TEN LEPERS
St Michael & All Angels, Barnes Trintiy XVII (Charity Sunday)
THE LEPER CHAPEL
On the outskirts of Cambridge is a small 12th century chapel, once commonly called The Leper Chapel.
As the name suggests, it was once part of a leprosy hospital, which no longer survives. The Chapel stands alone, in a field on the main road out of Cambridge, as the Hospital was built at some distance from other people and places.
Whether Medieval England or 1st century Palestine, fear of contagion, meant those with leprosy were forced to live apart as outcasts from society.
Jesus is– ‘along the border between Samaria and Galilee’. It is a peripheral place between Jewish and Samaritan land, But the Lord is there – with the people on the margins.
Today is our Charity Sunday, when we focus on our church charities for the year: Ghetto Classics and The Listening Place (of which more in a moment) and make connections between our faith and our giving as a Church and as individual Christians.
The Leper Hospital was built outside Cambridge and in today’s Gospel the lepers call to Jesus at a ‘distance’, but by the end one of them has come right up close to Jesus. Charity brings people together, and overcomes barriers and boundaries.
For that reason, that over the last few years, I’ve been trying to get us as a church to engage more with our charities – so our giving is not some distant kindness where we don’t get our hands dirty – but actually engage directly with the people and stories involved at a personal level. To build relationships and make connections – discovering what people want and need.
Among the first questions to ask about any giving is this:
‘What is being asked for?’
The 10 people with leprosy call out to Jesus saying:
‘Have mercy on us’.
They are probably calling for alms, for money.
What they receive from Jesus is not exactly what they asked for, but it is what they really want and need. And that should always be the focus of our giving too.
Giving should never be motivated by our feelings of guilt or well-meaning but misplaced compassion – but by intention and impact. That’s what Jesus does – his healing transforms their lives totally and forever.
THE LISTENING PLACE
Discovering people’s real needs starts from a place of deep listening.
One of our charities is called ‘The Listening Place’
Where anyone with suicidal thoughts or feelings, can receive confidential, free, quick and personal support. Like in today’s Gospel, it is people crying out for help, needing to know they are heard, and that someone cares.
Of the 10 who are healed, 1 comes back, and falls at Jesus’ feet, but Jesus tells him to rise and go on his way. This rising and falling is surely a reference to another verse from earlier in Luke’s Gospel, when Simeon greets the infant Christ in the Temple and says: ‘This child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel’. Here this verse comes true. As man falls to Jesus’ feet, and is raised up, given back his full human dignity, and sent out with hope and joy, his life worth living again.
GHETTO CLASSICS
Our other charity is called ‘Ghetto Classics’,
The flagship programme of the ‘Art of Music’ foundation, teaching music and life skills to children living in a slum in Nairobi, Kenya.
I am struck by the comparisons with the Gospel story – A Ghetto, a slum, a leper colony, are all places of segregation and separation from the rest of society. A Ghetto, a slum, a leper colony, are all places of segregation and separation from the rest of society. It is where people live, but it is not how they want to live.
When Jesus heals the 10 men, he sends them to Jerusalem to show themselves to the priests. In other words, he sends them back to the society from which they were excluded, he restores them to community – now they belong again, and can start a new kind of life.
Ghetto Classics exists to help people leave the ghetto in its name. For those with limited life choices to receive new skills and opportunities through music, to life differently except that the disease is not leprosy – it’s poverty.
But we should not fall into the trap of identifying ourselves with Jesus in the story – the one who bring healing and hope and joy. No – we should identify with the former lepers who have received Jesus’ healing ministry.
Our charitable giving should be an act of thankfulness and praise to God, for the love and mercy we have personally known and experienced in Christ.
Most of all, we are trying to be like the one who returned to give thanks, whose response to his healing, is deep gratitude to God.
As Jesus points out: ‘This man was a Samaritan!’ As we know from another famous story in Luke, Samaritans were the hated enemies of Israel. So this man is doubly outcast – a leper AND a foreigner! The one with the greatest need, Is also the most thankful.
The more grateful we are for what God has done for us in our lives, the more generous we will be to others.
Let that gratitude be the motivation for our giving as individuals and as a church.