Homily: Regaining Our Sense of Touch

What is it that your heart desires?  What is it that you long for?  Or, to put it a different way, what is it that you fear; the one thing that you worry about so much that it keeps you from enjoying the manifold blessings we call life?

With the huge government bailouts and a looming depression, our first inclination towards answering these questions may have to do with financial security.  In recent polling, most Americans listed economic problems (to include employment and heating costs) as their greatest concern.  A reported increase in stress and decrease in levels of happiness seems to be correlated with increased economic woes.  It seems obvious that our hearts desire security and prosperity, and that we fear not being able to make ends meet.

God is our loving Father.  He does not want us to suffer from stress and uncertainty.  Look at one of the most obvious expressions of that love: God took on flesh.  He was incarnate among us; lived among us.  Some people knock the Church and stay away from her services claiming that they do not offer real solutions to real problems.  They are deceiving themselves and refusing the very help they need.  God’s help is immediate.  It is real.  And it is imminently practical.  Today’s lessons are great examples.

Let us look at the Epistle reading.  Are you one of those people whose financial problems keep you up at night?  Is money what keeps you from enjoying life?  Is it what poisons your mind so that you know only stress and hopelessness?  St. Paul has an answer for you: give cheerfully.  [In tough economic times, this may seem like an oxymoron: giving and cheerfulness do not seem to fit together at all: but our faith is full of such seeming contradictions.  For example the cross of crucifixion; a sign of torture and agony, becomes a joyous sign of victory over sin and death.]

St. Paul writes; “he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully”.  Some Christian pastors have perverted this into the “prosperity gospel”, claiming that if you give money to the church, then God will give you even more money back.  This is heresy.  Our Church is the Church of the martyrs, not of billionaires.  St. Paul is teaching something far more fundamental than this: he is teaching us how to attain joy even in difficult times.  Even in the midst of poverty.  Giving of yourself and of your money changes everything.  It empowers you, reminding you that you were put here for more than groceries and heating bills; and in so doing, it puts all these necessities into perspective.  How can you be happy if making rent is your highest monthly priority? 

God knows that we have to pay our bills.  If you are interested in the nuts and bolts of Christian budgeting, there are plenty of good resources out there [Dave Ramsey is my personal favorite, and we at St. Michael’s will cover the basics of fiscal responsibility in our adult education classes later this Fall].  But unless you change your attitude towards money, then fixing your budget is like straightening the deck chairs on the Titanic.  Cheerful giving and making charity a priority in your life redirects the ship towards safer waters.

Another, related, piece of practical advice contained in today’s epistle has to do with gratitude.  You cannot be a cheerful giver if you are not grateful for the things you have.  If you horde over your possessions like a miser, then you cannot enjoy them or anything else.  When misers give to charity, they do so reluctantly, grudgingly.  For the miser, things like parish dues and tips for service become obligations; the giving of which sucks even more happiness out of their souls because they drain money that might be put towards things that are deemed more essential.  Do you see how this poison works?  How it commodifies and perverts our transactions with others and leads us into greater stress and depression?

Gratitude is a strong anecdote.  Teach yourself to be grateful for the things you have, and tipping a waitress and charitable giving become ways to express and share that gratitude.  They actually increase happiness rather than draining it.  Do not think of these things as bills to be paid for services rendered: you should not give to the Church in return for sacraments, good singing, or useful programs; nor should you give to your waiter simply for bringing you your food; or to the beggar on the street just to leave you alone.  You give because things have been given to you.  Because you are grateful.  Give so that it can become who you are.  Give because it reifies and restores your humanity, your relationship with others, and your relationship with God.

Today’s Gospel reaffirms this lesson.  Christ the God-man heals ten lepers and sends them to the priest, but only one returns to thank Him.  Let’s explore this for just a moment.  Leprosy causes terrible suffering.  First, it deadens the sense of touch.  There is no feeling.  No direct contact with the outside world.  So all feeling turns inward, to the creeping malady there.  Second, lepers are ostracized.  According to Jewish law, lepers were complete outcasts, totally cut off from any kind of fellowship.  They suffered and died separate from family; separate from community.  This is a terrible combination.  So when Christ healed these lepers, He did more than give them a new lease on life, He restored their sense of touch, gave them the potential to regain contact with the community, the potential to develop strong reciprocal relations with families and friends.  They were no longer sentenced to a life focused on internal stress and misery, but could share their lives – their joys and concerns – in harmony with others.  But would they?  Perhaps their attitudes had been so poisoned by years of introspective worrying that they were no longer willing to connect with others at any more than the most superficial level.  The lack of gratitude of the nine suggests this to be the case, at least with them.  This is a great pity.

But one did came back!  When God renewed the possibility of a full life for him, he jumped on the opportunity.  He reached out of himself by showing his gratitude - and look at what that did for him: it truly restored his connections with humanity and with God Himself.  He was more than thankful: through his gratitude he had become a cheerful giver; a positive force for joy and restoration. 

There is no greater metaphor for the way we live our lives in this fallen world than leprosy.  Our senses have become dead to the touch of others; we have turned inward, focusing on the many potential points of failure in our lives and in our budgets; we have cut ourselves off from the enjoyment of community.  Our interactions with others have become obligations, things that drain us. 

Earlier, I asked you what you feared.  If you thought about money, I want you to look deeper.  I believe that our stress over financial challenges is just a symptom of a much greater malady.  This malady is the utter aloneness and desperation of life lived apart from the shared love of community (ecclesia) in one another through Christ.  A malady that the world misdiagnosis and against which it offers only snake-oil and narcotics, the peddling of which has brought us nothing but financial ruin and even greater numbness.  I believe that our greatest fear is to live and die alone, unloving and unloved.

The irony is that there is a real cure, and it is here.  You are Christians.  Through the Sacraments of His Church, Christ has healed your spiritual leprosy as surely as he did those lepers in Samaria and Galilee.  You are free to join humanity, to feel love, to grow eternally in your enjoyment of fellowship and community.  Or you can be like the nine who never came back and continue to live and die inside yourself. 

What does your heart desire?  You will find it in Christ.  You will find it, feel it, enjoy it, and share it though your gratitude to Him and all that He has given you.