Pentecost 20, Year C

October 14, 2007

The Rev. Dena Cleaver-Bartholomew

In his Hugo Award winning science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein captures the essence of what it is to find one’s self in an utterly alien environment. In this famous story Valentine Michael Smith, son of astronauts, is returned to Earth after being raised by Martians on Mars. The word “foreign” does not even begin to capture how utterly different this new place and its ways of thinking, acting, and being are to the new arrival. While none of us can claim to have come literally from another planet, it is a very human experience to find ourselves encountering parts of life as ‘strangers in a strange land.’

In today’s reading from Jeremiah, we hear the word of God “to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.” Not only have these people been forcibly removed from their homes, their country, and all that is familiar to them, this letter makes it clear that their deportation is God’s doing! While they are busy dealing with shock, grief, anger, and a keen desire to return from whence they have come, along comes a most unexpected word: make yourselves at home, you’re going to be there a while. And, as long as you are settling in, “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” This would be a difficult thing to hear.

I grew up in a military family, so I know what it is to be moved to a strange land. I remember turning to my father after one move in particular and asking him “What did you do? Who did you insult?” Clearly we were being punished for something. While I, like the exiles in Babylon, may have been perfectly happy where I was, God had other plans. God does not minimize suffering, but puts it in long term perspective: “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”

In his second letter to Timothy Paul exhorts him to “share in suffering like a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” Paul, who is literally in chains, knows something of suffering. Yet Paul does not flinch. His chains may hold him back physically, but they do not contain his spirit. Paul knows that the path to new life for Jesus was through suffering and he is willing to walk the same path himself. If experiencing suffering is an inevitable part of being human, which it is, the remarkable thing is not that we suffer. The remarkable thing is that God was willing to suffer just as we do. The experience of suffering empties us, as Jesus emptied himself to become human. We can lose our friends, our jobs, our health, our homes, our abilities. We can lose people we love and even our own lives. However, as Paul knew, neither our true identity nor our security lies in any of these things: they lie in God alone. Even in the context of suffering Paul exhibited gratitude.

The lepers in today’s Gospel walked the way of suffering. Being both physically ill and socially ostracized, there was little to give them hope. Even hope in God might have been a challenge, as leprosy was often understood as punishment for sin. Yet they did not give up. “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, to the realization of his own suffering, yet he takes time to relieve theirs. He sends them to show themselves to the priests, whose declaration of cleanness alone can restore them to the community. Yet one, realizing that he has been healed, “turned back, praising God.” Obviously not all think to turn back to God, either in the midst of suffering or at its end. Referencing the other nine lepers, Jesus asks “Was none of them found to return and give praise to God…?”

There is a book I love entitled Thank You, Mr. Falker. In it a girl named Trish comes from a long line of avid readers. Yet Trish cannot read. It is a fact of which she is ashamed, so she hides it. When her beloved grandparents die and her mom must take a job in a new state, Trish finds herself suffering in many ways. She is a stranger, she is grieving, and she believes herself to be stupid—a fact which is reinforced by the class bully. Finally the new teacher, Mr. Falker, figures out her secret. He calls in a reading specialist and together they work and work until Trish begins to understand. One day Mr. Falker gave her a book and opened it. The author tells us: “Almost as if it were magic, or as if light poured into her brain, the words and sentences started to take shape on the page as they never had before.” She could read. It is only at the end of the book that the author, Patricia Polacco, reveals that she was that little girl. Her book is the way she returned to give thanks to the man who helped make her whole.

We all suffer. Ever since sin entered the world brokenness has been a part of our experience. It may come to us differently as individuals, but it does come. When it comes, suffering provides us with opportunity. There is no situation so bleak that God cannot be at work in it, creating a way through. We might be limited, but God is not. As Paul reminds us, “the word of God is not chained.” These were the words of a man in chains who probably realized he was on the journey toward his own death.

Suffering is real. It is not the end, or even the point, of the story of our lives. The exiles suffered through deportation and life in a strange land. Yet in doing so, they enabled God to fulfill the long ago promise made to Abraham, that “…in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” God reached out to all people beginning with these people. It was in and through them that God was at work in the world. Paul suffered for his belief in and commitment to the Good News of Jesus Christ. Yet it was this very Gospel that transformed his life and enabled him to offer himself in service to God. Patricia Polacco suffered, yet through the grace of God at work in a single teacher, she is now a prolific author of children’s books, using a gift she would never have guessed she possessed. Ten lepers suffered; ten were made clean. One found his life made whole and returned to give thanks. These stories encourage us to ask ourselves questions. When have I suffered? How was God present in my suffering? In what way can I live out my thanks? The suffering is real. The gratitude can be too.

Amen