We live in a polarized world. It's a place where people are pitted against one another, where extremes battle, where people are expected to take sides, where each one of us is labeled according to the opinions which we share. In this election year to determine a president for the next 4 years, we Americans are being urged to endorse a political party rather than to choose the best leader. In a time of economic uncertainties, we are manipulated to accept an economic policy that best benefits us or least the leaders who present the policy rather than one that fairly and justly meets the needs of all the people. We in America like to speak of equality for everyone, yet the reality is that our world and our own country is divided into classes, from the poor to the middle class to the wealthy, and not one of the sides has respect for the others. The world has been experiencing tragedies perpetrated by terrorists, but we still fail to offer justice to the oppressed. As an aside, lack of justice does not justify the actions of terrorists especially as they act like common criminals and gangsters victimizing and killing innocent civilians, women and children. And war always creates sides of us against them, with each side believing its right and the other side wrong. Looking at the Church, we church people have sharply divided ourselves over issues of homosexuality, abortion, patriotism, and our understanding of scripture, without witnessing to the call of Christ to proclaim the one salvation.

How do we bridge these gaps? What must happen to bring healing and wholeness to our world, to our nation, to our society, to us as human beings? Some would say faith in Christ will bring healing, but if that were so, we Christians would have already brought wholeness into the world. The fact is, we Christians do disagree, and we too are divided, not only about the issues of life but also about issues of salvation. As a pastor, I do have to say that I may have strongly disagreed with some of my colleagues and a few of my parishioners through the years, but I don't doubt their faith in Christ. Yet, for whatever reasons, we people of faith can become polarized to the point of doubting one another's faith.

Let me take us back to a world 2000 years ago which was polarized like us. Israel had been created to be God's people, yet they were occupied and under the control of the mighty empire of Rome. Israel's religion was exclusive and did not allow any recognition of other religions, even one like the Samaritans who were almost like the Jews, but not quite. It too had its powerful wealthy who looked down their noses at the poor and disadvantaged, even though scripture forbade arrogance and conceit and emphasized justice and mercy for the poor and the powerless. Some of the religious leaders believed that they were better than the rest of the people because they knew and followed God's commands more faithfully. And people who were not like the rest of the population, especially the sick and diseased, were kicked out of the community to fend for themselves.

In today's scripture, Jesus is heading towards Jerusalem expecting death to await him. Since we are already supposed to know the story, I'm not giving away the ending when I say that Jesus is killed by those Jewish leaders and Roman oppressors who have taken sides against God's revelation to the world. And if this is new news for anybody here today, then let's make an appointment to talk about the whole story, because Jesus' death is not the final ending, so I haven't spoiled the final ending of the story for you. The best part is still waiting for you to hear.

As Jesus passes through a border town between Judea and Samaria, he is approached by 10 lepers. Now leprosy is a terrible disease that attacks the nerves and skin so that persons lose feeling in their extremities. Leprosy would eventually disfigure a person, many times causing people to lose fingers and toes. Although today we have drugs to deal with leprosy, no medical treatments were known in Jesus' day. Since leprosy was considered highly contagious (which it is not; it is one of the least contagious diseases), and since the very religious many times felt that leprosy was God's judgment upon a sinful person, lepers were run out of the community, their property confiscated, and they were forced to live together with other lepers. Lepers could have no contact with the healthy, even their own families, and a system was set up for them to maintain their distance and identity. Lepers were to wear torn clothes and cover their mouths, and anytime an unsuspecting healthy person came near a leper, or a leper came near healthy people, he or she had to yell "unclean," or he or she could ring a bell. This allowed the healthy to detour around them and not become contaminated.

When Jesus happens by, the lepers keep their distance and yell to him. But as always in the Gospel accounts, the sick and diseased recognize God in Jesus, and they call out for healing. And as always in the Gospel accounts, Jesus answers their call and heals them. Now, it's interesting how Jesus heals them. He commands them to go to the Jewish priests who will follow a prescribed way of determining if a person is healed according the Jewish Law and therefore allowed to live among healthy people again. They have been separated from the community of life by a command, and now Jesus' command restores them. It is when the 10 lepers obey that command that they are healed. Without any reservations, words, or doubts, they turn to follow Jesus' directions and at that point they experience healing. Which tells you and me that when you and I obey Christ we are healed. There is faith in obedience and sometimes obedience brings faith. In any case, the healing stories in our scripture always witness to faith in the power of God.

Then a strange thing happens. One of the lepers comes back to Jesus thanking him and praising God. This was an act of worship and thanksgiving. What makes it doubly strange is that this man is a Samaritan, a man who is a kind of half-Jew, rejected and hated by full Jews. Yet his leprosy had thrown him out of his community and the only place he could safely go was to a community of lepers, even if they were Jewish. Disease had leveled the playing field, and while Jews and Samaritans may have been different in history, religion and culture, their disease made them brothers caring for one another. As another aside, I find it interesting that terrorism in the United States and in Russia has joined two former enemies together in a way that diplomacy could not. Only a Samaritan, not one of the 9 Jews, comes back to thank the Jewish healer, Jesus. In this response of worship and thanksgiving, Jesus pronounces the benediction, "Your faith has made you whole." All ten are healed, but only this one has a full relationship to God and to his fellow human beings. Only this one has received full freedom to live life as God has created it.

You see, faith in our Lord can bring us together, but only thanksgiving in what our lord has done for us will make us whole and one in Christ. That's what we ultimately seek in our Christian faith experience: to express unceasingly our joy and thanksgiving in our relationship with God through Christ. Christ's healing has do with fixing what's wrong, allowing sin to be conquered and replaced by forgiveness and salvation, but that's not the end product. We are called to wholeness, that is, putting and keeping us in a right relationship with God, giving praise and thanksgiving to our creator and savior God, not just because God has saved our souls through Christ, but because God is worthy of our worship and thanksgiving. Praise and thanksgiving sends us out to minister to others. And that ministry out of thanksgiving can make the divisions and the polarization insignificant causing us to allow God's wholeness of grace to form our lives and our relationships. When we thank God for all that God is doing in our lives, in the lives of others and in the life of the world, we are no longer divided, but brought together as people whose focus is totally on God. And God's world is not a divided world or one in which people take sides.

Very early in my career, I visited a husband and wife, shut-ins, who lived about 50 miles away from their church. While the wife and I visited in the living room, the ill husband lay in a hospital bed in the same room. He was blind and he was deaf. He couldn't hear or see anyone, he could only feel the touch of a hand to know that someone was there, but not who it might be, except for the touch of his wife. I always entered the house feeling pity for him, that his illness and handicaps so separated him from the human world; it seemed so depressing. Yet I always left with my spirit uplifted and thankful for his presence in that home. You see, he always laid in that bed with a big smile on his calm face, and he periodically would sing a hymn of praise to God or he would pray a prayer of thanksgiving to his Savior. He was one of the few people in that kind of a debilitating condition that I have ever met who could worship and praise God with a big smile on his face. What was it that the Apostle Paul said? "...I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me."

There isn't a person here this morning who cannot praise God and give thanks for what God has done in our lives. Therefore, I encourage all of us to leave here this morning and give thanks to God, not only in private, but also in public, sharing our thanksgiving with someone else who is not sure what God has done within life. When people see and hear our thanks to God, they too will be uplifted to give their own praise. Then people are no longer divided; they will be brought into unity when they focus on God. So give God your praise and share the Good News of Christ wherever you go and leave the divisions behind.