The One Who Turned Back

1:05:53 Minister Brendan had to tell me they're talking about you. You up next. Thank God for all of you. You may take your seats in the presence of the Lord, our God. What a privilege and honor it is to be here, be back home at the ship. And so grateful for this opportunity. Thank you so much, Pastor Sharp, for this opportunity to your lovely wife, Lady Bree. Come on, we can give God praise for them.

1:06:25 The word of God reminds us all throughout scripture that it akins bad leadership to being a curse. And so when you are sitting up under good leadership, it has to be a blessing. So let me try that again. Let's praise and thank God for your leaders. Pastor Reginald Wayne Sharp Jr. And Lady Brianna Sullivan Sharp. and we celebrate God for our pastor emeritus, Dr. Charles Jenkins, and his lovely wife, Dr. Tara Jenkins. And I brought some gang with me today.

1:07:03 Bryn Mawr, won't you do me a favor and make some noise in the room? We pulled our church bus up here to 45th and Princeton. And so we're here to have a good time. Thankful for my lovely wife and my parents and my in-laws and friends that are all in the building. To Lottie Dottie and everybody, look at your neighbor and say, neighbor, that includes you. Let's journey into God's word. You can find it in the book of Luke, chapter number 17. Book of Luke, chapter number 17. Gracious God, hide me behind the cross. Let your people see you and not me. Ultimately, Lord, it is our prayer that somebody gets to know and connect with you in a better way.

1:07:58 In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Amen. You all have been blessed with amazing preaching all day. Pastor Meeks reminding us when's the right time to look back. Pastor Spencer reminding us about a hell-proven church. and uh i'm gonna pray this today that the lord would bless us with

1:09:38 seats in the presence of the lord our god god bless you pastor wilson you all i realized something that many of us would only admit in private, that nobody thanks the roots. Some time ago, my wife and I had traveled to Puerto Rico, and while there, we climbed this mountain. This wasn't a climb where you would just take a picture and be like, I'm doing this for the ground. But no, this was an honest and a difficult climb. It was a narrow pathway, uneven footing. The air grew thin and it reminded me that I was not in charge of my own breath at that time. And what arrested me was not necessarily the height of the mountain, but it was what I, as I looked across and I saw the beauty of these trees and what caught my attention about the trees were not the height of the trees, but rather it was the roots. For you see, they were exposed everywhere, twisting across the trail, gripping the ground, holding everything in place.

1:10:47 And our tour guide gave us a simple instruction. As you climb, don't step on the roots. Everybody was looking at the trees. Everybody was taking pictures of the canopy, but nobody was looking down at what was holding the whole thing up. And I wonder how often we do the same thing in life. We enjoy what somebody helped build, but forget who helped build it. We walk through doors and forget who helped to open them. We sit in seats and forget who helped to make room for us. We enjoy shade from trees somebody else planted. We stand on foundation somebody else laid. We climb but forget the roots. And in Luke 17, it introduces us to 10 people who received the same blessing, but only one of them remembered to turn around. Which brings me to brings us to this place between Samaria and Galilee.

1:11:49 As Luke describes it, it is this road between Samaria and Galilee as Jesus is walking. This was an area considered to be no man's land. It was a place where outsiders resided. resided. This was a place much like many black and brown communities in the U.S. today. If it were a place today, it would be signified by food deserts, medical and mental health apartheid. This was a place where people of a certain race, ethnic group, documented or undocumented immigration status, economic status, gender or sexual orientation were segregated to live. And it was a type of place for people as Howard Thurman described them whose backs were against the walls. And here we find Jesus on his way to Jerusalem when 10 men suffering from what the Bible traditionally calls leprosy meets him. You all, leprosy was a terrible condition. It was a skin condition that affected more than just the skin. It affected where they lived. It affected to whom they can touch. It affected where they can worship. It affected their relationships. It affected their ability to participate fully in community life. And Leviticus teaches us that having leprosy would render a person ceremonially unclean. And while a person remained unclean, that person was required to live apart from the community. And so Luke tells us that when these men finally encounter Jesus, they stand at a distance. Now notice something, you all, their condition was had created a distance but here is the good news distance does not keep jesus from seeing them they cannot get close so they raise their voices jesus master have a mercy on us so so jesus sees them and i don't know about you but that's good news to me y'all that jesus sees them He before he changes their condition, he sees their condition and he sees exactly what they're going through.

1:13:52 And as Jesus sees what they're going through, Jesus gives them a word. Go show yourselves to the priest. Now, notice you all the priest did not heal them. The priests were not going to be the ones to heal them. But now while the priest did not necessarily create this law that separated them from everybody, It was the priest that was responsible for enforcing the law that forced them away from everybody else. Under the Torah, the priest examined the skin condition and made determinations concerning if they were allowed to enter back into society. So Jesus is sending them toward a process that can publicly confirm that their old condition no longer defines their present reality. but there is something strange happening here fellowship that that when jesus tells them to go they are still going but they are going still afflicted they have no visible evidence yet that anything has changed in their life that anything has changed in their body but yet and still they go and luke says as they went they were cleansed they had started walking while they still looked like they kept standing at a distance they they were somewhere between Jesus and the priest and all of a sudden a healing took place all of a sudden a change took place all of a sudden all 10 not nine not one but all 10 were cleansed but the same thing happens that separates one from from the other nine the verse 15 says then one of them when he saw that he was healed turned back praising God with a loud voice let me pause right there how many of us today have witnessed something like that happen someone receive a blessing someone receive a cleansing but has never turned back to give thanks and never received a wholeness y'all know that person that person who got the job but never came back to say thank you for the referral the person who got healed from the illness but never returned back to testify what God has done that person who

1:16:00 got the house got the degree got the promotion but all of a sudden drifted from the community that prayed them through that person for whom the congregation prayed for their deliverance from a crisis then when the crisis has passed and they already returned back to the same behaviors that got them in the mess in the first place you all we all know folks like that and the text shows us that this danger that it is possible to receive God's blessings and still be unwell. The nine lepers were cleansed but not saved. They got a gift but missed the giver. And far too many of us have been too trained to survive in life. And too often our survival has demanded relentless forward motion. This idea that we got to keep going, that we got to keep grinding, we got to keep pushing and the Samaritan turning back is counter-cultural. It is a counter-cultural act to shut up this culture of what they say and to remind himself of what God had done. He saw that he was healed. He turned around. He returned back to Jesus and he gave thanks. And then Luke makes a detail that many of us will zoom past over he says and he was a Samaritan he was an outsider he was a foreigner the person carrying another social religious label on top of the stigma already attached to the disease and the Samaritan turns around this outsider turns around and the one who was never going to get fully accepted by the priesthood anyway notices something about him and notices the nine went to get validated by the system that put them out in the first place.

1:17:44 How many of us in here can be honest in here and admit that we've gone back to seek validation from places and people who have rejected us? Family members who would never support our dreams, friends who watch everything you post but never celebrate anything you accomplish, jobs who will work you to the bone and to death and still make you prove that you are worth, belonging in the room relationships that will have you questioning whether you are good enough fine enough successful enough or worthy enough to be with as a parent who never stepped up and cared for you and let me give a word for somebody in this place today that god may have only trusted them to carry the seed and not the child you gotta learn to not be so reliant and try to go after validation from people that don't care about you and concerned about you ain't praying for you and encouraging you, you ought to be thankful for the people that are in your life. Too many of us spend too much time trying to prove ourselves to people that have already made up their minds about us, trying to get a follow from people who overlooked us, trying to get a like from people who never loved us, trying to get an invite from people who excluded us, trying to get a text back from people who ignored us, trying to get support from people who never showed up for us, trying to get validated by people who never valued us. But this man said, I'm not walking another step. I'm not taking another step to prove myself to somebody that I am clean. He turned back to Jesus.

1:19:15 Because at some point you have to stop chasing validation from people who do not heal you and turn back to the one who did. Please be seated. Please be seated, family. I want to give you three reasons that this man turned around. I want to give you three reasons. They're real simple, but I want to give them to you. He turned around, number one, because he remembered where he came from. The nine had healing, but he is the one that had a memory. You cannot say thank you for something you have decided to forget. And the fastest way for you to lose your gratitude is to get comfortable. enough to stop remembering what it costs to get there. So fellowship, I want you to remember, remember in 1950, a sharecropper's son from Brownsville, Tennessee, started a church with five members in a funeral home. They later moved to a garage at 46th and State. They stayed in that garage, but they turned it into a cathedral. By 1959, it could not hold the glory that was present with that congregation. So he led hundreds of cars in a motorcade across the city like Moses. And in 1963, they broke ground in the building that we are sitting in today. But in 1966, the building stopped going up. It was stopped because a man came to the city to whom the powerful did not want here. And the doors that were open for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were very few, but this door remain open and then mayor richard j daly and the political machine did what machines do the permits were denied the money dried up the steel skeleton of this structure stood for seven years to chicago elements and winter and the reason construction began was because of a preacher and activist by the name of reverend jesse lewis jackson who co-signed the mortgage as a result So many lives have been changed and the fruit is still showing today as the gospel has been heard all over radio, all over TV, all over the world.

1:21:26 A scholarship fund had begun that was quietly educating people's children for over 40 years. And there was a kitchen downstairs that fed hungry people from all over the city. That's where you come from, fellowship. That's where you come from. That's where you come from. And when somebody walks into the sanctuary now and finds it easy, somebody better lean over to them and remind them that this seat was paid for by sacrifice. This seat was paid for by obedience. This seat was prayed for by faith and by prayer. Somebody prayed before you got here. Somebody sacrificed before you got here. Somebody served before you got here. And I came to tell somebody it's not just fellowship, but we as a people have to remember. remember what our ancestors survived they survived slavery Jim Crow racial terror and segregation remember who fought so that we can have a place people marched and organized and boycotted so that we can have a seat at the table remember the grandparents and the elders who made something happen out of nothing remember the way we came from builders we built businesses we built churches We built schools. We built organizations. We built neighborhoods. We built institutions. We built resources. We built opportunities when we were denied all of that. We come from creators. We created gospel music, blues music, jazz music, R&B, hip hop. We got dance, fashion, language, and creativity all up in our fingertips.

1:23:00 Remember that somebody prayed for us before we knew how to pray for ourselves. Somebody called our name before God and took us to the church, taught us scripture, believed God, that God had a future for us. And you ought to remember that somebody did that for you. Somebody encouraged you. Somebody believed in you. Somebody sold into you. Somebody blessed you. Somebody counseled you. Somebody pushed you and put a few dollars in your hand in the process. Remember what they did. they might be long gone from this earth but somebody ought to give god praise for them right now they'll give god praise for what their life meant to you give god praise for what they sold into you give god praise for how they encouraged you give god praise for how they pushed you give god praise for how they prayed for you and someone in here might still be in here and if they are somebody might still be living in your life you ought to not let the sun go down tonight before you call them before you send a text to them before you send something to their cash app and say thank you i remember what you did for me Number one, he remembered where he came from.

1:24:23 But number two, he turned back because he recognized the man didn't have to do it. Jesus had no obligation to these ten. He was just passing through. They were at a distance because the law required the distance. Nobody would have faulted him for keeping to his schedule. And then, here's the thing. Here's the thing here. One understood that nine missed. Here's what he understood. That the man didn't have to do it. And I have to be honest here. I got to testify because a tribute that costs the preacher nothing is not necessarily a tribute. And when I was a younger man, when I was a younger guy, I just started preaching when I was 15. But somebody took me under their wing. There was a man of God, a pastor who helped me to discern if God was saying what God was actually saying. A pastor who had no obligation to me named Charles Jenkins was moved by God to mentor me.

1:25:24 and I was not a strategy. I was not a simple audience. I could not do anything for his platform. I couldn't do anything for the numbers of this church. I couldn't do anything for his name. However, he poured into me anyway, gave me free counsel when advice was expensive, money when the math did not work, energy he did not have that it was left over, which was the only kind of giving that actually cost and I was not special I was standing in a line see this house where this 25 year old was handed a legend the 25 year old was handed something special and precious he did not squander it but rather he grew it past every number anybody else would predict he built an engine for education and jobs and treated these whole blocks of the city as though God had an opinion about them and then at the age when most pastors are finally getting comfortable in the chair he'd handed this historic pulpit over to a 27 year old and made room he did not step down he stepped under and he went from being the tree everybody could see to being part of the root system nobody has to see I want every preacher to hear me.

1:26:45 I want every deacon to hear me. I want every leader to hear me. I want every servant to hear me. Because this is the hard part of the text. If the nine out of the ten never came back, you cannot do ministry on commission. You have to learn to pour without a receipt. and pastor jenkins launched preachers who never called again gave money to people who never mentioned it opened doors for folks who walked through them and never turned their heads back to say thank you but he kept pouring and that is a sign of the discipline of a man who decided a long time ago that his obedience would be priced but not be priced by other people's manners and i want to personally say to you pastor charles jenkins and dr tara jenkins that i want to say thank you for how you have poured into me and into my wife's lives. You have been a blessing to our house and our family, and we are eternally grateful for it. And I came to tell somebody in here today that I know I'm not the only one in here that can remember somebody and what they did for you in your life. There is somebody in here that has a mother that encouraged you, a father that was beside you, a sister that pushed you, a brother that pushed you, a friend, an auntie, an uncle, a teacher, a co-worker, somebody in your life. And someone in here ought to take a moment and thank God for giving you a thing called grace, giving you a thing called unmerited favor, giving you something that you did not deserve and that you could not buy. God gave you healing.

1:28:17 God gave you deliverance. God gave you strength. God gave you a job. God gave you a career. God gave you a house. God gave you salvation. All I'm trying to tell you is that you got to recognize that God didn't have to do any of it. He didn't have to wake you up this morning. He didn't have to start you on your way, but he did it anyway. Not only does he turn back because he remembered where he came from, not only does he recognize that the man didn't have to do it, but thirdly and finally, he turned back because thank you requires a response. Look at the Samaritan. Look at what the Samaritan actually did. He did not send a word. He did not write a letter. He didn't shoot a text. He turned his body around, came back, fell on his face, and glorified God so loudly you can hear it down the road. His gratitude did not stay in his head.

1:29:16 It moved through his body. See, he sees what happened to him. He turns his body around. He returns back in the direction where Jesus is and raises his voice in the process and he falls at Jesus's feet and he gives thanks fellowship you all gratitude is the text it not merely a feeling gratitude has to be a movement gratitude has to be a physical response and if I appreciate you at some point my appreciation ought to become visible if I'm thankful at some point my thanksgiving ought to become audible there ought to be something i do there ought to be something i say there ought to be some evidence that i recognize that i did not get here by myself notice notice the samaritan does not send a word he does not assume that jesus knows how he feels he does not say i'll catch him the next time he's in town but no he turns around and maybe that is a word for somebody this afternoon that you too need to turn around. That you need to turn around and call that person. Turn around and text that person. Turn around and write that person a letter.

1:30:27 Turn around and buy that person the flowers that they can smell. Honor the person while they can hear it today. Somebody, that person might be your grandparents. Go tell your parents. Go tell your grandparents. Go tell a teacher. Go tell a mentor. Go tell a pastor. Go tell the person who gave you a chance. Tell the person who spoke your name in a room that you were not in. Go tell a person who saw something in you before you could even see it in yourself. Go back and tell the person who reminded you that you are enough. Go back and tell the person who reminded you that my God is awesome. Go back and tell the person who reminded you to be free. Go back and tell the person that God will do more for you than you ever expected. Go back and tell the person, don't wait till they stretched out here in front of the church and you got to give a eulogy or give some words over them. Go back and tell them thank you while they can hear it. Give them flowers while they can smell it. Give them a hug while they can still feel it. And above all, somebody ought to above else, somebody ought to praise God and thank God for what God has done. Somebody ought to give God glory for what God has done because this man glorifies God with a loud voice. He falls at Jesus' feet and his request has been loud, but his praise is now even louder. Before his voice said, have mercy, but now his voice says glory. The same mouth that cried because he needed something is now praising because he received something. I came to tell somebody that's a sign of Thanksgiving.

1:32:02 Thanksgiving is an admission that I did not do this by myself and is there anybody in here today that can say I did not come to this house by myself I did not come to this house and all alone by myself but I came because somebody brought me somebody prayed for me somebody encouraged me and I came to give something I came to give glory I came to give honor I came to give appreciation I came to give thanks I came to turn around and I want you to know this fellowship that the 10 were healed but only one was made whole. Watch the last line of the story. Jesus says the man to the man on the ground. Arise and go thy way. Thy faith has made thee whole. All 10 got their skin back but only one got sent away whole. The 10 got healed but the one got whole.

1:32:57 And the difference between the nine and the one is a thank you. The ten experienced the gift, but the one turned around to acknowledge the giver. The ten had something happen to them, but one let what happened to them return with a response of appreciation for what had happened. And maybe that is appreciation and what it really looks like. appreciation is when you decide that somebody did something for you that deserves a response not from anybody else but from you and this afternoon i came to tell god thank you i came to tell god thank you for waking me up this morning thank you for clothing me in my right mind thank you for putting breath in my body thank you for keeping my mind thank you for putting food on my table thank you for putting clothes on my back thank you for a roof over my head Thank you for people who love me Thank you for doors you open for me Thank you for doors you close for me Thank you for prayers you answered Thank you for the things that I knew that I did not need But I prayed for them, you held them back Because you knew I didn't need them I thank you for that Thank you for making ways I could not see Thank you for carrying my burdens every day Thank you for keeping me when I didn't want to be kept Thank you for protecting me from danger seen and unseen Thank you for the nights that you cared for me the nights that I cried myself to sleep.

1:34:22 Thank you for every mountain you brought me over, every valley you brought me through, every storm you kept me in, every mistake that didn't destroy me, the grace I didn't earn, the mercy I didn't deserve, the love that when I was unlovable, you looked beyond my faults and supplied my every need.