October 9, 2022
Rev. William G. Carter
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.’
If you tuned in last week, you heard a wonderful sermon by our friend Jim. He unpacked the passage right before this one and told us at least two things. First, it doesn’t take a large quantity of faith to claim the promises of God’s gracious kingdom. God has already given us faith the size of a mustard seed, and that’s all we need. Second, the good servants of God are the ones who do what they are told.
That’s the context for the story that Luke tells us today. Ten people with leprosy are living in exile because of their disease. They see Jesus and call out for help. Jesus hears them, sees them, and then he says, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” Presumably, those are the same priests who diagnosed their skin diseases. They functioned as the Purity Inspectors, with the authority to banish from society anybody with dangerous looking blemishes. If the lepers ever got well, the Purity Inspectors could readmit them to the public.
We don’t know how much faith the ten lepers had, but apparently, they had enough faith to trust his word. As they started off to find a priest, suddenly the disease left their bodies. It was a miracle. They were healed. They were clean. They were free. All because they had just enough faith to trust him. Even a little was enough.
And second, just as important, they obeyed Jesus. They did what he told them to do. They called him “Master.” He said, “Go,” and they went. Faith set them free. obedience opened the way to healing. This is what faithfulness looks like. It’s a great way to reinforce what we heard last week.
Yet there’s more. Ten people with a skin disease was healed as they stepped out in trust to find a priest who could tell them they were healed. Nine of them kept on going. After years of exclusion, it was time to keep moving. But one turns back. He returns to Jesus, throws himself at his feet, praises God, and says, “Thank you.” Suddenly the story is not about the healing; it’s about what comes next.
Now, I suppose we could kick the nine, make fun of them, and ask, “What’s wrong with them?” That’s usually what happens when a preacher gets hold of this story.
Some years ago, our local ministerial group held a Thanksgiving Eve service at a nearby church. The Rotary Club collected donations for the food pantry. The newest pastor in town got appointed to preach. Maybe there was a time when a service like that was well attended, but attendance had seriously dwindled. In fact, one of my colleagues murmured, “If you get all the churches together for an ecumenical service, the total number present would be just under what we’d have if one of the churches had a service of their own.”
In any case, the young pastor who picked the short straw that year stood up to see a very sparse crowd in a very large church. He read the text, which is the text that we’ve heard today. Then he looked around the room and said, “Where are the nine? Where are the nine? Ten were healed, and only one turned back. Where are the nine?” He kept up the harangue. “Where are the nine?”
I thought to myself, “The nine are where I would be if I had any sense.” The way he kept going on, I’d rather be home peeling the next day’s potatoes and watching my wife roll out dough for the pumpkin pie.
Where are the nine? Indeed. A healing story in the Gospel of Luke has been repurposed as a speech about gratitude. Or rather, a lack of gratitude. Ten are healed, only one says thanks.
To be fair, we don’t have any idea where the nine former lepers went. They disappear from the pages of the story, so we can only speculate. Maybe they went home to the families that they hadn’t seen. Maybe they couldn’t wait to depart the leper colony. Maybe they decided to get on with their lives. And maybe they simply obeyed Jesus – and they went off to see the priest. After all, that’s what he told them to do.
Yet there’s also the contrast between all of them and Number 10. He returns to say thanks – and they did not. Luke might be reminding us that gratitude can be a spiritual problem.
A few years ago, Diana Butler Bass wrote a book about thankfulness. She begins by confessing her own spotty history with responding to gifts that she had received. You can guess some of what she knows. One time, she gave someone a gift – they responded by giving her a gift. So she wrote a thank you note. They responded by writing a note to say thank you for the thank you note. “It’s a suburban game,” she says, “a circular offering that ceases to have anything to do with true gratitude. Rather, it smacks of social obligation.”
She also confesses how her mother forced her to write thank you notes when a relative or friend would give her something for Christmas or her birthday. She was so terrible at it, that, one Christmas an etiquette book showed up as a gift under the tree. A bookmark was placed in the section “How to Write Thank You Notes.” She got the point but didn’t change her ways.
And she writes,
Years later, the struggle over thank-you notes repeated with my own daughter. Although I had not been good at it, I hoped she would be. No such luck. She resisted and complained just as I had at her age. I bought her fancy cards and personalized stationery, supplied her with colored pens and cute stickers, hoping all might inspire notes of gratitude. It did not work. She utterly refused to write. However, no Miss Manners showed up under the Christmas tree. Instead, I prompted her to call gift givers and send thank-you e-mails. We had some success with electronic forms of expressing gratitude, but only minimally so. I gave up. When I stopped resorting to threats and etiquette shaming, she stopped writing thank-you notes. Is there DNA for ingratitude? For daughter wound up like mother, and I felt bad that I had not done better as a parent.[1]
I can relate to her experience; maybe you can do. Enforced gratitude is always a misfire. Compulsory thankfulness never works. Ethically informed threats are counter productive. And then there was the tactic of one of my beloved grandmothers. After years of being neglected, she announced, “If you don’t send me a thank you note, I will stop sending you gifts.” Someone must have gently pushed back, because she later said, “I’m 95 years old and I can do whatever I want.” Fair enough.
What does it take to stir up gratitude? Good question. Let’s consider the former leper who turned back to thank Jesus. He was purified of a dreaded disease. No longer was he judged by the spots on his skin or the scars on his face. He could return without stigma to his family and friends. He didn’t have to hang around with those who only had their disease in common. In so many ways, he received his life back. He had a fresh start.
And he didn’t do anything to earn it. His newfound health was a complete gift.
Someone notes how he and the others cried out for mercy. Since they had been reduced to begging, that could have been construed as a request for food or money. What they received was better than food, richer than money. Jesus treated them better than they expected, more generously than they could have deserved. The gift of healing came because they stepped out in faith even before they were well. He told them to go to the priest – and they went. This was exemplary obedience. Their faith put into action.
And yet here’s the one returning to thank the Master who healed them all. He is lifted up as a good example. He teaches there’s something better than faithful obedience, and that’s gratitude. Gratitude – it’s voluntary, never forced. It’s a response from the heart. There’s no desire for ingratiation, no interest in manipulation, no attempt to reduce the gift to a transaction. Just “thank you.” Thank you.
Do you think it matters that Luke tells us the man was a Samaritan? Maybe, maybe not. Not only had he been sent off because of his dreaded disease, he was also a “foreigner.” That’s a nice way of saying that the Jews of Jesus’ time wanted nothing to do with a Samaritan. It’s also a hint as to why the other nine skedaddled as soon as they all got healed. As in, “We’ve spent enough time with this Samaritan, let’s get out of here.” We don’t know.
We do know that Jesus made no distinction when it came to healing all of them. Health care is not only for the insiders. He offered care to all. It’s quite possible this outsider is grateful to receive the same as the others. Luke says he comes back “praising God,” the God who is the Source of every life, the guardian of every soul. God does not discriminate. Everybody gets their turn.
And yet, Jesus takes note how the insiders take off while the outsider comes back to say thank you. Here, too, is another clue to identifying true-blue gratitude. If we’re accustomed to getting all the breaks, we tend to take them for granted. If we depend upon our own privileges, we’re tempted to believe we deserve them. If we ask for something – and receive it – we might think we were entitled. And the precious truth that is lost is simply this: that life is a gift.
Take a breath: did you pay for that? Feel your pulse: did you earn that? Look around at the people who truly love you for who you are: did you manipulate them to love you? The opportunities to think and create and work and produce: have you deserved those things? No, no, no. They are a gift.
And I consider this church and all that it means. We proclaim the Gospel here, a Gospel that challenges us to love everybody, regardless of who they are or what they’ve done to us. Can’t get that Message on your cable TV, and I’m grateful to get it here. We come to hear that our sins are forgiven in Christ, and the sickness in our souls can be healed in his power, and I don’t hear that anywhere else; I’m thankful to get it here.
In this church, I’ve made life-giving friendships in a suburb where too many of our neighbors hide on their back patios. This church invites me to care for other people whose names I don’t even know. And this is the only place in town – and I mean the only place – where I am invited to sing with others, and to sing songs that are of ultimate importance. Do you know any other place where that happens? It happens here – in this community of faith that gathers around Jesus.
And I’m grateful, so grateful that I keep showing up. I get to study the Bible here and enjoy the company of others. I enjoy all kinds of conversations with all kinds of people. I get invited to step into key moments of life and death and resurrection. There are newborns to be baptized and welcomed, old-timers to bless and accompany through life’s passages, and everybody in between. I don’t take any of this for granted.
Let me tell it to you straight: you people are a gift to me as much as you are a gift to one another. You are a gift from a most generous God. If it weren’t for the Gospel which calls us together as church, I would never have had the opportunity to receive the gift that you are, as an expression of the generous love of God. So I have only one thing to say: thank you. Thank you, God.
And I conclude with the frequently quoted line from the German mystic Meister Eckhart: “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is ‘thank you,’ it will be enough.”
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
[1] Diana Butler Bass, Grateful:
The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks (New York: HarperOne, 2017) xii
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