My old parish church of Llandrinio is well worth a visit, for those who are interested in history and old stones. Changed and rebuilt several times over the centuries, it’s like a detective story in stone, as you trace the way the building has been altered, from Norman times to the fifteenth century when Llandrinio lost its market and much of its status after the founding of the Cistercian Abbey of Strata Marcella just up the river, to the new works done in the 17th century when the then Rector became the first Bishop of St Asaph after the restoration under Charles II, to the inevitable restoration in Victorian times. Some of the fabric dates back to before the Norman Conquest, and Llandrinio was one of the first places in the area to hear the Gospel, preached there by Trunio, who was one of the band of evangelists brought to this part of Wales by St Cadfan.
Among the older bits of surviving masonry is a narrow window by the side of the altar. It seems very likely that in early medieval times this window would have been used to give communion to people who had leprosy. Leprosy was not uncommon at that time, and of course no leper would have been allowed into the church itself; their disease excluded them from society, and they were, to all intents and purposes, non-persons.
We can in fact cure leprosy - or Hansen’s Disease as it’s more correctly known - fairly easily these days; but it’s much harder to put right the physical and emotional damage done to those who've lived for years with the disease. It’s a sad fact though that many people in our world still live with leprosy. To me that’s a major blot on the face of humanity, that we’ve failed to get this disease cured and done away with, when it seems we can easily find all the money we need to supply bombs and tanks and missiles to whoever wants them. Perhaps it has something to do with the way in which lepers are still seen as being unclean and unworthy today. Perhaps they are still non-persons.
Hansen's Disease is a particular disease with a clear diagnosis and a specified treatment. But in Bible days almost any chronic skin complaint could be labelled as leprosy, so that people with a whole range of skin diseases would find themselves excluded, banned from entering towns and villages. They would band together and live in the open country, until such time as - just maybe -they could prove themselves to be clean, with unblemished skin. Interestingly, leprosy is not in fact very contagious. But it is fearful and in its effects extremely unsightly. Lepers lose their sense of touch and therefore easily injure themselves, so are frequently disabled as a consequence of the disease.
Imagine, then, what things were like for the lepers in our two readings today. That word ‘leper’ says a lot in itself. We still use it to label those who are despised and turned away by others, for whatever reason. This was a disease that labelled you, defined you, you were no longer a person, a citizen, you were a leper. And it was no respecter of person or privilege.
Naaman, for all his high office, had become a leper: think how horror stricken he must have been to see the tell-tale white marks on his skin. Imagine being one of the ten men who came to beg healing from Jesus. One of them at least was a Samaritan, under normal circumstances he would have had nothing to do with Jews. But these men no longer had status or citizenship; as non-persons they were bound together by their shared misery and degradation.
Leprosy is more or less extinct in modern Europe; it's a disease of poverty, in countries around the world. It still disfigures and damages those who get it, and forces them into a kind of internal exile, to live in leper colonies or villages away from family and home. Church agencies are among those trying to put things right, using multi-drug therapy to cure the disease and corrective surgery to put right some of the damage caused, and helping those who are disabled to earn their own living and not have to beg.
I can almost taste the fear and anguish of the lepers in our stories as I read. Naaman clutches at straws, desperately hoping that the things his slave girl has told him might be true. The ten lepers have maybe heard that Jesus is someone special - though maybe they’d have made the same appeal to any travelling teacher. In most cases they'd have been sent away still unclean.
But in our stories what happens next is miracle. "Dip yourself in the Jordan," Naaman is told. He wasn't impressed - surely a man like him deserved a personal audience with the prophet! And the Jordan was hardly more than a marshy stream, it couldn’t compare with the great rivers of his homeland. But of course, as we’ve heard, when he does go and wash in the Jordan he's instantly made clean.
All Jesus says to the ten who came to him is 'Go, show yourselves to the priests.' You couldn’t re-enter society until a priest had certified you clean. And it was just as easy as that; perhaps they were grumbling as they turned away; there hadn’t been any special incantation or healing prayer. But then, all of a sudden, they found that they were clean, their skin pink and healthy like that of a little child. Imagine them jumping for joy and dancing off down the road to see the priest.
Naaman had some making up to do after his healing. He’d been in quite a huff about the poor reception he’d had, and the fact that the prophet hadn't come out to speak to him. His servants had had quite a struggle to persuade him to follow the simple instructions he'd been given. But now we see the newly healed Naaman not only healed but also converted. There is a God in Israel. He goes straight back to the prophet's house to say thank-you, and to promise his praise and worship to the God Elisha serves.
And that’s the most important part of this story, and the story of the ten who came to Jesus. I’ve talked a lot about leprosy, but really these stories aren’t about leprosy, which, when all said and done, was just a fact of life in those days. They’re about thankfulness. The thankfulness we see in Naaman; the thankfulness we see in just the one out of the ten who came to Jesus. They were all amazed and thrilled to be healed - but only the one came back. The other common thread in these stories is that both these thankful people, Naaman and the Samaritan leper, were foreigners. Not the people you might expect to lead the way in thankfulness to the God of Israel. 'Your own faith has cured you,' says Jesus to the Samaritan who came back to him.
For me a theme of our readings is the link between faith and thankfulness. One thing that reveals our faith is that we know to say thank-you, and we know who to say it to. Thank-you is a word that lies right at the heart of the Gospel.
Paul wrote that he’d been set free from the tyranny of the Law. As a Pharisee, he had believed that to get to heaven he had to keep every word of the Law (and indeed, he thought he was managing to do it - but he was wrong). If you want to earn your way into heaven, nothing less than perfection can ever be good enough. But Paul’s life had been completely turned round. He’d encountered Jesus, and he had encountered the grace of God. He’d been showered with undeserved, unmerited grace, discovering the wonderful truth that we are loved by God despite ourselves, despite our sin. What Paul could never manage to do by trying to keep the Law had been already done for him on the cross of Calvary; where he and we are healed and set free from the deathly power of sin. The cross stands as the sign of a spiritual healing that is simply there for us, gracious and freely offered. Even before we confess our sins we are forgiven; even before we notice the scars we are healed of the leprosy of our souls.
So the life of faith, for us as Christians, as for Naaman and the Samaritan who came back to Jesus, is a life of thankfulness. For Paul, every aspect of his life in Christ was a thank-offering for what he had been so freely given. His great theme is that now he belongs to Christ, that now Christ lives in him; all that he had lost is found, all his failure is redeemed, in the one man Jesus Christ, crucified in our stead and raised from the dead. So have we freely received: and we should freely give, in praise and thanksgiving for God's redeeming love.
Fill thou my life, O Lord my God
in every part with praise
that my whole being may proclaim
thy being and thy ways. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment