Guided by Gratitude
Luke 17:11-19
One of the rituals that I grew up with was the writing of the mandatory thank-you note. Anytime I received a gift for my birthday or Christmas from someone outside the immediate family, my mother made sure that I wrote a thank-you note. No matter how small the gift—a check for $2 from my great Aunt Marg in York, Pennsylvania—I was expected to express my gratitude with a note.
The format always followed the same basic template. “Dear [blank], Thank you so much for your check for [blank] dollars. I deposited the money in my bank account in which I’m saving for a [blank]. I hope you are doing well, and I look forward to seeing you soon. Love, John.” I would have about a week to write the note unprompted. After that, I would get regular reminders from my mother until the deed was done.
At the time, writing thank-you notes struck me as a chore. It’s not that I wasn’t grateful for receiving gifts. I was. I think it was more that I bristled against the unspoken demand of writing a thank-you note (unspoken at least for 7 days; after that, the demand was very much spoken). But in retrospect I’m glad—and I dare say, grateful—for having received this lesson in gratitude. If I had children of my own, I definitely would have instilled the same lesson in them.
Beyond acknowledging gifts, there is much to recommend cultivating gratitude as a habit because it is so easy to take for granted the many ordinary things in life that come to us as gifts. The kaleidoscopic colors of autumn. The shrieks of laughter from children playing in the neighborhood. Coming home and being greeted with glee by the dog or cat, or in my case, an army of cats. All ordinary events that are extraordinary gifts.
But if you think this sermon is going to be about my encouraging us to be more thankful for gifts large and small, you may be disappointed (perhaps not for the first time). As much as I would encourage us to cultivate gratitude (by all means, write those thank-you notes), nowhere in today’s passage does Jesus demand that the ten men who are healed of their skin disease show some gratitude. His only command is that they go to the priests to receive the rite of purification, in keeping with the law of Moses.
When one of the men does return to thank Jesus, he does so not because he was commanded but because he was inspired. Thus Jesus tells him, “Your faith has made you well.” Yes, Jesus healed him, as he healed the other nine, but it is the one man’s faith that has made him whole, that has inspired him to return to offer his gratitude when the others who were healed simply turned and walked away.
The one man who returns to say “thank you” highlights for us that the most basic, most fundamental response to what Jesus Christ does for us is gratitude. In his death on the cross and resurrection from the dead, Jesus has healed our wounds, reconciled us to the Father, and lifted us up from the pit of death into his abundant, eternal life. Everything that we experience in this life—good or ill—is seen in the light of this truth. This is why Paul can say in his first letter to the Thessalonians “give thanks in all circumstances.” It’s not that we give thanks for the circumstances necessarily, but that not even the worst of circumstances can alter, diminish, or destroy the truth of God’s love for us in Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ we have been healed and made whole.
After our brief foray into the turbulent waters of Habakkuk last week, today we return to the safe harbor of Luke’s Gospel, where we will remain for the next several weeks leading up to Advent. Jesus and the disciples are continuing to make their way from Galilee in the far north down to Jerusalem. But first they pass through the borderlands between Galilee and Samaria.
The Samaritans were the descendants of what was once the northern kingdom of Israel, a kingdom that was destroyed more than 700 years before the time of Jesus. By Jesus’ day, although Samaritans shared a common ancestry with Jews, they were regarded as outsiders, rivals, and at times even enemies, which makes what happens next all the more remarkable.
As Jesus is passing through the borderlands he is approached by ten men who call to him from a distance. Apparently, they are all infected with some sort of skin disease. Some older translations refer to it as leprosy, but more recently New Testament scholars have suggested that “leprosy” is an umbrella term that can refer to any number of skin diseases. Regardless, whatever the condition may have been, it would have rendered the men ritually unclean. That is, in addition to the physical effects of their illness, they would have needed to isolate themselves from family, friends, and community for as long as they were ill, even if that were a lifetime. They could not rejoin their community until they had been cured.
With that in mind, we can understand why the men cry out to Jesus for mercy. This could be their only chance. They’ve no doubt heard of his reputation for healing the sick. Not only do they call to him by name, they even refer to him as “Master,” as though they were already his disciples. “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”
There are so many stories in the Gospels of Jesus’ healing people, and no Gospel features more miraculous healings than does Luke. Up to this point in Luke’s Gospel Jesus has already healed: Peter’s mother-in-law of fever; a man who was paralyzed; a Roman centurion’s slave; a demon-possessed man; a hemorrhaging woman; a girl who had died; a demon-possessed boy; a crippled woman; and a man with edema. Not to mention the countless other healings that occurred as crowds pressed in on Jesus and sought merely to touch his cloak.
What’s interesting about these healings is that no two are exactly alike. There’s no pattern. Some are healed by Jesus’ touch, others by his verbal command. Some ask Jesus to be healed, while with others, like the crippled woman in the synagogue, Jesus takes the initiative. Some come close enough to touch his robe, while others, like the centurion’s slave, are healed from a distance without ever having encountered Jesus.
Jesus’ healing of these ten lepers offers another unique example. This is a group healing. Jesus heals all ten at the same time. Perhaps what’s most interesting is the utter lack of drama. Jesus doesn’t roll up his sleeves and raise his arms. He doesn’t shout, cry, or pray. He doesn’t put on a show. He merely tells the men to go and present themselves to the priests, i.e., to go and receive the rite of purification. As healings go, this one is rather anticlimactic. That’s fitting because the healing isn’t the heart of this story. The heart of the story is what happens next.
Ten men are healed. Nine go on their way while one leaves along with the others but then returns. He returns to say “thank you.” A thank-you note won’t suffice. He doesn’t say to himself, “Maybe after I go see the priest and get purified I’ll send Jesus a note of thanks. I think I have some thank-you cards laying around here somewhere.” No, he must return in person. His faith compels him.
As thank-you’s go, this one is pretty dramatic, far more so than the healing. The man returns praising God with a loud voice. He falls at Jesus’ feet, tears streaming, nose running, voice quavering. “Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, Master! Thank you, Lord!”
It’s quite a scene. Dramatic. Emotional. Stirring. And yet it’s punctuated not with an exclamation point but with a question mark. Actually, three question marks. “Were not ten made clean?” Jesus asks. “So where are the other nine? Did none of them return to give glory to God except this foreigner?”
Faith and gratitude are inextricably linked.
What is Jesus on about here? The nine did just as Jesus instructed them to do. They went on their way, presumably to go to the priests to receive purification so that they could return to their communities. Jesus never said a word about saying “thank you.” He didn’t watch them walk away and say, “Hey, guys! Aren’t you forgetting something?” Then why is he questioning why only one man returned to give thanks?
What I believe that Jesus is suggesting is that faith and gratitude are inextricably linked. This is why the passage ends with Jesus telling the man who fell at his feet in gratitude, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”
Your faith has made you well. What does that mean? Before healing all ten men Jesus didn’t ask to see their baptismal certificates. He didn’t ask whether they believed in him. He simply healed them, without reservation, without qualification. No questions asked.
Then if Jesus did not ask for an expression of faith before healing, faith must be doing something different here. Indeed it is. Faith is not the reason for but rather the response to having been healed. Faith follows healing, and that faith is expressed in gratitude.
Love and marriage. Faith and gratitude. You can’t have one without the other. Faith in Jesus—in his saving grace, in his death that gives life—invariably, inevitably expresses itself in gratitude. It’s a compulsion, a reflex. To the Christian, gratitude is like the doctor tapping your knee joint with a mallet. Gratitude is a natural, instinctive response to the joy of Jesus saying, “You are forgiven, you are loved, you are healed.”
I would go so far as to say that Christian faith without gratitude is not Christian. It might have the appearance of Christianity. It might use the symbols of Christianity. But without gratitude, without joy, it’s not Christian. It’s not of Christ. It grieves me that much of what passes for Christianity today seems motivated more by grievance than gratitude, more by fear and loathing of the other than faithfulness to Jesus’ call to welcome the stranger.
And speaking of strangers, it’s ironic that of the ten lepers, it’s the Samaritan, the outsider, who cannot help but return and give thanks. Perhaps because he was a Samaritan, i.e., from a despised group, he was all the more grateful to receive mercy, whereas the nine, as insiders, may have taken their healing for granted.
As followers of Christ, we walk in the Samaritan’s footsteps. Our faith, our gratitude, put us on a different course. Guided by faith rather than fear, by gratitude rather than grievance, we can turn away from the direction in which our society is marching. As Jesus passed through the borderlands between Samaria and Galilee, we as a nation are passing between borderlands…between the liberal democracy that we’ve known and something else…something darker, angrier, crueler, and less free. Now more than ever the church must set a different course, returning again and again to Jesus, our hope, our healer, our redeemer.