Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Sermons 

Title: "Healed and Whole"

Text: Luke 17:11-19

to read from a different translation this morning …

It’s because of that last verse.

If you were following along in your pew Bible,

or your very own New Revised Standard Version,

what Jesus says to the leper there is,

"Rise and go your way;

your faith has made you well."

That’s not what the Greek New Testament says.

It says, "Your faith has saved you."

To me, those aren’t the same thing.

Granted that wellness and healing are a part of salvation,

though they only come once and for all

in the next life, not this one.

But they aren’t the whole story.

For Jesus to say,

"Your faith has saved you,"

means much more than

"Congratulations! You’re no longer a leper!"

After all,

the other nine were also cured of their disease.

But only to the one who returned and gave thanks,

only to the foreigner, the Samaritan,

only to him does Jesus say,

"Your faith has saved you."

I think that’s a very interesting commentary

on what it means to be "saved."

That’s a word that gets tossed around a lot among Christians,

though we Presbyterians are often suspicious of it.

It may bring to mind slightly fanatical folks

who latch onto you

on a busy street or in an airport or wherever,

and demand to know,

"Have you been saved?"

It may remind us of people we know

who worry about us and whether we are really "saved"

because we don’t attend the right church …

namely, theirs.

It may make us think of others who have told us

that unless we have a dramatic, one-time,

"born-again" conversion experience,

we aren’t yet "saved."

But none of that seems to be what Jesus is talking about.

Jesus says, "Your faith has saved you."

Not your church membership,

not your particular experience of God,

not the particular words you use to express you beliefs …

your faith has saved you.

No more and no less than that.

And how does Jesus know

that this former leper has faith?

Because he returns to give thanks.

Not to ask how Jesus did it,

not to recite a creed establishing that Jesus is the Messiah,

but to give thanks.

No more and no less than that.

Now let me be careful here:

I’m not saying that giving thanks and being saved

are in a simple cause-and-effect kind of relationship.

You don’t just sit up one day and give thanks,

and then, abracadabra, you’re saved.

Rather, the fact that we, like the leper,

remember to give thanks in particular situations,

is a sure sign that we are saved,

or at least, are on the way to being saved.

Another matter to be careful about:

When we talk about "being saved,"

often, we are referring to

what happens to us after this life.

If we are saved,

we go to heaven, to be with God,

however we envision that.

If we are not saved,

we go somewhere else!

But again, there is more to it than that.

A different translation of this passage

handles that last verse in yet another way:

"Your faith has made you whole."

Now that’s not an exact rendering of the Greek text,

but it does capture the sense of it, in a different way.

Because "being saved"

isn’t just a promise for the hereafter …

it has to do with wholeness here and now.

"Wholeness" is a tricky concept.

Because we tend to think of it first and foremost in physical terms:

if we’re sick, we’re not whole;

if we’re well, we are.

The trick is,

there’s just enough truth to that

to get us into difficulty.

Jesus did, after all,

go around making sick people well.

It’s clear that it is not God’s will

for us to be hurt, or injured, or sick.

And we don’t have to look very far

to find books, or preachers, or even friends,

who will tell us that if we only had enough faith,

we could be cured of whatever ails us.

Well, sometimes that’s true,

and sometimes it isn’t.

Notice that Jesus did heal all ten lepers;

he didn’t make the other nine sick again

when they neglected to give thanks!

They remained healed,

even though their faith was less than it should have been.

Yet, unlike the tenth one,

they were not saved;

they were not whole …

at least, not yet.

Wholeness, it seems to me,

has more to do with the individual self –

and I’m hesitant to talk about the "individual"

in the individualistic culture we live in –

but it has something to do with the soul, the psyche,

whatever word you want to use to talk about

the part of "you" that is more than just your body.

It is possible to be whole

even when our bodies are sick

and even when our hearts are broken.

Wholeness has to do with what psychologists call "integration,"

coming to terms with and reconciling

the opposites within ourselves.

Our need for companionship

versus our need for solitude.

Our capacity to be wonderfully creative

and our ability to be horribly destructive.

The masculine and the feminine aspects that are within each of us.

The ways we help people,

and the ways we hurt them.

The emotional part of us,

and the rational part of us.

The parts of us that are sick,

and the parts that are well.

And until we have acknowledged and wrestled with

all the things we are,

we cannot be whole.

For most of us,

that battle seems to come

around age 40-45 …

the infamous "mid-life crisis."

A few people manage to become integrated before that time;

others, unfortunately, never get there at all.

But for most of us,

mid-life is where the painful process of becoming whole

really hits us hard.

Probably the easiest place for most of us to see it

is in our marriages, or other long-term committed relationships.

Because most of us tend to marry or partner with

someone who is at least in some way, our opposite.

This is what delights us, and attracts us to them …

But over a period of years,

it’s also the thing that drives us the most crazy about them.

How often have you heard a woman say of her husband,

"I wonder sometimes if he has any feelings at all;

he’s so cold and logical."

And that very same husband may say of his wife,

"She’s so emotional all the time!

I wish I could get her to think straight just once."

And yet, that difference between them

was probably part of their initial attraction to one another.

What all human beings seem to do

is to take the underdeveloped side of our personality

and project it onto someone else.

Whatever we don’t like,

or aren’t comfortable with, in ourselves,

we attribute to someone else.

In the hypothetical marriage I just described,

the wife has been doing all the feeling for both partners,

while the husband has done the thinking.

And when mid-life hits for one or both of them,

and they suddenly start recognizing in themselves

all those things they denied

and assigned instead to their spouse …

you’d better believe, that’s painful.

It’s why, so often, when divorces and affairs happen,

they happen at mid-life …

we sometimes try to escape the pain

by escaping the person who seems responsible.

And yet, it is through the pain

and on the other side

that we find wholeness.

Of course, it isn’t just married people

who have to work this all out …

single folks do, too.

Sometimes, they seem to go through it earlier,

because they can’t postpone it in the same way

by projecting their shadow side onto that other person.

Sometimes, though, we don’t ever go through it at all,

because the thought of facing up to ourselves alone

is more painful than we can bear.

I realize, we’ve wandered far afield

from those ten lepers …

but psychological wholeness is a faith issue.

The great psychologist Carl Jung often said

that all of his patients who came to him after age 40 …

no matter what the initial problem was that they came to talk about –

their marriage, their work, depression, whatever –

at its most basic level, it was a religious issue.

Because when we begin to wrestle with

that side of ourselves that we’d rather not see –

the "shadow," as Jung calls it –

it is our faith that gives us the courage

to do that wrestling.

It’s because we know God is forgiving

that we can confess the worst about ourselves.

It’s because we are created in God’s image

that we know we are valued and valuable

even in what seem to be our worst moments.

It’s because Christ has died for us

that the brokenness in us can be made whole.

It is because God loves us

that we are indeed saved.

May we never forget to give thanks to God

Amen.

© 2004 Julie Adkins (e-mail: DrJAdkins@trinitypresdallas.org)