Christ Church

“There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger”

Ten lepers, standing afar off on the outskirts of a certain unnamed village in the lands of Samaria and Galilee, cry out to Jesus for mercy. All ten were healed. Yet one turned back, Luke tells us, “glorifying God, giving him thanks,” and, indeed, in an extravagant manner, crying “with a loud voice and falling down on his face at his feet.” As Luke simply says, “he was a Samaritan.”

Jesus calls attention to the paradox of the one and the many. Ten were healed. But “where are the nine? There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger.” The Samaritan here as in last Sunday’s Gospel in the parable of the Good Samaritan is the stranger, the other, yet the one who shows us what it means to be human. In both cases, the Samaritan, the stranger, the other, really symbolizes what belongs to the truth of our common humanity, and in two ways: first, our being healed and restored by divine compassion in the care of one another, (such is “music at midnight” as we considered last week), and, secondly, in turning back, giving glory and thanks to God in whom all our good and the good of one another is found.

Giving thanks for healing and care and giving glory to God go together. The act of receiving and giving reveals the nature of salvation. If the “certain lawyer” learns in spite of himself who is the neighbour in the parable, so here in today’s Gospel, we learn that the love of God and the love of neighbour not only belong together as the fulfilling of the law in love, but as the very meaning of our being made whole and restored; in short, salvation. Jesus says directly to the stranger, “Arise, go thy way, thy faith hath made thee whole.” He is not simply healed of the contagion of leprosy, a bodily condition, which separates him from the human community, he is made whole or saved in terms of his whole person, his essential humanity. The terms are synonymous: Salvation is our wholeness both in body and soul as restored to the community of God in faith, hope, and love.

In returning and giving thanks we are made whole. Yet returning and giving thanks to God in Christ was not actually commanded by Jesus. All he said to the ten was “Go, and show yourselves unto the priests.” This references the customs and practices of Israel in the Jewish religion. Implicit in his directive is that they could only show themselves to the priests of Israel if they were no longer outcasts and defiled by their contagion of leprosy; in short, only if they were healed. In Luke’s wonderful economy of expression, “it came to pass, that as they went, they were healed.” All ten were healed.

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“Love is the fulfilling of the law”

John Drury’s masterful literary biography of the poet and priest, George Herbert (1593-1631) is entitled Music at Midnight (2013). The title is taken from an anecdote in Izaak Walton’s The Life of Mr. George Herbert, written in 1670. It has the ring of truth to it about Herbert’s character, drawn from his own account of what happened to him one evening on his way from Bemerton to an evening of music making with friends in the cathedral city of Salisbury. As he journeyed, “he saw a poor man with a poorer horse that was fallen under his load.” Both were in distress and in need of help “which Mr. Herbert perceiving, put off his canonical coat, and helped the poor man to unload, and after to load his horse. The poor man blessed him for it, and he blessed the poor man;” and then, in very telling phrase, “and so was like the good Samaritan, that he gave him money to refresh both himself and his horse, and told him, that if he loved himself, he would be merciful to his beast.”

The whole event acts out the story of the Good Samaritan. But the anecdote goes on to report what happened when Herbert reached the house of his friends, dirty and in disarray, unlike his usual trim and clean self. He told them what had happened and was told by one that “he had disparaged himself by so dirty an employment.” Herbert’s answer was that the thought of what he had done would prove music to him at midnight, and that the omission of it” would have troubled “his conscience, whensoever he would pass by that place.” Walton quotes Herbert as saying, “For if I be bound to pray for all that be in distress, I am sure that I am bound, so far as it is in my power, to practise what I pray for … and I would not willingly pass one day of my life without comforting a sad soul, or showing mercy: and I praise God for the occasion. And now let’s tune our instruments.”

“To practise what I pray for.” Prayer is “a kind of tune which all things hear and fear,, Prayer (I). It illustrates the reciprocity and interplay of all things human and divine, natural and holy, domestic and exotic, concluding through a parade of images and metaphors that prayer is “something understood.” All in all, the anecdote and his poems encapsulate poignantly the radical understanding of the Parable of the Good Samaritan before us this Sunday in the midpoint of the Trinity season. It is all captured most wonderfully in the opening words of the last poem of The Temple, Love (III). “Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back, / Guiltie of dust and sinne,” for that is our human condition. Yet “quick-ey’d Love” always draws nearer to us, “sweetly questioning, If I lack’d any thing.”

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