Standing At A Distance

 

Scripture: Luke 17:11-19

 

A sermon shared at the Suttons Bay Congregational Church

August 9, 2020

 

 

 

       When Facebook first came on the scene, I didn’t know what to make of it. My trendy friends assured me that I needed to join. They promised that it would help me connect with other human beings; but I didn’t feel particularly disconnected. They said that I’d see pictures of other peoples’ vacations and lunches; but I wasn’t sure I had any interest in doing so. They described all the funny pet videos I’d be able to watch; but I couldn’t imagine a greater waste of time.

 

       Still, I was most put off by the rather casual use of the term “friend” in connection with the online associations that Facebook facilitates. In the early days of the social media site, a family member enthusiastically gushed to me: “I’ve only just joined and I already have five-hundred friends!” With my characteristic tact, I responded: “No, you don’t.” He said “Yes! I do!” and pointed at the number in his online profile. I said: “Do this. Ask all of those five-hundred people for money and see who sends it. Those are your friends.”

 

       Well, a pulpit is perhaps an awkward forum for confessions, but I will admit that over time I’ve become an enthusiastic Facebook convert. I know that opinions differ about Facebook and I have no interest in evangelizing anyone on its behalf. If you’re not into Facebook, I get it. But—speaking only for myself—Facebook has enabled me to stay in much closer touch with family, friends, and professional contacts who are dispersed around the globe. Also, I like posting pictures of our travels and our lunches and funny videos of our dog.

 

       What surprised me most about Facebook, though, is that it turned out to be a way to establish new connections that have somehow mysteriously transformed into friendships—despite the fact that I’ve never met these individuals in person. They include an Episcopal clergyman in Kansas. A rabbi in Maryland. A Jesuit priest in Washington, D.C. It sounds like a joke where all my new Facebook friends walk into a bar.

 

Speaking of which, my new friends include someone who’s written a book on the favorite cocktail recipes of Ernest Hemingway. A law professor in Indiana. A couple of newspaper columnists. A fair housing advocate. The list goes on and on. Would they all loan me money? Maybe, although following Jesus’s example in the wilderness, I won’t tempt them to disappoint me by asking.

 

For all of its other shortcomings, which are abundant, Facebook has reminded me of something about which I seem to need constant reminding, especially these days: We can maintain deep personal connections with people even when we’re not in their physical presence. Indeed, we can even establish those connections out of nothing more than words, images, and the electronic projection of the human spirit. Physical contact plays such an outsized role in our lives that we can forget about the facility and effectiveness of other kinds of communion.

 

The healing stories of Jesus convey the same message, but in cosmic, mind-bending, soul-changing terms and dimensions. Of course, many of those healing stories involve physical contact. Perhaps the most famous comes in the fourth chapter of Luke, in these stunningly simple words: “At sunset, the people brought to Jesus all who had various kinds of sickness, and laying his hands on each one, he healed them.”

 

In some of the stories, Jesus has very minor physical contact with those he heals. In the eighth chapter of Luke, we encounter a woman who touches the hem of Jesus’s cloak and is instantly cured of her condition. We often remember this story as one about the unimaginable power of physical contact with Jesus. But it’s worth noting that Jesus describes things differently. He says to her: “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.”

 

A number of years ago, I helped institute at a church that I attended a regular “healing service.” We met once a week in the evening, listened to each other’s struggles, and prayed. I think everyone agreed that the most important moment came at the end, when we gathered in a circle, our arms around each other, imagining a healing force moving through us like a steady electric current. If sometime I had announced that we were having a no-contact healing service that week, I think everyone would have stayed home.

 

But that would have been a mistake. Jesus knew that we can be in a place of healing intimacy with each other even when we’re not in close physical proximity. He conveys this to us over and over again, including in the gospel’s healing stories.

 

Consider the story of the centurion’s servant, told in the eighth chapter of Matthew and the seventh chapter of Luke. You remember how it goes: a centurion comes to Jesus and asks him to heal his servant, who is gravely ill at home. Jesus offers to go to him, but the centurion dismisses it as unnecessary. In essence, the centurion says: “I have a lot of authority and people do what I tell them to do; but your authority is even greater; so I know that if you just ‘speak the word’ he will be healed.”

 

As with the woman who touched his garment, Jesus celebrates the man’s faith: “I have not found so great a faith, no, not in Israel,” he says. Jesus calls for the servant’s healing. And within the hour, the man recovers.

 

Then we have the story of the Canaanite woman’s daughter, told in the fifteenth chapter of Matthew and the seventh chapter of Mark. Here, a Canaanite woman comes to Jesus and pleads for him to cast a demon out of her daughter, who has become possessed. Jesus simply says that her request has been granted and sends her on her way. No laying on of hands, no hugs or high-fives or garment-touching. It’s as if the woman’s faith alone did all that was needed.  

 

But my personal favorite among these stories comes in the seventeenth chapter of Luke. Here’s what happens. Jesus, on his way to Jerusalem, stops in a village. He is visited there by ten men, all lepers, who because of their illness “stood at a distance.” That was essentially the command of the public health departments of the time: no one should come into physical contact with a leper.

 

They ask Jesus to have mercy on them, he tells them to show themselves to the priests, and as they depart they are healed. Now, I want you to notice that all these men showed tremendous faith. When Jesus sent them to the priests, they didn’t balk, or wait to see if the healing worked, or otherwise test the power of Jesus’s command. They turned, and left, and were healed.

 

Still, only one of the men—a Samaritan, and so a social outcast for an additional reason—shows gratitude. He comes back to Jesus, falls at his feet, and thanks him. Jesus says (we can imagine, almost with a smirk): “and where are the other nine I healed?” Then he commands the Samaritan: “Arise, go your way. Your faith has made you well.”

 

It’s funny how experience changes your perspective on biblical texts. I used to think of the nine who did not return to express their thanks as ungrateful oafs. But now, in my COVID-saturated sensibility, I suspect they just wanted to run off and throw their arms around all the family members and friends who they’d had to look at from afar for so long. You know, it’s almost as if someone somewhere had told me to be careful about judging people.

 

These healing stories all reinforce the notion that we do not need physical contact to be in spiritual contact. We can love each other, connect with each other, heal each other, even when we stand at a distance. All we need, every one of these stories tells us, is the faith that this is so.

 

Of course, we do not find this message only in the healing stories. After all, ours is a religion built around the experience of absence as presence. God is elsewhere, and yet with us every day and even as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Jesus ascended to heaven, and yet the gospel of Matthew concludes with his promise: “And surely I am with you, even to the very end of the age.” At the center of our belief system lies the conviction that when his followers went looking for Jesus in a tomb, he wasn’t there, he was gone—and yet he walks with us and he talks with us and he tells us we are his own.

 

These days, we all need to make do with less physical contact. But that doesn’t mean we’ve had to make do with less loving connection. To the contrary, in some paradoxical ways COVID-19 has pushed us to places of broader connection, deeper empathy, and a more considered compassion.

 

In that bracing passage in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew, Jesus tells us that when we serve the hungry, the stranger, the sick, and the imprisoned it is just as if we are serving him. Those misfortunes may or may not have been part of our personal experience before COVID-19. But, now, all of us are sharing more intimately in these sources of existential instability and anxiety.

 

All of a sudden, we have to worry about how we will get food—and we stand in closer communion with the hungry. All of a sudden, we have to worry about our health and the health of every person around us—and we stand in closer communion with the sick. All of a sudden, we have to worry about where we will be welcomed and admitted—and we stand in closer communion with the stranger. All of a sudden, we have to worry about whether and when we can leave our homes—and we stand in closer communion with the imprisoned.   

 

And, all of a sudden, things we took for granted have become precious to us. A hug. A kiss. A big, sloppy gathering of friends or family. The ordinary has taken on an extraordinary significance. Counting our losses turns out to be a compelling way to count our blessings.

 

But a critical part of the Good News of Jesus Christ is that all of this upending of our normal lives has made us more connected, not less. It has brought us closer together, not pushed us apart. It has expanded our spirits, not shriveled them up. It has magnified the Lord and his place in our lives, not marginalized him.

 

When those ten lepers came to Jesus, the Bible tells us, he found them standing at a distance. But the healing stories demonstrate that physical remoteness is no obstacle to the God who, after all, created space itself. Their faith closed the gap—in an instant. Just as it did for the centurion and the Canaanite woman. They could do all things through Christ, who strengthened them. And we can do all things through Christ, who strengthens us.

 

The healing stories also provide some reassurance that this amazing grace does not depend upon us having arrived at a state of spiritual perfection. Jesus blessed the woman who grasped at his garment, despite her boldness; he blessed the Canaanite woman, despite her bluntness; he blessed the centurion, even though he represented the oppressive power of the Roman government, and the centurion’s servant, even though Jesus had never met him; he blessed the ten lepers, even though only one returned to express his thanks.

 

As the old hymn goes, Jesus blesses me “just as I am,” and you just as you are. He strengthens us and works through us even though we are messy and flawed human beings who are laboring to do better, to live faithfully, and to love unhesitatingly and inexhaustibly. Perhaps, in the Good News that he brings us, that is the best and most welcome news of all: that we are blessed, just as we are. The gravest mistake we could make would be not to hear it and take it to heart.

 

Right now, at this very moment, the most powerful and loving force of the universe is in your company, right beside you. God is no more “remote” than you are from your children, your grandchildren, your friends, your co-workers, your fellow church members, or any of the hungry, homeless, estranged, sick, or imprisoned people that have been placed in our care. Through the movement of our faith and the power of the Holy Spirit, no living soul stands at a distance from us. Not even one.

 

“With God,” Jesus said, “all things are possible.” Even a savior born into poverty. Even a Messiah riding on a donkey. Even an empty tomb, with the stone rolled away. Even human connection, over hundreds of miles. Even intimacy, when communication goes online. Even peace, in the midst of turmoil. Even grace and comfort, in the throes of an often ungracious and discomfiting time. Even love, in the absence of embrace. It’s kind of like magic—only infinitely better, and it’s for real.

 

*

 

Once upon a time, the story goes, there was a terrible sickness. Ten men thought that it meant they had to stand apart from God. But then they learned that their sense of distance was an illusion. And their faith that this was so brought them to a place of wholeness and healing.

 

And so will ours.

 

Praise God that it is so.

 

And the people said: Amen.