The Marks of Faithfulness

The Marks of Faithfulness  

Old Testament: Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7    

Gospel: Luke 17:11-19  

In Luke’s gospel, 10 men, at least we presume they are men, come upon Jesus of Nazareth and his band of disciples as they walked from Galilee towards Samaria on their way to Jerusalem. No doubt the disciples thought Jesus was being reckless, because good Jews avoided Samaria, detouring through the Jordan River Valley. 

But Jesus and friends encounter 10 lepers, sadly keeping their distance, because there was no cure for this disease that marked their skin, so they were required to live away from others, away from their families, and away from their communities. They called out to Jesus, asking for mercy. What did they expect, maybe a handout? A loaf of bread and a jug of wine?  

Jesus showed them mercy. He told them to go to the priest and show themselves to be clean. Once a person was ostracized from the community for a communicable disease, only the priest could restore them to their families and civilization. 9 of the 10, discovering they had been cleansed of the marks on their skin, raced off to the priest. Only one returned to give thanks and praise to God. 

In this portion of Luke’s gospel, Jesus is pressing hard on his followers to demonstrate their faithfulness. Jesus finds a variety of images of faithfulness to be lifted up, but none of those identified as faithful - are “good Jews” or disciples of Christ. In this case, the one who was faithful is both a leper, and a hated Samaritan. And those Samaritans are known to have a wrong understanding of God. 

Here Jesus explains that the faithful, when faced with a radical change in their circumstances, first thank and praise God. At the core of the life of a faithful person is the basic understanding that God is present in good times and bad, and God is always to be praised. Times of change should make us more prayerful, and more aware of God and God’s love. 

Before I went back to school at night to earn a Bachelor’s degree that permitted me to go to seminary, I was a Senior Reactor Operator at the LaSalle County Nuclear Power Station. I worked a rotating shift schedule as an operator, and also had assignments in the Training Department, Scheduling and Planning, and Administration. While some folks felt like it was important to hold on to their place in the organization, I willing accepted a variety of assignments. 

I was one of the initial 60 individuals licensed to operate the new nuclear plant on the Illinois River, south of Marseilles. It took a long time to get to the point of operating the plant. We were the first plant to go on line after the event at Three Mile Island, and TMI followed the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in Russia. 

After these celebrated and well known incidents, the kind of training that nuclear plant operators were exposed to - changed dramatically. Originally there were seventeen General Procedures, all of which we were expected to memorize, and we were expected to demonstrate most of those procedures single-handed on a life size simulator, even though we would never be allowed to operate in that manner. 

After these events, our procedures were split between the General Plant Procedures, for normal unit startup and shutdown and other integrated plant events, and the Emergency Procedures. The Emergency Procedures were detailed, multi-page logic charts, where movement between the steps of the chart were driven by plant conditions, IF you have this condition THEN take this action. 

The training and testing of operators on the simulator demanded powerful new computers be brought in, so that complex and multiple failures could be programmed. Some of the problems, if they were diagnosed correctly and quickly, could be resolved without incident. Some problems, escalated despite the best efforts of the Control Room Staff, simulating real life scenarios, or progressive scenarios - designed to require use of the most dramatic and challenging steps included in the Emergency Procedures. 

In doing this training, we saw a lot of commercial airline pilot safety videos. While our equipment problems are totally different than what a pilot would encounter, the human performance issues that resulted in aircraft disasters could easily be replicated by real people in the power plant. The airlines had such detailed documentation from the flight recorders and cockpit recordings, that their successes and failures were available to scrutiny and assessment. 

All of this came to me in a rush, as Martha and I watched the movie “Sully” last week. Sully is the movie about the pilot who landed the commercial airliner on the Hudson River after both of the jet engines completely failed during takeoff, without loss of a single life. 

During the event, and then replayed in both simulator trials, and in the replaying of the cockpit recording, the routine of assessing and reassessing was in evidence. Where are we, what do we have control over, is there any way to get more resources, review our procedure, did we miss anything, and finally the pilot says to the co-pilot before they commit to landing in the water, “Do you have any other ideas?” 

Recently we have bumped into some of the many scriptural references to the time of the Babylonian Exile. The prophet Jeremiah brings up the situation again today. He writes to the senior leaders in Babylon with a word from the Lord God delivered through God’s prophet. “Unpack you bags and plan to stay a while. Get married and have children. Have your children marry. Do not decrease in population.” 

This is not life as usual. The priests are not in the Temple, praying over the sacrifices the people have delivered asking for forgiveness. This is a severely off-normal situation. The Temple is destroyed and the Chosen People are held as slaves far away from home. And the prophet says, be strong, be faithful, God is coming for you, but it will not be soon. In fact, it will take several generations. 

My faith has good days and bad days. At times it feels like a struggle to be faithful more than an hour of so at a time. I raised my kids in the church. They are good people, and great neighbors. Will my faith survive through them and through the lifetime of my grandchildren? I don’t know. I don’t have any control over all of that. 

Where am I? Where am I headed? What do I have control over? Can I get any more resources? 

This is a different time in the life of the faithful. The number of people in any church on any Sunday is a fraction of what it used to be. Churches are closing regularly in the United States, and it is far worse in the greater part of Europe. Will God be faithful to the people of God, when even more people have lost their awareness of the presence of God in their lives? Is the fall off of people participating in the wider church a judgment against our lack of faithfulness? 

Clearly, God can be trusted to be faithful. We can trust God, better than we can trust ourselves. Better than we can trust our local congregation. Better than we can trust our ability to guide our children to be faithful and share that faith with our grandchildren. 

God is faithful through the generations. That message was first evidenced in the story of Moses, called by God to deliver the Chosen People out of Egypt. That Moses story is from the time before written language. It is essentially pre-historic, that is, before things were written down. 

In the circumstances of the Exile, the Jews are confronted with a real life challenge to both their culture and their faith. The prophet gets a message from God, and transmits by way of letter to the leaders of the people now slaves in Babylon. 

In Babylon, the slaves were not treated especially badly. They were not assigned mindless, back-breaking labor. Instead, they were treasured for the gifts of their skill, knowledge and advanced culture. They were employed as skilled workers, and apparently had some ability to move about, congregate, and talk with each other. In fact, when the day comes when they are given permission to return, many will choose to stay in their comfortable life among the Babylonians, rather than take the arduous journey - only to face the task of rebuilding their homes and nation from desolation. 

This morning, we are highlighting God’s faithfulness. God does not lose concentration walking from room to room. God does not forget the faithful, even when they are far away: away from home, away from the faithful community, away from prayer and liturgical participation. God is good all the time, all the time God is good. 

We are tempted to evaluate God’s performance against how we feel and what is important to us. Stockbrokers watch the daily and quarterly performance of individual stocks and market sectors, and make their evaluations. 

Political candidates, agonize over the tiny bits of change that are evidenced in the ever swirling political polls. Day by day and week by week, political campaigns refocus and restructure their use of - time and money and message - in response to the measured perceptions. 

God is faithful through the generations. Our Jewish ancestors in the faith gave power and expression to the timelessness of God, rooted in their very experience.

Jeremiah’s story represents the experience of the faithful community, through the course of generations, in an encounter with the divine. In our generation we are charged to continue to protect the collection of scriptures and continue the tradition of teaching our children: both our faith in God, and the values that God inspires in our living. 

Today we are reminded - that the marks of being faithful - are having God in the center of our lives, and responding to the challenges in life - by thanking God and praising God. We look about at each other, to see if we bear the marks of faithfulness. Could Jesus single us out as a useful example of keeping the love of God in the center of our lives? Might the culture want to push us away, because we are carrying the marks of faithfulness in our lives? We are reminded in times of change - that God is near us and with us. 

So my friends, it is true. A Christian is no longer the epitome of the ideal American. We are in fact counter-cultural. We believe in God and God’s love for all of creation. We are against pollution and for the earth. We care about the poor and the hungry. We want what is best for all people. We honor everyone who loves God, no matter what language they speak, or what tradition feeds their faith. We are marked on our hearts and spirits with mercy and compassion. It is not the way of the world, but it is the way of the Kingdom of God. Amen.