"Jesus Has Changed My Name"

Luke 17:11-19

I once heard a story about an after school-program in an inner-city church.  The kids in this neighborhood were all poor, and many had to get along without much adult supervision. Schools were typically overcrowded and substandard.  It was rough environment and one in which it was easy for a kid to get lost, overlooked, even abandoned.  But the kids liked to come to the church after-school program because it was a safe place, the teachers were kind and, for some of the kids, the snacks they were given might be their last meal of the day.

One day the teacher was helping the kids learn the Lord's Prayer. Since most of the kids were un-churched, this was a new learning experience for them.  After going over the prayer several times, the kids were asked to write the Lord's Prayer so they could continue to practice it.  When one little girl showed the teacher her prayer, the teacher noticed she has misunderstood the phrase, "hallowed be thy name."  Instead she had written, "Our Father who art in heaven, how did you know my name?"  Well, God does know our name.  I don't mean just our given name—Bob, John, Sue and Mary—but the name that tells who we truly are, in the deepest and truest sense.

In our reading today, we come upon a group of persons who have been branded with the name leper. Their disease has obliterated any individual identity, and they are simply clumped together under the one name, leper.  Jesus encounters this band of outcasts while traveling along the border between Galilee and Samaria.  As he nears a village, the lepers keep their distance, because this is what lepers are required by law to do.  In that day, the term leprosy was applied to a range of skin diseases which were assumed to be contagious.  Once a person was diagnosed by the priest, and once the priest conferred on him or her the dreaded name leper, that person was isolated from the rest of the community and forced to fend for himself.  The Leviticus laws states the condition of these people graphically "The person who has the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, 'unclean, unclean.'  He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp." The name leper was synonymous, then, with outcast, untouchable, unclean.  In a word, unacceptable. Of all the names one might be called in Jesus' day, the most dreaded was leper.

No wonder, then, that the lepers cried to Jesus for mercy.  Seeing them, Jesus told them to go and show themselves to the priests.  It was the priests who alone could proclaim them clean and readmit them to the Temple and to the community. As they went, they were made clean. Only one of ten, however, turns back, praising God and thanking Jesus. While we don't know his given name, we do know the name by which he would be judged and treated in that society. He was called a Samaritan and a foreigner. 

Now Jewish enmity toward the neighboring Samaritans had a long history.  Samaritans were despised as foreigners, persons of another race and religion.  The Samaritan may have turned back from going to the priest because he knew that barriers to joining society on the Galilean side of the border ran far deeper than leprosy. Even if the priest proclaimed him clean of leprosy, he would still be an outcast, a foreigner, unwelcome in that society and barred from worship in the Temple. The very name Samaritan, foreigner evoked racial and religious prejudice.

But Biblical names such as leper and Samaritan may be too far removed from our lives today.  Let's retell the story in a more familiar setting:

While he was on his way to Austin, Jesus passed through the Rio Grande region between Mexico and Texas. As he neared Brownsville, a group of homeless persons approached. Some were drunks.  Some were sick. Some acted mentally ill. It was hard to tell one from the other. They were all beaten-looking, dirty, and disheveled. When Jesus saw them, he said, "Okay, go show yourselves to the doctors, return to your homes, your families, your communities." And as they were going, they were cured. One of them, realizing that he was cured, turned and ran back to Jesus. He fell at his feet, his heart bursting with gratitude.  Now this particular person was an illegal immigrant. So Jesus asked, "Weren't there ten of you who were healed? Where are the nine Texans?"  Well, well.  So didn't any of them come back here to praise and thank God except this illegal immigrant?  Jesus said to the man, "Get up and go. Your faith has made you well." 

That phrase, "Your faith has made you well" (Or as some translate it, "Your faith has saved you") is uttered four times in Luke. Each time it is declared to a person on the margins of society, to an outcast.  In addition to the leper in our reading today, Jesus tells a woman of questionable reputation who washes the feet of Jesus that her faith has made her well. Before meeting Jesus, her name was sinner.  Then there was the woman with the twelve-year flow of blood. She had been to every physician in town, to no avail.  Before she met Jesus, her name was Hopeless. And finally Luke tells of the blind man begging beside the road to Jericho.  Before he met Jesus, his name was street bum.  People named leper, sinner, hopeless and street bum were rejected by society and unwelcome in the Temple.  But in Jesus the Temple came to them. In him, the rejected were welcomed and the outcasts were cast in to God's Kingdom.

And  this name-changing ministry of Jesus continues to transform lives today.  A middle-aged man confessed that, before he met Jesus, the name by which he knew himself was Not Good Enough.  Jesus changed his name to Beloved Child of God.  Some of us might have been given similar names by others, though more likely by ourselves.  Names such as:  Not Smart Enough, Not Talented Enough, Can't do Anything Right.  But Jesus sees us differently.  In his eyes we are Beloved, Friend, Child of God.

I remember a woman in another congregation I served.  She was bedridden for thirty years with Multiple Sclerosis.  Before becoming ill, this woman had been active in the church and community.  She was a founding member of the congregation, and she organized the first church school for the children.  She was a leader in several organizations in the community. Forced to give up all these things, her name might easily have become Bitter.  But by the grace of God, she didn't succumb to despair.  She was never cured, but she had been healed in the sense of being reconciled, saved and made secure in God's love.  Entering her room was like entering a pool of deep, still water.  Her name was Serenity, Joyful One, At Peace with God.

Friends, each of us has a name. Sure, we have the names our parents gave us.  We also have names that cripple and deplete us.  But everyone who meets Jesus is given a new name, one to empowers and frees us. He gives us a name that sends us out with a new sense of meaning and a new goal n life.  Jesus has a name for us.  He calls us Friends.  He tells us to go and be his Disciples.  Thank you, Jesus!  Thank you!  Thank you!