Hush and Hallelujah

Elizabeth Macaulay

There are always parts of the story we will never know. In stories from Scripture, in the story of our own lives, there are always parts of the story we will never know.

So it is in this morning’s Scripture reading. We hear the story of the ten lepers freed from their illness and we hear that only one of them had the presence of mind to turn back and thank Jesus for the gift of their lives and we are quick to judge the nine who go their way. How could they be so ungrateful, we wonder? Thank God for the gratitude of the Samaritan leper, the most unlikely of heroes. At least he had the good grace to remember to give thanks.

The other nine? We lump them in our scorn and turn away.

This morning I invite us to hear what it might have been to be one of the nine who did not shout their praise in public.

Hear now the story of one of the nine who took the gift of their healing and unwrapped it in silence.

I will tell her story as she might have told it to her people.

“It has been a year since I was given back my life.

I was one of the ten lepers who begged with the man Jesus for mercy. I haven’t wanted to share my story before now, because there are so many who shake their heads when they hear it. How could those Lepers just leave without saying thank you to Jesus? They ask. I know those who hear the story judge my friends and me. We have been called ungrateful. We have had scorn heaped upon us. That, at least, I am used to. For as a leper, I was a walking target for scorn.

I am a woman in the middle of my life. I began to notice sores on my hands and feet seven years ago. I tried to pretend they weren’t there. I prayed to any god who I thought might help me. My children and husband noticed my edginess. They were careful around me, because they knew that something was wrong.

I tried to avoid contact with other people, but one day while I was doing our wash, my neighbor looked over at my hands and started to shriek –

Leper – she is a leper!

My life ended with those words. I became one of the unclean. Inside, I was still the wife and mother and woman who had been respected in my community.

But because I was marked with the sores of a leper, I became nothing more than that. A leper. It was all that people saw.

I was cast out of my home. The faces of my children and husband as I left greet me every time I try to find release in sleep. They wailed as I walked away. Because as a leper, I was dead to them.

I walked until I could walk no further that first night. I collapsed and wept myself to sleep. For days I wandered, seeking a place where I could find food and shelter. I spent each day thinking of what it was my family was doing. Without me in their midst.

And I spent each day learning more and more the ways of living as a despised person. People noticed the sores on my hands and the shame in my eyes and looked at me with such hatred that I began to avoid contact with anyone. I wished for death to take me.

What I could not have imagined was the fear. People fear me now. In my people’s understanding of disease, they assume that I have leprosy because of something I did wrong. They think that these sores are a punishment for some sin I have committed. So they look at my disease and see God’s judgment on me. Because they think that God has judged me, they feel comfortable judging me as well. They keep their distance, always.

They even yell “leper” when my new friends and I approach, because then they are sure that there is a safe distance around us. They won’t have to actually look into our eyes that way. They won’t have to see our pain.

I think there is another fear, too. When they can get themselves to look at me, they are reminded that they too could be cast away into a living death. They too are so very vulnerable. They too could know this pain.

It was a living death I endured. Until I found a group of people who knew the ways of my pain. I met some others like myself, lepers, and we traveled together. Samaritan, Jew, man, woman, rich or poor. It didn’t matter any more, the differences we had thought were so important when our bodies were whole. We were together. We lived a bond created by living the same pain.

It helped more than I can tell you to be with people who would look into my eyes when we talked.

So that day, when we called out to Jesus, we didn’t expect much. We had heard of the prophet from Galilee, and heard that he was able to heal. But we had gotten so used to being pushed away from the world that we didn’t hope for much.

But, we yelled just the same. Jesus, master, have mercy on us!

And we were healed.

The sores on my body were knitted back into my skin. I was a whole woman. I was no longer a member of the walking dead.

And my first response? It was not thanksgiving. My first response was confusion.

I wandered away and sat down in a field and stared long and hard at my body and felt its wholeness and I wept. My tears came from a place so deep down inside of me that I wondered if they would ever be done flowing.

I who was dead was now alive. I who was known by my disease was returned to the land of those who have names.

I emptied the well of tears. Gratitude, grief, fear, exhaustion. And I arose to a new life. A life made new because of the healing of my body.

But oh, most powerfully, a life made new in the deeps of my soul. Because having been among the living dead, I know what pain in this world is, and I will not look away from it.

My children and husband were struck dumb when I returned. We are still fearful. We lost so much. We lost our sense of security, and our sense that something like leprosy could never happen to us.

But we have gained this. We have gained the gift of knowing gratitude. Every day I awake to the hush of my household; the smells of my children and the dust, heat, and wonder of a new day, I know such gratitude.

And I know this gratitude because I knew pain.

And, I know this way of living hallelujah because I felt it – oh, I live in my flesh the knowing that love has such great power. It was a sense of pure and fierce love which washed over me as the man Jesus healed my friends and I. He, who saw my pain and did not judge. He, who saw my pain and drew upon the power of compassion and … I will never be able to fully live my thanks. Never.

But I try.

When I see someone in my village who seems bowed by shame and pain and fear, I make it a point to look them in the eye and feed them with the power of the love Jesus shared with me.

I who was dead. I am alive.

Dear God, help me to live my thanks.

Amen