One of the most miserable tasks I ever had to do as a kid and a young adult was write thank you notes. I knew that people had given me some item, or given me money, that came from their hard work and earnings. So I knew they had given me something of value. It cost them something. And I knew it was important to say thank you. I was truly appreciative! But sitting down and writing out a thoughtful note and all the work of handwriting addresses just seemed tedious. I don’t mind as an adult. But as a kid I did. And I’d swear there were a few adults in my life who held a stop watch counting the minutes for how fast I’d get a thank you mailed to them!
In our gospel reading we meet ten lepers who are healed by Jesus. Actually, I need to be as precise as Luke is. Our translation is actually a bit wrong. Luke more literally says there were ten men who had leprosy. He always does that. He says a person has a condition. A person has leprosy. He does not say a person is a leper. In 5:18 Luke refers to a man who was paralyzed. He does not say a paralyzed man. In 8:27 he does not call the guy from Gerasene and demoniac. He says a man who has demons. Perhaps it’s too subtle, but there is a humanizing effect to this. Luke sees all people as people first, conditions second. You are not your condition.
Anyway, we meet ten men who have leprosy. In Luke’s typical storytelling style he does not give us all the details we need up front. He puts them in just when he wants in order to surprise us.
While Luke may be good at humanizing people, he is not good at geography. He says that Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem. He’s traveling in the region between Samaria and Galilee. Not exactly. He’s traveling south which means he has to go through Samaria outright. Either that or he’s skirting along the eastern border of Samaria. This is something Jewish travelers probably did. You’ll remember that Jews and Samaritans did not get along at all.
Let’s note a few things about the men calling out to Jesus. First, they call him Jesus and Master. Thus they’ve heard of him before and they know something about him. They ask for mercy from him. They don’t especially ask for healing. Mercy might have meant healing but it could also have meant a gift of money or food. Lepers, after all, had to live in isolation because the disease was highly contagious. They’d live in isolation until they died.
Luke tells us that Jesus saw them. That doesn’t seem like a big deal. They’re calling out to him after all, but seeing is a big deal in Luke’s gospel. In the Parable of the Good Samaritan we meet three people who saw the man in the ditch. Only one acted upon what he saw. For Luke, seeing is recognizing a person and their condition. It is an opportunity for mercy, to connect, and to recognize their humanness.
Jesus just tells them to go show themselves to the priests. This was standard procedure if one happened to be cured of leprosy. It was like going back to the doctor to be given a clean bill of health.
The healing itself is never narrated. It happens offstage. Why? Because the point of the story is not the healing. It is the response to the healing. Only one of the ten comes back to Jesus. He throws himself at Jesus’ feet and says thank you.
Jesus does not pull out a stop watch and say, “Good job. You’ve given me my thank you in good time.” No. In fact Jesus’ response is not about thank you at all.
Luke drops two things on us simultaneously. First, he tells us this one guy was a Samaritan. A Samaritan is someone the Jews loved to hate. But the Samaritans loved to hate the Jews too. Lots of boundaries are being broken here. This man has not been declared clean but he comes back right to Jesus and thanks him. And, he’s a Samaritan giving thanks to a Jew.
The second thing is that this Samaritan is grateful to God. Apparently the other nine, whom we now can infer were Jewish, did not feel this gratefulness. Why? Why are they not grateful to God?
Luke does not answer that in any direct way. But the context of this story does give us an answer. If you were here last week you’ll remember Jesus saying this, “Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? Would your not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink, later you may eat and drink’? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’” (Luke 17:7-10)
Ouch! How cruel is that coming from God?!? The placement of this story of the cleansing of the ten who had leprosy illustrates a point.
What is owed? What is expected?
It appears as if the other nine knew Jesus was a healer. They received their healing and did what Jesus told them. They went to the priest. They were found clean. They then joyously returned to their lives and families. That’s great! Except it doesn’t seem to surprise them. It is as if that is what they expect of God for being a Jew.
We may think that’s pretty presumptuous of them. And yet, do we inadvertently fall into the same trap? How much should we be grateful for that we are not?
It is so very easy for us to forget how divorced from reality we really are. I don’t know if they still have it, but I love the hand cranked generator and incandescent lightbulb our boy scout troop here has. When you have to generate the power to light a lightbulb by hand you realize just how much energy it takes. True, it is an old incandescent bulb, and not a new LED, but you get the point.
When I was a kid there was a big thing about how many hours of TV kids watched. Kids wanted to watch more. Parents wanted them to watch less. I remember, ironically on TV, an interview with a dad who installed a generator on an exercise bike. It powered the TV. The kids could watch as much TV as they wanted. They just had to provide the power to run it! It goes without saying that they didn’t watch much!
How many of us heat our homes but cutting down trees, splitting wood, and burning it? And if you do, how many of us actually split the wood by hand? Don Curtis liked the quote that heating with wood heats you twice. Once when you burn it, and once before when you split it.
How many of us got here by our own body’s energy – walking, jogging, or riding bike; and how many of us got here by using an automobile? Even an electric one had to get that power from somewhere!
I discipline I try to have for myself, but forget quite often, is to realize that simply having cold running water in my house is nothing short of amazing. It is not my due. I did not carry the water. I did not treat the water to make sure it is safe. I just turn a knob and – miracle of miracles – water comes out of a pipe!
To have hot water running water is to live a life of extreme luxury. I’ve said this before and I’ll never forget it. An African Civil Engineer once said, “Potable water is the most precious commodity on earth. Yet you Americans are so opulent you flush your toilets with it and think nothing of it!”
Brothers and sisters in Christ, if we are not waking up every day in absolute awe and wonder of what amazing things are at our finger tips each and every moment of each and every day we are missing things! We are like the nine who, for some strange reason, think we somehow deserve it.
The Samaritan, the foreigner, felt the amazingness of Jesus’ work. He was grateful to God.
While I readily accept that saying the conveniences of our lives is not the same as receiving a miracle from God, I hope you get the point of how easy it is to lose a sense of awe and gratitude.
Let me conclude with these words from R. Alan Culpepper:
“Are we self-made individuals beholden to no one, or are we blessed daily in ways we seldom perceive, cannot repay, and for which we often fail to be grateful? (New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume 9, Pg. 328)
“[In the preceding scene of the slave who works without expectation of reward] discipleship requires doing one’s duty, but because of God’s mercy, God’s servants can never repay the grace they have received.” (Pg. 325)
Faith, like gratitude, is our response to the grace of God as we have experienced it. Faith, like gratitude, is our response to the grace of God as we have experienced it. For those who have become aware of God’s grace, all of life is infused with a sense of gratitude, and each encounter becomes an opportunity to see and to respond in the spirit of the grateful leper.” (Pg. 328)
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