Get Changed Before You Go.

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. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, 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.’

The readings this weekend are about gratitude and conversion, which is fitting for Thanksgiving. Catholics are a Thanksgiving people, a Eucharistic people: every time we participate in the Eucharist, we are engaging in a communal act of huge thanksgiving. Every day is Thanksgiving as far as the Catholic Church is concerned because gratitude is foundational to who we are and to everything we do – or it should be.

But when was the last time you were converted?

Of the ten lepers, only one returned to give thanks and to show that he recognized Jesus as God. The fact that he was a Samaritan who knew he was despised by the Jews made his gratitude even more poignant. He obviously sensed that Jesus was in no way concerned about his religious background. He simply returned praising God while prostrating himself at Jesus’ feet in a true act of conversion and Jesus assured him his faith had made him well. That meant spiritual healing as well as physical. The other nine lepers clearly did not feel the need to be converted. They were of the Jewish faith that, in their understanding, was the one true faith and they felt absolutely no need to turn around and acknowledge Jesus even though it was he who healed them. They were on their way to be obedient to the law by showing themselves to the priests in order to be pronounced officially well so they could regain their status in the community. What more did they need?

Were they grateful? Who knows? Certainly they would have been experiencing huge relief and their minds would have been racing, thinking of the lives they could return to as normal and acceptable people. They would have been filled with joy as they thought of going back to their families, their friends and their jobs. However, relieved and joyful does not always equal truly grateful. Those nine healed lepers stayed within their old way of understanding God and completely missed the opportunity to be introduced to an incredible new life. They thought that by being law abiding Jews they had all that was spiritually necessary.

We can be in the right place doing all the right things and still be in deep need of conversion. If we do not seek conversion constantly, we will become static and stagnant believers. We will be maintaining, not growing.

‘Conversion’ is a Latin term: con (altogether) and vertere (turn) meaning “to completely turn around”, or “to change in form”. Reconciliation is one point of conversion. It’s an act of recognizing the things we’ve done wrong, turning around, confessing them and receiving cleansing forgiveness, which can lead to gratitude and healing. But what about conversion in the midst of all that we do right? Sometimes we can be so familiar with the spiritual routines, beliefs and rituals that are so foundational to our lives that we lose the urgent consciousness that the spiritual life is not a life of simply maintaining faithfully what we have but one of continually seeking out and going deeper into new discoveries of who God is and who we are. Just because we can’t conceive of anything deeper or different, we stop seeking.

John Foley, S.J. wrote a hymn that most of you are familiar with. It’s based on some verses from Isaiah and it’s called “Turn To Me”. The refrain goes:

“Turn to me, O turn and be saved, says the Lord, for I am God,

There is no other, none beside me. I call your name.”

I don’t care who you are or how committed you have been to the Lord, every morning from the moment you open your eyes to a new day and in every moment throughout that day, God is saying to you, “Turn to me, turn and be saved, for I am God. There is no other, none beside me. I call your name.” Being ‘saved’ is not just being pulled away from the clutches of the Evil One or from the power of death; being saved is also being pulled away from the dangers of the status quo and ‘good enough’ religion. Being saved is being lifted out of the quagmire of cynicism and criticism. Being saved is being freed from a heart of stone and being given a spirit of gratitude and a tender heart of flesh. Being saved is knowing that you can never get to the bottom of a heart like God’s and that you will never fully comprehend him but you’re willing to die trying. Being saved is coming to know your Name, your True Self, and entering into the joyful revelation that it was never about you – and yet, it was always about you.

In the last reflection, I said that gratitude within our faith gives us wings and makes us want to fly close to the heart of God. This time I’m adding that gratitude helps us to be open to the Godwinds of grace, the grace that causes us to be changed in form. That means transformed or not being the same as you were before. Something else that aids us in conversion is a willingness to say, “Maybe I don’t know it all. Maybe I have only been seeing part of the picture. Maybe I’ve been trying to create myself and make myself righteous and holy. Maybe I’ve been holding on too hard to creating myself and not allowing God to create me according to the name by which he and he alone calls me.”

Conversion is a risk. Always has been and always will be. It’s a risk of not being the one who’s got the plan, learned the rules, totally knows the score and is in control. The kingdom journey is not a game plan; it’s an adventure into the ‘known unknown’, meaning we can listen to what others have to say about the spiritual journey but in the end we need to go ourselves and find out that it’s completely different than what we assumed it would be. Conversion doesn’t necessarily mean that all that we have been up to the present moment was wrong; it just means we accept the fact that we’re never ever finished with being radically changed. Note that I didn’t say we’re never finished with just being made nicer, more pliant, more obedient or more irreproachable. I’m talking about being Changed. Capital ‘C’. The Samaritan leper, rather than just asking for and experiencing a change in his circumstances, allowed the circumstances to change him.  

Conversion, indeed, is risky and it may also involve suffering because suffering strips us of control and self-sufficiency. In turning back to give thanks to Jesus after knowing the suffering of illness and of isolation, the Samaritan leper risked everything. He was given his heart’s desire and he could have gone off like the others and returned to the old spiritual life he had always known, physically healed but spiritually static. In turning back to Jesus, he was opening himself to a future where it would be necessary to examine all his religious assumptions and attitudes to see how a poor carpenter with the power to heal would fit into his life. From then on, even if he never saw the Lord in person again, Christ would always be there in spirit and in truth, challenging him and changing him.

May Christ do that to us all.