---

A Life of Gratitude

Jeremiah 29: 1, 4-7; Luke 17: 11-19

Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem.  The region he has just entered is unclaimed.  It belongs neither to Samaria nor to Israel.  In this unclaimed region are ten unclaimed people-nine Jews and one Samaritan.  All are lepers.  Ordinarily, the Samaritan would not be in the same company as those nine Jews.  But misery does love company.  Whatever differences they may have had are superseded by the common predicament they share.  The writer Luke introduces us to these ten castaways, outcasts, living on a remote island of alienation.  He introduces us to them wondering, I suppose, if you and I will allow them entrance into our lives, wondering if you and I will claim these unclaimed people and give them residence in our minds and hearts.  

          Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem.  Together, they come to him.  Together, they cry for mercy.  They come to Jesus.  Yet they keep their distance from him.  When, for so long, you have been told you are ritually unclean, you begin to believe it; the compassionate side of you instructs you to keep your distance so that your presence will not make someone else unclean. 

          Jesus sees evidence of their condition.  He has compassion for them.   He instructs them: “Go, show yourselves to the priest.” Only the priests can certify their cure.  Only the priests can restore those ten lepers to intimacy with family and friends. 

          But, Jesus, who is known in the scriptures as the great high priest, is the only one who can raise those men to new life. 

          The lepers, on their way to be certified and restored, are healed of their disease.  Their skin becomes soft and smooth.  The ends of their fingers acquire feeling.  Their arms are no longer limp.  They are empowered to walk with their heads held high.  Nine continue on their way.  One of them, the Samaritan, returns to the source of his healing.  For this double outcast, it is not enough to be healed.  He desires a relationship with Jesus. He begins to build that relationship on the foundation of doxology and thanksgiving.  “Praise God from whom all blessings flow”, he might have sung as he knelt before Jesus.  But it would have been a solo, because none of the other ten returned.

          Jesus wonders: “Where are they?”  “Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”  Then, turning to the Samaritan, Jesus says: “Rise.  Go on your way.  Your faith has made you well.”  Not only has this Samaritan been healed physically, something spiritually has happened to him.  He has been made whole. The Greek word translated as the word “well” also can be translated as “saved”.  The Samaritan has encountered the God who is doing new and marvelous things through Christ. The grace of God has been lavished upon this foreigner, this Gentile. Most scholars see this scene as a foreshadowing of the book of Acts, also written by Luke.  In Acts, there are many instances in which the good news of God’s limitless love is being carried to Gentile people.  God’s grace crosses every imagined or unimagined boundary line and brings salvation.  Not only has the Samaritan leper been healed of a horrible disease, he has been raised to new life in Christ.  He responds in the only appropriate way. He kneels at Jesus’ feet and profusely offers his thanksgiving. 

          Jesus tells the man to “go on your way.”  I don’t find it hard to imagine that he left Jesus’ presence that day and began to live a life of doxology and thanksgiving.  In my mind’s eye, I can see his gratitude being embodied as he finds a marginalized person, maybe even a leper, someone living on an island of alienation, separated from the world.  To that person he extends the same grace Jesus extended to him, to let that person know of the healing and the wholeness to be found in Christ. 

          The way he chooses is the way of thanks and gratitude. 

          Is there a chance that we might join the Samaritan on the road he travels?  Is there a chance that we might assume our places on the path of doxology and thanksgiving?

            We also have been healed.  Some of us have been healed of serious physical diseases.  But that’s not the kind of healing I’m speaking of here. 

          We all have been healed spiritually, like the Samaritan who was made well and whole and saved from a life of despair.  We have been saved from self-inflicted alienation from God.  “We were lost but now are found, were blind but now we see.”

          Our only appropriate response is the response of the Samaritan-a response of thankfulness and, as some would say, a response of thanks-living. 

          I remember occasionally hearing from one of my parents the question, “Have you forgotten something?”  That was the parental admonition, usually for not saying ‘thank you’ after receiving a gift.

          Have you forgotten something?  Do we take this gift of grace, this gift of healing, and this gift of salvation for granted? 

During his first year of being the pastor of a small church in Aberdeen Mississippi, a young minister was visited by three men inquiring about one of his members, a widow who lived by herself.  How was she doing?  Do people in the church reach out to her?  Was there anything they could do for her? 

          The three men told the pastor their situation and gave him their cards-one lived in New Jersey, another in Oklahoma, the other in California—and he was told to call them if there was anything they could do to make her life happier or easier.

Every year, these three men arrived bearing presents their wives had picked out in the shops of San Francisco and New York. The men had hired a family who mowed the woman’s yard, trimmed the bushes, and checked on tree branches and gutters. One of the men prepared the woman’s tax returns each year, another contracted repairs on her house or made them himself. Sometimes they helped her shop for a new car. They were meticulous in wanting to check on everything and anticipate every difficulty the woman might face.

Each year they visited the President of the Bank of Mississippi in Aberdeen and passed out their cards, explained that he was to notify them of any worldly need this woman might have, and they explained to the Bank President the situation.

The situation was this: Over sixty years ago the three men had been three soldiers standing on the ground floor of a house in Normandy just a few days after D-Day when a German grenade came bouncing down the stairs. A fourth soldier, the woman’s husband, threw himself on the grenade, absorbing most of its impact. The three men lived because of his death.

After the war was over in 1945 the three men began making their way to Aberdeen, Mississippi on a regular basis to make sure that this man’s widow would lack for nothing they had within their power to provide for her. They had been doing that for more than twenty-five years when that young pastor began his ministry in that small Mississippi town. 

Isn’t that a remarkable story? I’ll tell you another remarkable thing: there were eighteen soldiers on the first floor of that house in Normandy. All eighteen of them were spared by the action of that one soldier’s leaping on a grenade, and after the war ended three of them made their regular pilgrimages to Aberdeen, Mississippi.

Could we be as intentional as those three men?  Could we have that level of gratitude in response to the one who has given his all for us? 

          Ten of the lepers were healed.  But only one of them returned to give thanks.  

Would you give that man some company today?  

 

Not One of Them Ever Thanked Me

 

Bishop Gerland Kennedy of California tells the true story of a shipwreck off the coast of Evanston, Ill, many years ago.  The students of Northwestern University came to the rescue.  One student, Edward Spenser, personally saved the lives of 17 persons that day.  Years later, a reporter was writing a follow up story on the event and went to interview the now elderly Spenser.  When asked what was the one thing that stood out in his mind about the incident; Spenser replied: “I remember that of the seventeen people I saved that day, not one of them ever thanked me.”

 

Staff, www.eSermons.com