Lectionary Discussion Group

Week of Sunday, October 14, 2007, Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost

Ruth 1:(1-7) 8-19a

[In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to live in the country of Moab, he and his wife and two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion; they were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there. But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. When they had lived there about ten years, both Mahlon and Chilion also died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband.

Then she started to return with her daughters-in-law from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had considered his people and given them food. So she set out from the place where she had been living, she and her two daughters-in-law, and they went on their way to go back to the land of Judah.] But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, "Go back each of you to your mother's house. May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. The Lord grant that you may find security, each of you in the house of your husband." Then she kissed them, and they wept aloud. They said to her, "No, we will return with you to your people." But Naomi said, "Turn back, my daughters, why will you go with me? Do I still have sons in my womb that they may become your husbands? Turn back, my daughters, go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. Even if I thought there was hope for me, even if I should have a husband tonight and bear sons, would you then wait until they were grown? Would you then refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, it has been far more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the Lord has turned against me." Then they wept aloud again. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.

So she said, "See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law." But Ruth said,

"Do not press me to leave you

or to turn back from following you!

Where you go, I will go;

Where you lodge, I will lodge;

your people shall be my people,

and your God my God.

Where you die, I will die--

there will I be buried.

May the Lord do thus and so to me,

and more as well,

if even death parts me from you!"

When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her. So the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem.

2 Timothy 2:(3-7) 8-15

[Share in suffering like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving in the army gets entangled in everyday affairs; the soldier's aim is to please the enlisting officer. And in the case of an athlete, no one is crowned without competing according to the rules. It is the farmer who does the work who ought to have the first share of the crops. Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in all things.]

Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—that is my gospel, for which I suffer hardship, even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But the word of God is not chained. Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, so that they may also obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory. The saying is sure:

If we have died with him, we will also live with him;

if we endure, we will also reign with him;

if we deny him, he will also deny us;

if we are faithless, he remains faithful—

for he cannot deny himself.

Remind them of this, and warn them before God that they are to avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth.

Luke 17:11-19

On the way to Jerusalem, Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" When he saw them, he said to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were made clean.[1] Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed,[2] turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, "Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" Then he said to him, "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well."[3]

Historical Tidbit:

Samaritans were related to, but not the same as, Jews. Before the Assyrian Exile, the fortified town of Samaria was the capital of the northern Jewish kingdom of Israel (the southern kingdom, with its capital at Jerusalem, was called Judah.) In 722 B.C., the Assyrian kings Shalmaneser V and Sargon II captured Samaria and carried off the entirety of the Israelite ruling and intellectual classes, leaving behind a group of mainly farmers and uneducated artisans, with few priests and no leaders. (See 2 Kings 17:1ff.) Subsequently, they settled Assyrian colonists in Israel, who intermarried with the local Jews. (2 Kings 17:24ff.; see also Shen.) Meanwhile, in Assyria, the Jews developed the highly sophisticated, legalistic, anti-idolatrous and anti-syncretistic Jewish religion that we know today. (See Isaiah.) This makes sense in light of their embattled status in Assyria, and their ancestors’ experience with the Baals. Meanwhile, in Samaria, a syncretistic religion grew up, in which local family gods, gods of places, and other minor gods were worshipped in addition to the Lord. When the exiled Jews returned, they had contempt for the Samaritans, who had partially turned away from what they conceived as the Jewish religion. Thus, even in Roman times, Jews considered Samaritans to be idolators and held them apart from themselves.

Theological Tidbits:

- Syncretism is when we combine ideas or religions to create new ones.

- Today, leprosy is easily curable with antibiotics. In ancient times, it was a name applied to any skin disease, including bad eczema, shingles, and similar diseases of the skin. Lepers were forced to live outside the city walls, usually in the city dump, and had to shout out to announce their presence, and often had to wear bells as well.

- The modern theologian Rene Girard has developed a theory of Christian understanding that focuses on the inclusiveness of the Christian religion. Groups often define themselves in terms of who is not a member of the group. Some theologians—notably Karl Barth—define God as “he who breaks through barriers.” Christ broke through the barrier that separates man from God by becoming human, and subverts our comfortable assumptions at every opportunity.

- Before leprosy was curable, in the early 20^th century, Father Damien, a Catholic priest, built a sanctuary for lepers on a remote peninsula in Hawaii. There he served the lepers his whole life, eventually dying of the disease.

- Ruth was a Moabite. Moab was a country to the southeast of Judah, on the edge of the Arabian desert. In Old Testament times, Jews and Moabites were alternately allies and enemies, but were never friendly nations. Thus Ruth, like the Samaritans, was of a different race from Naomi or the other Israelites, and took a true leap of faith to return to Bethlehem with Naomi!

- According to tradition, Paul was imprisoned at Rome and executed around 67 B.C. Second Timothy was, again by tradition, written during this period. However, linguistic analysis tends to show it was written either by someone else at Paul’s request or by a later follower of Paul, perhaps by cobbling together actual letters by Paul.

- In this passage from Luke, Jesus puns on the words “clean” and “heal” (putting the lie to Christopher Hitchens’ claim that Jesus never jokes!) Each of the three words he uses (see fnn. 1-3, above)--ekatharisthesan, iathe, and sesoka—have double meanings. Ekatharisthesan means both cleaned in the sense of not being dirty, and of being ritually clean in the Jewish sense. Iathe has a strong meaning of physically healed, but also can mean “made whole,” in the sense of having the faith and grace to overcome the sickness unto death. Sesoka means saved, in an undifferentiated way, meaning either saved by Christ or saved from disease. Therefore, all ten lepers were clean and healed—but only one was saved!

- Note that, in contrast to the other healing miracles Jesus did, in this one there is no laying on of hands or daubing mud in people’s eyes. The man was cured not through the power of Jesus, but through his faith in Him, foreshadowing how faith would be the vehicle for the salvation of us who came after.

- All three of this week’s texts are devoted to the themes of faith allowing leaps that break barriers. Just as we saw last week, faith not only has the power to make trees uproot themselves and throw themselves into the sea, but also to save the worst of the worst in our society, and break through the barriers that lead to there being an “us” and a “them,” just as Christ broke through the barrier that made humanity an “us” and God a “thou,” completely and inscrutably different from us.

- Note the importance of giving praise and worship to God in the passage from Luke.

Questions:

1. Has God ever broken through a barrier in your life?

2. When have you felt dirty, and unclean? Absolutely unable to be part of the community, whether your community of friends, or the community of the Church? What broke through and helped you rejoin?

3. When have you joined someone you loved and followed them, to your own detriment? Has it worked out for you?

Suggestions for Further Reading:

Shen, Peidong, et al., Reconstruction of Patrilineages and Matrilineages of Samaritans and Other Israeli Populations from Y-Chromosome and Mitochondrial DNA Sequence Variation, in Human Mutation, 24:248-260 (2004), available at http://evolutsioon.ut.ee/publications/Shen2004.pdf

Girard, Rene, Scapegoat (2000).

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[1] In Greek, the verb used here for “made clean” is ekatharisthesan, which is the aorist passive of katharizo, which means, “I make pure; I save; I heal; I purge from sin.” Being passive, it means that the action happened to the leper; he was made pure/saved/healed/purged of his sins. The aorist tense has no equivalent in English. What it means here is that he is being progressively made clean; it is something that goes on, and is not complete, but must be continually kept up. This double meaning of ekatharisthesan should be kept in mind, and compared to the use of sesoka, as explained in fnn. 2 and 3.

[2] The verb here is iathe, from iaomai, which is in the aorist passive. It means “cure” or “make whole.” This can also be taken to have double meanings: all ten lepers were cleansed, but only one was made whole.

[3] In Greek, the verb used for “made you well” is sesoka, from sozo, which means “I save.” It can mean, “made healthy,” but its cognate noun is soter; the study of salvation is called soteriology), which means saviour! It is also in the perfect tense, which means that it is something that has already occurred, and whose effects are felt in the present, similar to the English past tense. Keep this in mind when interpreting this passage. It helps show the potential double meaning.