My sermon is based on
Where did they go? Ten voices cried for mercy. One command sent them on their way. As they went, healing began. But only one came back. A foreigner. I can almost hear the pause in Jesus’ breath – a silence between gratitude and grief. Did he smile at the one who returned, or did he feel taken for granted?
I wonder about his reaction because I’ve encountered many situations where I helped people in trouble, but I rarely got to see them again. They disappear! When I see them come back, it is mostly to ask me for more help. They seem to be going through another crisis and try to convince me that I am their only hope. Some of them swear to God that they will return once the situation is under control. I had fallen for their compelling stories in my early days in ministry, but over the course of almost twenty years, my bitterness and skepticism have grown to outweigh my joy.
So when I hear Jesus ask, “Where are the other nine?”, I feel the sting of recognition. I caught my hardened, prejudiced heart that judges people before I have a chance to even get to know them. Naaman from today’s Old Testament reading could relate to my judgmentalness. Naaman, too, suffered from Leprosy like those in the Gospel. He expected a grand miracle, so he was outraged and unwilling to follow through with the instruction that all he had to do was to go down the river Jordan and wash himself seven times. He could not figure out why he could not have done it in his own land. When he put his grudge aside to listen to his servants and washed himself seven times as instructed, he found God waiting in muddy water. He was made clean, realized God’s grace, and returned to Elisha to express his gratitude.
We all carry some of Naaman’s pride – a prejudice born of old wounds. Whatever experiences we have endured in the past have shaped the way we perceive the world, our community, the people around us, and ourselves. Somewhere along the line, we start relying on our evidence-based rationale and understanding more than taking a chance to find God in the muddy water. How often do we shut down and stop listening to people because of different opinions?
Before I could see others clearly, I had to wash off the layer of arrogant pride that covered my insecurity and face the real me. I was lonely and unsure of myself when I arrived in the Diocese of Kentucky. Many clergy colleagues seemed cliquish, their brief welcomes polite but hollow. I grew guarded, convinced I had no one to talk to.
My frustration eventually shifted from loneliness to a state of cynicism. I began to see the church as insincere, hypocritical, and pretentious. We preach love from the pulpit, I thought, yet my colleagues don’t even care to welcome a new one among them. What is wrong with the church!? My desperation must have shown, because one pastor came up to me one day and invited me to lunch. I went, skeptical and self-protected. What good could it do to share a meal with someone I might have to measure every word around?
But I was wrong. The conversation was simple, kind, and genuine. More importantly, it revealed that the insincerity and judgment I despised were living inside me. That lunch became my own “wash and be made clean” moment — a reminder that the first cleansing God asks for is almost always our own heart.
True wisdom begins when we stop fighting the muddy water and let God wash us clean; those who walk humbly live by it.
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