This past summer, my husband and I received bad news regarding the sale of our home in WA State. This whole situation with our house has been one of those spiritual tests that all of us unwillingly encounter in our day-to-day lives. We received this news in the heat of the summer. I found I could not shake my worry and concern; it was affecting me in a way that it had not during the two years we have been trying to close the deal on this house. And so I, who can count on one hand the number of times I have gotten sick in the past ten years, got a cold. In the middle of the summer, I got a horrible cold. And then my husband who is immuno-suppressed got my cold only his cold turned into pneumonia. This was our vacation! I have known for a long time about the relationship between emotions and health but this particular experience was so obvious that in the end I could not stop laughing. Would that all illness and disease could be so easily connected to our spiritual state!

Health problems, especially serious ones are a great mystery. Many times illness and disease seem to be incredibly random. Why does this person get cancer, why did that person have an aneurism? This, of course, is above and beyond congenital and environmental factors; there are very specific reasons why a disproportionately high number of children in the Bronx have asthma. No, I’m talking about illness that cannot be specifically attributed to the world in which we live or the way we were born.

But within this sphere of environmental factors and random illnesses, faith plays a very big role. Aside from taking care of ourselves physically, tending to ourselves spiritually is of primary importance. When we worship as a community, when we take time to pray and reflect on our lives, when we practice keeping the Sabbath, we give our bodies the best chance possible of remaining whole and healthy.

Today’s gospel reading is about Jesus’ healing of 10 lepers. Lepers appear frequently in the gospel readings and are clearly a symbol of all that is repugnant and despised. Leprosy has been around since the beginning of time and has carried with it a devastating emotional component. While the disease is contagious, it would not appear that the level of isolation imposed upon lepers was ever warranted. Father Damien lived with lepers for 15 years before he eventually got the disease and worked alongside them for another three before he died.

Lepers appear a great deal in scripture because they are a potent symbol of the rejection that the diseased face. While leprosy still exists in some parts of the tropical world, it is not a major threat in the western world. Nonetheless, there are plenty of illnesses which do plague our society and cause a certain amount of rejection. Despite the fact that many accommodations have been made for the disabled, there is still a model of the healthy and beautiful that seems to be the ideal of our culture. And so there are many who simply do not want to deal with the mentally handicapped, the physically handicapped or the average person who simply has some sort of disease.

There is one place, however, where those who are struggling with health concerns of any sort are embraced and cared for and that is the church. Prayers for healing have been a part of the Christian tradition since the beginning of our faith. Over the two thousand years of our faith, miraculous healings have abounded. Prayer has brought healing when doctors had given up hope. The power of our faith cannot be underestimated.

While Jesus’ oft repeated statement "your faith has made you well" has certainly been misused over the years, the core meaning of this statement is certainly true. Faith makes us well. Faith may not always cure our physical ailments but faith makes us well. I had a friend who had a brain tumor that eventually took her life but toward the end of her life, she was well – well with God, her family and her friends. Obviously, most of us would prefer to be physically healed and live out a full lifespan but sometimes that simply does not happen.

Jesus’ final words to the leper in today’s story: "Your faith has made you well" have been misused over the years. "You haven’t gotten well so therefore you must not have faith!" How many times have well intentioned people uttered this terribly cruel and harsh statement? The most important thing to realize is that Jesus never said such a thing. We cannot assume that opposites are true when it comes to what Jesus preached; matters of faith and religion frequently defy simple logic. The fact that many people die with a sense of peace, even though their bodies were never healed, does not mean that their faith has not made them well.

Today we have the beginning of a new ministry at St. John’s. While this church has had a healing service on Wednesday mornings for many years, we have never offered opportunities for healing on Sunday mornings. Now we do. Many people come to church longing for healing in some place in their lives. It may be obvious such as an illness that has been diagnosed; it may not be obvious at all, such as unresolved grief. Whatever it is, the first step is to acknowledge that we need healing. That acknowledgement allows us to open ourselves to others and recognize the interdependence of humanity and the very real need for community. The human spirit can endure many hardships and trials as long as we are not alone.

The story of the ten lepers also contains Luke’s theme regarding Samaritans. Remember the story of the Good Samaritan that also comes from Luke’s gospel. Once again, a member of the despised Samaritans shines because he is the only one of the ten who returns and gives thanks to Jesus. How typical is this! How slow we are to give thanks to God when God does act in our lives. In every church I have ever served, whenever the prayers of the people are prayed, the section in which we are to give thanks gets glossed over. We have huge lists of concerns and desires but we don’t remember to give thanks. Perhaps it is because we are always longing for something we don’t have. I know that when I moved beyond this situation with our house in Washington State, and really lived into the fact that "it is only money," I regained my grounding. And God has provided in ways that I never would have dreamed of. For that I am very thankful.