, they were there when we needed.

After years of war, following the destruction of Solomon's Temple and the whole City of Jerusalem, the leaders, the strong and the educated, were taken into captivity by their enemy as Exiles in Babylon. The Nationalism and Patriotism of Ancient Israel was not far different from what we feel here in America. Can we imagine 20 years of war on our own soil, at the end of which everything building, roads, farms our culture is in ruins and shackled together as prisoners we have been taken away from our Nation to live out our days in a foreign land. When word comes from the Prophet Jeremiah, that God has appointed our enemies to care for us, to provide for us. How different the New Testament words of “Praying for One's Enemies” and “Having Compassion on those who persecute You” sound, if our survival depended upon their survival.

The Bible has identifications of people that we too often take for granted, without really seeing to understand. There are still cases of leprosy in the world today, 14 Million cured in the last 20 years, there are some 250,000 with this disease today, although mostly in tropical climates it does occur in America with an incubation period of 5 to 20 years it is often misdiagnosed as skin lesions. Leprosy is a Bacterial Infection that has been recorded since the year 600 BC as a Chronic Social disease, requiring people being ostracized. How many other Chronic Social Diseases are there? Diseases that are not like the flu, mumps or measles, but will remain with us all of life. Social Diseases that cause us as polite society to withdraw, to look past them and not see the person as a person, but only as a Leper.

According to cultural laws, Lepers were to live outside to community in leper colonies, covering themselves with a white sheet because the abrasion of clothing might gnaw at the skin, wearing a bell round their neck and forced to identify themselves by crying out Leper, so none would come into contact with them, none would see them and none would ever have to touch them. When Jesus encountered these ten along the road between Samaria and Galilee, they cried out for him to take notice of them and to have mercy. And he saw them, and he had compassion, and he healed them, instructing them to go to show themselves to the Priest who was the community authority on whether a person was clean or filthy, whether they were able to live in community or not. The priest was charged with protecting the culture from physical and spiritual illness.

It was not required that the person with leprosy return to be grateful to Jesus, but the Samaritan, and Jesus takes note that it was only the Samaritan, the outcast, the broken one. For which Jesus, as our Priest, describes “Go your way, your faith has made you well.”

Mother Theresa has become such a cultural icon, many have forgot that she ministered to a Leper Colony. When visited by an envoy of Religious Leaders, they were awed by all that she and the Sisters of Charity were doing and had done. The envoy offered to give them a gift of whatever they needed, perhaps washing machines and dryers to clean bed linens, mops and buckets, vacuums, and electric floor polishers to buff the floors, refrigerators or electric generators, and the sisters said “No, we can wash the floors and wash the clothes, but you can do for us what only you can. You can share Communion with the colony, offering forgiveness.”

This time of year we see the colors of trees all around us, and we respond “How beautiful the colors in Autumn!” When actually these are the true colors of the leaves from Creation, but during the year, the leaves are so filled with life, their true colors are hidden by green. Only at this time, as the trees prepare for winter does life get pulled away to reveal the true beauty of the leaves as God intended.

Seeing one another, we provide validation of the other as being a gift of God. Seeing one another we validate one another as being worthy. Seeing one another, we take the role of the priests for the cleansed extending forgiveness and welcome into our lives.

Occasionally when things seem to be going well preachers will ad lib about something from the morning's worship. This day, I am struck that thus far this summer we have celebrated 25 couples getting married, and we have two of those couples married this summer with us in worship, one of which married just yesterday. But the question is what happened to the other 23 couples? Do we stop in our marriages, in life, to recognize how blessed we are? Or are we among the other 23?

Some things are easy to see, miracles and cures, amazing world developments. Jesus described to the Pharisees that the Kingdom of God is not coming as an apocalypse, not with signs and wonders, but the Kingdom of God is already in our midst. Can we see it? Can we validate the reality that this world is not of our making, but this creation, Life is a gift from God.