Do the Work
One reason that I became a priest and not a social worker or some other helping professional is because I believe in the healing power of a living God. I believe that it is God who heals us from our hurts and our forgives us of our sins. I believe that there is a God that sees and hears us and cares about us. I believe that there is a creator God, a God who created us and knows each of us by name and I believe that without him, true and whole healing will never occur.
This posture places me on the outside or subsidiary of the helping professions. Helping is part of what I do, but it is by no means the primary focus of what I do. I am a priest. It is my task to proclaim by word and deed the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I am to preach, to declare God’s forgiveness to penitent sinners, to pronounce God’s blessing, and to share in the administration of Holy Baptism and in the celebration of the mysteries of Christ’s Body and Blood. I am to nourish Christ’s people from the riches of his grace and to strength them to glorify God in this life and in the life to come. BCP 531.
Part of my duty as priest is to love and and serve the people among whom I work, caring alike for young and old, strong and weak, rich and poor. BCP 531. In order to love someone, in order to serve someone you have to see someone.
I often pray, “Lord give me eyes to see and ears to hear.” Because if I do not see, if I do not listen and hear, I cannot serve.
Today’s Gospel passage is the story of the ten lepers who approached Jesus, as he was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. This region was sort of the border land, the middle space, the space where ethnic and religious differences were palpable. Lepers were unclean and would not have been welcome in either region. They were contagious and shunned. Jesus did not overlook the lepers in this account. Not seeing them or ignoring them all together, had most likely become the custom. They were unclean and what could anyone do about it. Most would walk by, pretending not to see or notice them.
This text tells us Jesus saw and heard them and upon their request for Jesus to have mercy upon them, he sent them on their way to see the priests where they were healed. One turned back, a Samaritan, and thanked Jesus.
Healing takes place through mutual agency. The men were not only seen and heard by Jesus, but they each had the courage to speak up. They had the courage and faith to cry out, “Have mercy upon me”. They had the courage to ask for healing.
These men were not only healed from their skin disease by having the courage to speak up, but they were also healed from the social isolation and marginalization they experienced living in the border lands, not amongst people. Living out on the borderland, away from people, neglect and being an outcast had to have taken its toll on the lepers. The skin disease not only affected them physically, it would have affected them psychologically. People need other people.
I have led three grief groups for the community in my past 2 years here at St. James and one thing I always tell the group, is that healing takes place in community. It takes courage for people to come to a grief group and to be willing to share and to walk into a strange building amongst strangers. But by doing so, they are “speaking up for themselves," having the courage to come and to enter in with strangers to begin to seek their healing. Healing rarely occurs within isolation. You have to seek help both physically and mentally, emotionally, spiritually, you have to speak. “Jesus have mercy on me”!
When the Samaritan returned and thanked Jesus, Jesus told him to get up, for his faith had made him well.
In today’s ongoing pandemic context, anxiety, depression and other related illnesses are running rampant. Articles are being written and physicians and psychiatrists are increasingly encouraging prescriptions such as: walks in nature, social activities, becoming involved in some sort of group as forms of treatment. All of these treatments require active patient engagement. You have to get up and walk. You have to get up and get out of your house to be social. It requires you to participate in your healing. Healing does not take place in isolation and it does not take happen by yourself generally. And I would add to all of these articles and physicians, that your spirit is just as important as the other parts of you, and your spirit also does not heal in isolation or without your spiritual community.
Direct participation in community is vital to us all. During this pandemic, many have gotten out of the “habit” of going to church. It remains to be seen what the long term implications will be for our society, but I can tell you that it is not going to be good. I suspect that depression, anxiety, feelings of isolation will continue to increase as people continue to isolate and not participate in the life of community, having neglected their spiritual life, emptiness will occur.
The Samaritan, the Lepers, recognized that Jesus had something they needed. They approached him with a faithful and expectant posture, as if they knew their healing would come from his presence. They called out to him, and they found healing.
I am priest because I believe that total healing, spiritual healing, healing those wounds inside of us, only comes thoroughly through God.
And expressing gratitude is a big deal. The Samaritan came back and thanked Jesus because he recognized what had been done for us. The Samaritan was a mixed race and despised by many. He was the true outcast in the group which is why the author, Luke, mentions him-"and he was a Samaritan”. He was the one who was least likely to have been thought of to be a one to recognize and give thanks — and he was the only one who did.
In our own lives, how often do we pause and give thanks for what God has done for us?
Seeing is a big deal. May we pray that we can be like the lepers who even in their despair, saw and recognized Jesus. May we also be like Jesus, who saw those in despair and responded to them.
May we see God at work in our lives and the world. Perhaps this is the key to the Christian life. Before we are called to believe or confess, or help or do, we are called to see… and to help others do the same. Depression and anxiety, illness are real. And they can bring us all down at various times and affect us. Part of helping depression and anxiety; part of healing is to be able to see, to point out blessing, to claim mercy, to name grace wherever we are and with all the courage we can.
Jesus sees you and he cares. Move toward him. Call out to him. Ask him to have mercy on you.
And you just may hear him say to you as he did to the Samaritan, "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”
Amen
This posture places me on the outside or subsidiary of the helping professions. Helping is part of what I do, but it is by no means the primary focus of what I do. I am a priest. It is my task to proclaim by word and deed the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I am to preach, to declare God’s forgiveness to penitent sinners, to pronounce God’s blessing, and to share in the administration of Holy Baptism and in the celebration of the mysteries of Christ’s Body and Blood. I am to nourish Christ’s people from the riches of his grace and to strength them to glorify God in this life and in the life to come. BCP 531.
Part of my duty as priest is to love and and serve the people among whom I work, caring alike for young and old, strong and weak, rich and poor. BCP 531. In order to love someone, in order to serve someone you have to see someone.
I often pray, “Lord give me eyes to see and ears to hear.” Because if I do not see, if I do not listen and hear, I cannot serve.
Today’s Gospel passage is the story of the ten lepers who approached Jesus, as he was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. This region was sort of the border land, the middle space, the space where ethnic and religious differences were palpable. Lepers were unclean and would not have been welcome in either region. They were contagious and shunned. Jesus did not overlook the lepers in this account. Not seeing them or ignoring them all together, had most likely become the custom. They were unclean and what could anyone do about it. Most would walk by, pretending not to see or notice them.
This text tells us Jesus saw and heard them and upon their request for Jesus to have mercy upon them, he sent them on their way to see the priests where they were healed. One turned back, a Samaritan, and thanked Jesus.
Healing takes place through mutual agency. The men were not only seen and heard by Jesus, but they each had the courage to speak up. They had the courage and faith to cry out, “Have mercy upon me”. They had the courage to ask for healing.
These men were not only healed from their skin disease by having the courage to speak up, but they were also healed from the social isolation and marginalization they experienced living in the border lands, not amongst people. Living out on the borderland, away from people, neglect and being an outcast had to have taken its toll on the lepers. The skin disease not only affected them physically, it would have affected them psychologically. People need other people.
I have led three grief groups for the community in my past 2 years here at St. James and one thing I always tell the group, is that healing takes place in community. It takes courage for people to come to a grief group and to be willing to share and to walk into a strange building amongst strangers. But by doing so, they are “speaking up for themselves," having the courage to come and to enter in with strangers to begin to seek their healing. Healing rarely occurs within isolation. You have to seek help both physically and mentally, emotionally, spiritually, you have to speak. “Jesus have mercy on me”!
When the Samaritan returned and thanked Jesus, Jesus told him to get up, for his faith had made him well.
In today’s ongoing pandemic context, anxiety, depression and other related illnesses are running rampant. Articles are being written and physicians and psychiatrists are increasingly encouraging prescriptions such as: walks in nature, social activities, becoming involved in some sort of group as forms of treatment. All of these treatments require active patient engagement. You have to get up and walk. You have to get up and get out of your house to be social. It requires you to participate in your healing. Healing does not take place in isolation and it does not take happen by yourself generally. And I would add to all of these articles and physicians, that your spirit is just as important as the other parts of you, and your spirit also does not heal in isolation or without your spiritual community.
Direct participation in community is vital to us all. During this pandemic, many have gotten out of the “habit” of going to church. It remains to be seen what the long term implications will be for our society, but I can tell you that it is not going to be good. I suspect that depression, anxiety, feelings of isolation will continue to increase as people continue to isolate and not participate in the life of community, having neglected their spiritual life, emptiness will occur.
The Samaritan, the Lepers, recognized that Jesus had something they needed. They approached him with a faithful and expectant posture, as if they knew their healing would come from his presence. They called out to him, and they found healing.
I am priest because I believe that total healing, spiritual healing, healing those wounds inside of us, only comes thoroughly through God.
And expressing gratitude is a big deal. The Samaritan came back and thanked Jesus because he recognized what had been done for us. The Samaritan was a mixed race and despised by many. He was the true outcast in the group which is why the author, Luke, mentions him-"and he was a Samaritan”. He was the one who was least likely to have been thought of to be a one to recognize and give thanks — and he was the only one who did.
In our own lives, how often do we pause and give thanks for what God has done for us?
Seeing is a big deal. May we pray that we can be like the lepers who even in their despair, saw and recognized Jesus. May we also be like Jesus, who saw those in despair and responded to them.
May we see God at work in our lives and the world. Perhaps this is the key to the Christian life. Before we are called to believe or confess, or help or do, we are called to see… and to help others do the same. Depression and anxiety, illness are real. And they can bring us all down at various times and affect us. Part of helping depression and anxiety; part of healing is to be able to see, to point out blessing, to claim mercy, to name grace wherever we are and with all the courage we can.
Jesus sees you and he cares. Move toward him. Call out to him. Ask him to have mercy on you.
And you just may hear him say to you as he did to the Samaritan, "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”
Amen