By Reverend Laurie DeMott

And we recognize their prayer because we too have prayed it. Maybe we haven’t been stricken with leprosy but we have our own diseases both of the body and soul, and so we too pray: “Help me, Lord.”

“Help me, God,” we cry when the doctor diagnoses cancer. “Help me, Lord” we plead as we try to figure out how to cope with a child’s trouble or a tension filled relationship. “Help us,” we pray when the flood waters rise and the hurricanes blow and the fires course across the hilltops. “God, help us,” we sigh as the news of another war or a sickened economy rolls in an endless drone from our television sets.

In times of trial, we turn to God because we recognize our profound frailty as human beings and we hope for a holy strength that will lift our weary hands and shore up our battered hearts so that we can endure what is before us. Perhaps there has been a time when we thought we could manage on our own and we tried to shoulder on brazenly through the night but it only takes a few stumbles on a dark trail to realize finally that we just don’t see very well in the night. Whether it be in the physical landscape of a moonless hour or in the spiritual landscape of a troubled time, in those shadows the familiar can suddenly turn frightening and the way forward disappear from view. Lost in the darkness our trouble, we look to the one whose eyes can penetrate our gloom and who will take our hand to show us the way, and we pray, “Help me, God. Lead me through the night, lead me to the day again. Help me.”

William Sloane Coffin said, “Some people scoff and say that religion is just a crutch and I always want to reply, “Maybe it is, but who among us does not limp?”

And so, with those ten men afflicted with leprosy, humankind keens out our prayers for help and God hears those prayers and shows us the way forward so that we may be healed. A sense of peace begins to calm our anxieties, or a renewed determination lifts our hearts. The quiet presence of people in this church praying on our behalf and reaching out with their words of caring starts to chip away at our fear and isolation. The gospel stories of forgiveness help us to begin to let go of old wounds that have been festering in our hearts. We pray our prayers for help and, sometimes gradually, sometimes with a surprising suddenness, we find we are being healed of our brokenness; healed by the steadfast compassion of a God who will not give up on us no matter how doubtful, how frightened, or how lost we have become. There is in God’s touch a strength beyond any human strength and a love greater than any human love that has the power to lead us through our wildernesses to a place of promise and peace.

Jesus told the ten men, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed. And one of them returned and knelt at Jesus’ feet to thank him. And Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine?” Then he said to the man, “Rise and go; your faith has made you whole.”

We pray two kinds of prayer – “Help” and “Thank you” – but like the men with leprosy the frequency of the first far outweighs the frequency of the second. After 9-11, church attendance spiked as people flocked back to the pews looking for comfort. But predictions of a grand new spiritual awakening proved hollow as attendance returned within a few weeks to normal levels. People had found a tonic to soothe their souls in the midst of their initial frightened state but soon, feeling they could cope once again with daily life, they no longer felt a burning need for God’s presence. A prayer for help rises easily to our lips but a prayer of thanks is not as easily spoken.

Why is it so much easier to ask for help than to say thank you for help given? I think it is because we cry for help out of our desperation but once the healing comes, we, in a more stable and rational state of mind, are embarrassed to look back on that moment and admit that we were weak. If you fall into a pit, your immediate feeling is, “I need to get out of this pit! Help!” but once you are out of the pit, your first feeling is often, “Geez, people must think I’m a dolt for falling into the pit in the first place.” Every now and then, my dog Zack will be so soundly asleep on my couch that he’ll turn over and fall off. And his first reaction when that happens is to jump to his feet, and then stretch and yawn as if to say, “I meant to do that.” We are embarrassed by our own moments of desperation and the reality of our human frailty, and to say ‘thank you’ is to admit that we are in debt to another because we were not strong enough to make it on our own. To say ‘thank you’ is to confess a dependence on others that we in our self-reliant Americanism just hate to face.

But of the ten lepers that Jesus healed, only one was made completely whole; the one who said “thank you.” For Jesus, no person can be whole in isolation because we are simply not big enough, deep enough, broad enough, or high enough as a single human being to know the fullness of life as God has created it. It is only though the bonds of community that our experience of God and God’s world can expand to embrace the breadth of God’s vision for us. To know more than just healing – to know and experience wholeness – we must acknowledge our dependence on others, confess our inherent frailty and limitations as human beings, and humbly kneel in gratitude week after week to say, “I just could not do this without you.”

Today on Consecration Sunday, we ask God to bless the future of this church – we pray our prayer of “Help”: “Help us forward, God. Help us meet our financial obligations. Help us to have the wisdom to make good decisions. Help us teach our children well. Help us have patience with one another in the coming year! Help us to minister as Christ calls us to minister. Help us, God.”

But on this day, let us also simply pray, “Thank you, Lord”: “Thank you for these friends who have toiled by our sides. Thank you for these people who have prayed us through the dark nights of our souls. Thank you for your guidance we have found here which has led us over rocky paths and through the wilderness. Thank you for the joy in worship that refreshes our hearts week after week. Thank you for the laughter of children and the exuberance of youth and the fellowship with one another that we find in this place. And thank you most of all for your love. Thank you for your steadfast compassion that sustains us, that fills us, that abides with us faithfully though the light of day and through the dark night, in and out of weeks, and over all the years of our lives. Thank you for your love that has made our lives not only bearable, God, but beautiful and whole.”