Gratitude For What Is

Gratitude For What Is

Luke 17:11-19
October 14, 2007

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.”

I know its not Thanksgiving yet—far from it—though it often feels as if time is moving
faster nowadays. Doesn’t it seem to you that everything gets here faster than it use to,
but I just had to share with you a little thanksgiving joke just to prepare us for what is
just right around the corner. In the book, Every Excuse In The Book: 714 Ways To Say
“It’s Not My Fault,” there is section where they list out a dozen reasons you can be
thankful if the Thanksgiving turkey actually gets burned to a crisp.

1. Salmonella won’t be a concern.
2. No one will overeat.
3. Everyone will think it’s Cajun blackened.
4. Uninvited guests will think twice next year.
5. Your cheese-broccoli-lima-bean casserole will gain newly found appreciation.
6. Pets won’t pester you for scraps.
7. The smoke alarm was due for a test.
8. Carving the bird will provide a good cardiovascular workout.
9. After dinner, the guys can take the bird to the yard and play football.
10. The less turkey Uncle George eats, the less likely he will be to walk around with his
pants unbuttoned.
11. You’ll get to the desserts quicker.
12. You won’t have to face three weeks of turkey sandwiches.

It’s the latter that I most agree with—I like turkey, but turkey sandwiches…not my
favorite, after thanksgiving or anytime, really, and I suspect that its because turkey is
such a healthy meat, which naturally means I don’t like it all that much, at least not on a
sandwich.

But being thankful even in the midst of those moments in our lives when the turkey is
accidentally blackened, or the car stops working, or an unexpected illness hits us, or we
lose a job, or, worse, we lose someone to the next world…well, being thankful in those
moments is always difficult. What is there to be thankful for, really, if things are not
going the way we want them to? On the other hand, I’ve also found that its is always on
the other side of those difficult moments, when next year’s turkey is perfect, or the car
somehow fixes itself, or the job of our dreams falls into lap, or someone we loves
survives a scare with death, it is those moments when the words “thank you” fall easily
from our lips and tumble out of hearts to God.

That’s natural, and that is sort of what is happening here, in our story today, with the
single leper returning to Jesus to express his wonder and thanks for what had
happened to him moments earlier, when Jesus healed him of his disease.   As we just
heard, these lepers cried out to the Christ for healing—have mercy on us!—and Christ
does just that—he sees them for who they are and what they need, and he does what
they ask of them, he gives him mercy. Christ tells them to go the priests to show
themselves as having been cured of their ailments, because in ancient Israel, disease
and ritual purity, spiritual purity, were closely linked and it was only by being approved
as “clean” of a disease, especially a skin disease, could one return back to the
community. Now, what is commonly labeled “leprosy” in the Bible is not necessarily
what we have commonly understood as leprosy in the modern world, Hansen’s disease,
in which, after acquiring a certain bacteria, one begins to lose feelings in certain nerve
regions, and then eventually one loses one’s fingers or toes. In the ancient world, the
word “leprosy” designated a variety of skin diseases, ranging from simple skin
blemishes to serious rashes to more serious fungal and bacterial infections. So, you
can imagine that lepers were pretty common in the ancient world, and the diseases
under the category of leprosy were often curable—and, the good news is that it didn’t
automatically doom one to be pariah of the community forever—in fact, even Moses
and Miriam (Numbers 12:10-15) suffered temporarily from some sort of leprous
affliction. The biggest concern from the viewpoint of Jewish law and the priests was
that the lepers ought to be kept at a distance from un-afflicted, unaffected people and
objects—they were to be kept out of the camp, out of the city, so that they wouldn’t
infect others, nor would they contaminate the spiritual purity of others.

But I don’t want to minimize the fear that accompanied many must have felt when they
were told they had to leave for the sake of the larger community—can you imagine
suffering an illness, but not being able to be emotionally supported by your family and
friends? This is the terror these lepers are going through when they ask Jesus for
mercy, and this is what they are relieved of when he grants them their deepest desire,
which is to go back home, healed of this disease that had built a wall between them and
their family and friends. They go to the priest to be certified as healed, as Jesus tells
them to, but one man turns back, and he comes to back lay himself at Jesus’ feet, to
offer thanks to this Jew who has had mercy upon his body. And then the text points out
the simple fact that he was a Samaritan, a man who was part of a religion that good,
Orthodox Jews despised because they had once been Jews but had intermarried with
non-Jews, and who now worshipped at a competing temple other than the one
universally recognized by Jews as the right temple, the one in Jerusalem. Once again,
it is the nobody, the heretic, the dirty one that Jesus points to, that he interacts with—
you’ve heard the story of the Good Samaritan, the one who stopped to help someone
by the side of the road, but I suspect most of us don’t know the story of the other
Samaritan, the outsider by virtue of his leprosy and his religion. This is his story, and
this is the story of how his gratitude, his deep gratitude at what had happened to him
and what had been given to him, changed his life forever, and made him truly whole.

But before we go there, I want us to sit with Jesus’ amazement here in the text, that
amazement he has that only one of ten came back to offer their thanks. I can’t imagine
not falling over myself with gratitude for such a gift, but somehow it didn’t register with
the other nine that one ought to thank the healer for the healing. On the other hand, I
wonder if they just weren’t THAT grateful because the leprosy they were dealing was
minor, wasn’t all that big of deal, an inconvenience that would eventually go away, one
of the varieties of inconvenient leprosies I mentioned earlier, but not necessarily deadly
one we know as Hansen’s Disease. Maybe they expected to go home at some point, to
be made clean by the eventual passage of time, and Jesus simply hurried up a natural
process for many of them. I don’t know—maybe its idle speculation on my part,
something I am pretty good at, but it may explain their lack of gratitude—they didn’t feel
as if they had to be grateful for the small things, for the small gifts given to them, which
is a shame, I think. You know, you and I probably are lot more like them than we’d like
think: we don’t tend to thank God for the small things like, oh say, aspirin, or the doctor,
or Haagen-Dazs ice cream, or a simple good night’s sleep. So often from this chancel I
say that all is a gift, that everything, from electricity in my home, to the food on my
table, to the water flowing out of my tap, to being home with you in this sanctuary—all of
it is a gift—I say it, but like those nine who left with their gift, with their healing, I often
forget to thank the giver of these small miracles, the water flowing from my tap, or food
on the table, or a million little things that I feel are my right in this world.

There is a funny little story about not appreciating the obvious gifts, the gift being
given. The story goes that one day the boss called one of his employees into his
office. “Rob,” he said, “you’ve been with the company for a year now. You started off in
the mailroom, one week later you were promoted to a sales position, one month after
that you were promoted to district manager of the sales department, and just four short
months later, you were promoted to vice-chairman. Now it’s time for me to retire, and I
want you to take over the company. What do you have to say to that?” “Thanks,” said
the employee. “Thanks?” the boss replied. “Thanks?! Is that all you can say?” “Okay,
okay,” the employee said. “Thanks, Dad.”

Now, its funny, and the young man doesn’t quite get the enormity of the gift given him,
but if he did, it would make all the difference in his life. A sense of entitlement is
something this young man has, but not our Samaritan, the Other Samaritan we’ve
watched in this little story today. No, it is with an overwhelming sense of gratitude that
this outsider comes to Jesus and lays himself at his feet, thanking him for the gift he
has been given. It’s kind of interesting that he is one of ten, he is a one tenth of the
lepers whom Jesus originally healed—it’s almost as if he is a living tithe, the 10% we all
strive to give back to God in service and money—he is gratitude to God given flesh and
bone. Now, again, that is probably pressing the story to its metaphorical maximum, but
I do know this, this truth, from this story: God and doctors may heal us, they may fix our
bodies, sometimes even our minds, and they too are a gift, but its gratitude that really
makes us well, that makes whole. What does Jesus say to the man AFTER he has
received his healing, AFTER the leprosy is gone: “Get up and go on your way; your
faith has made you well.” As one of the ten, he was simply a man crying for mercy from
a stranger, from a wandering preacher that he had heard had a reputation for doing
miracles. All of those ten lepers—we don’t know if they had faith, but Jesus didn’t heal
them because of their faith—he healed them because he saw them as hurting and he
wanted to help them—he had mercy on them. But the one before Jesus, this one who
is prostrate on the ground, this outsider who turned around and wanted to express his
gratitude, it is he who had faith because he knew WHO to give thanks to, WHO to show
gratitude towards, and it is his faithfulness that has made him whole, and that
faithfulness in that moment was shown in his gratitude to the healer. A miracle had
given this man back his skin, but his gratitude had made him well, had made him whole,
had done something beyond just repairing flesh and bone.

The writer Anne Dillard has written that she thinks that “that the dying pray, at the last,
not 'please,' but 'thank you,' as a guest thanks his host at the door." Now that I am in
my late thirties, and hypothetically, I am approaching a probable mid-point in my life, I
find that she is right, and I now found my prayers are mostly prayers of thanks, of
wonder of what I have been given to me, even amidst my sometimes selfish complaints
that was has been given has not been enough. Even my public prayers in this place,
even those prayers begin with words of thanks, almost always, but that wasn’t the way it
was fifteen years ago. I guess I’ve recognized more of the small things to be thankful
for, in addition to some of the larger ones. I am thankful for many things in my life—like
having someone special to go on life’s journey with, who has stuck by me through thick
and thin, and for a family I just finished visiting in Mississippi, who deserve a better son
and brother than I have ever been. I am thankful for this congregation, for the
wonderful people you are, and how faithful you have been to the Gospel of Jesus
Christ. And I am thankful for the small things, the fact there is air conditioning in the
parsonage, or that we have Chloe, our year old dog, or that the grass is growing now in
the yard. You know, it’s gratitude for the big things AND the small things that will make
me whole, make me well, on this side of eternity.   I hear that whenever the movie star
Jim Carrey gets down, or feels that his life is not going the direction he wants it to, he
takes out a sheet of paper, and simply begins listing out the things in his life he is
thankful for, every little and big moment or person or thing in his life that he knows he
needs to be grateful for. That is wise move, I think, something we each might consider
doing in our lives when it feels like there is nothing to be grateful for…its those
moments when our feelings are not be completely trusted, because, in reality, there is
much to be grateful for, despite the struggles we may face. In the end, it is not the gifts
that we pray for, that we hope to get so that we have something to be thankful for—it is
not those gifts that will make the difference in our lives, even the beautiful and needed
gifts we pray for, like healing. It really will be our gratitude to the Giver that will make us
well, that will heal our soul, that will make us whole. Amen.