2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c Psalm 111
2 Tim. 2:8-15 Luke 17:11-19
Lectionary Link
Can we agree on some universals?
Everyone needs and wants health and deserves access to the modes of healing available.
Everyone can have valid faith.
Everyone can be thankful.
What happens when people do not practice these universals?
Access to health and healing and care belongs to those who can afford it or to those who are members of our own group who share our persuasions.
The faith of my own group is more valid and efficacious than the faith of those who do not agree with us.
Since my group deserves health and health care, we don't really need to be thankful for something which we deserve.
How did the Gospels present the values of the early communities which derived from following Jesus of Nazareth?
They preached the health of salvation to all peoples, both to the Jews who had a very illustrious faith tradition and to the non-Jewish peoples who inhabited the Roman Empire. The Jesus Movement, as it is presented in the New Testament is a Christo-centric Judaism with a method of evangelism that allowed the universalism of the Hebrew prophets to be practiced in welcoming ways. These welcoming ways involved dispensing with some of the ritual requirements in customs like dietary rules and ritual circumcision. Ritual adjustments were made to become an accessible universal invitation to the health of salvation.
What did the early Gospel communities discover about faith in Jesus Christ? They found that it was winsome among Jews and Gentiles. This winsomeness was seen as validating the faith experience of those who were Samaritans and Gentiles. Salvation became a faith event for all peoples. St. Paul wrote an apology for this kind of faith in appealing the pre-Jewish Patriarch Abraham. Abraham had faith before the Covenant of the Law existed and he was seen as the model of faith for the Gentile peoples. This faith in Jesus Christ was able to be the basis for establishing the extended family social organizations which came to become churches. These social organizations gave structures of belonging for the diverse people who were inhabiting the cities of the Roman Empire. This lodging, befriending community behavior was expressive of the holistic health which was a chief characteristic of communion called fellowship. Fellowship is a special kind of spiritual bonding around the values of hope in the Risen Christ who could continue to known in individual ways to animate the particular gifts of each person.
One of chief values of the Jesus Movement was thanksgiving. This value was ritualize in the principal gathering event derived from the very word thanksgiving, or Eucharist. A thanksgiving feast comprises the actual social reality of the gathered church, a people who belong to Christ and to each other. This experience of belonging is like health to those who have known "leper state" of isolation from the community of health. The experience of the Risen Christ is the experience of coming to belong with God in Christ and within a community of care. A meal of Thanksgiving is truly the most appropriate worship response to God for healthful salvation offered in Jesus Christ.
With the continual practice of Eucharist within a community of people who belong to Christ and to each other, we are like the thankful Samaritan leper who was healed; we are always returning to thank Christ for healthful salvation. And in this thanksgiving event, we again receive the presence of the healing Christ. Amen.
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