Remembering to Say "Thank You" (Luke 17:11-19)

I was taught to say “thank you” to anyone who gave me anything or did anything for me. I say “thank you” to the wait persons who refill my water glass in a restaurant. I say thank you to the mail person and the Fed Ex person and the man who picks up our trash. I taught my children to say “thank you,” and they have taught their children to say it.
Saying “thank you” is one of the conventions of politeness. But there is a “thank you” that goes far beyond conventions. It is the “thank you” that comes from the heart, when your heart has been touched by someone else’s love or kindness. It is the spontaneous “thank you” of being touched by the unexpected goodness of another person. It is the emotion that wells up in us when we realize that someone is doing something for us out of love or friendship--and for no other reason.
It is the “thank you” that is accompanied by a lift and a lilt in your heart. It is the “thank you” that sometimes causes me to say, with a little smile, “Thank you, God; thank you, Jesus,” when I realize that something good is flowing into my life…when I remember for a moment that the good in my life far outweighs the bad…when an unexpected gift comes my way.
One of my favorite grandchildren stories--and if you have heard it before, just enjoy it again--is about our grandson Stefan and an Easter egg. When he was just a little guy, he offered to peel an Easter egg for me, and when I said that would be nice, he did so--right down to the yolk. And as he handed me that little yellow ball of cholesterol, he said, “Because you are the best man in the world.” My thank-you to Stefan including hugging him to me, both in love and so he wouldn’t see the tears in my eyes. I was also saying in my heart, “Thank you, Lord, for the love of my children and grandchildren.”
I.
Today’s gospel lesson is about 10 people who were helped in their misery by Jesus, but only one of them returned to thank him. How could the other nine fail to give thanks? Perhaps they were too eager, after their long isolation, to rejoin their families and to resume normal life. Under the same circumstances, would we stop to give thanks? How often do we stop to give thanks for our blessings? How often do we forget to thank God? How often do we fail to thank our spouses for loving us, for putting up with us? Our parents for what they have done for us? How often do we forget to thank our friends for being our friends? Our neighbors for being pleasant? Is thankfulness our habit?
This story is one of those told about Jesus, not by Jesus. It was told by Luke the Gentile, who never knew Jesus in person, as far as we know. This story is an allegory, and it is easy to tell who the players are. Of the ten lepers, nine are the Jews who considered themselves the upright, God-fearing, all right, okay children of Israel. Such were the Scribes and Pharisees who could not, would not, listen to and accept the teachings of Jesus, and with whom Jesus had to contend so often. Their leprosy, allegorically speaking, was their pride in their leadership role among the people and their inability to see themselves as sinners in need of the forgiveness of God.
Leprosy, today called Hansen’s Disease, was greatly feared in the ancient world. Today it is treatable and curable with antibiotics, but in Jesus’ time it was a chronic, wasting disease that killed people slowly. And with leprosy, unlike many other diseases, you never got better--only worse.
The book of Leviticus, the third book in the Bible, devotes two whole chapters, the 13th and 14th, to leprosy. Dermatologists have identified at least seven separate medical problems described in those two chapters that were called leprosy. Many of those skin diseases often went away after a while, and so there are explicit instructions in Leviticus as to how the priests should determine that a person was clean again, as opposed to “unclean.”
Such diseases were believed to be punishment for sin, all the more reason why the diseased persons were condemned to live outside human contact and be shunned, unable to participate with their people in the worship of God.
Leviticus declares, “The leper who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his (mouth) and cry ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean. He shall dwell alone in a habitation outside the camp.”
In that time, you had better hope you never had an outbreak of psoriasis or a persistent skin rash, because it meant you were unclean and exiled from your community until the disease went away and you showed your once-again-clean body to the priest.
II.
In Luke’s story, ten lepers were healed and declared clean again by the priests--but only one returned to thank Jesus. And the one who returned was, among the Jews, a double outcast. The first reason for his exclusion was simply that he was a leper.
The second reason was that he was a Samaritan. Samaritans were scorned and hated by the good church folks of Jesus’ day. They held Samaritans in such low regard, so despised them, that they would walk miles out of their way to keep from setting foot on the lands of this inferior class of sub-humans. Are there any parallels in our modern-day social and religious prejudices?
This passage of scripture is another of gospel-writer Luke’s picture post cards showing how Jesus’ own people rejected him, but outsiders and outcasts did hear and accept him. Luke was himself an outsider, a Gentile. He delights in telling stories of outsiders whom God has blessed, and he even makes Samaritans the heroes of some of his stories.
The nine, Luke is saying, might have been healed physically, but not spiritually. The outsider, the despised Samaritan, received a spiritual blessing that Jesus’ own people denied themselves. And the underlying, undergirding message in the story is that God is no respecter of persons--not of Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Asians, Africans or Caucasians. All humans are God’s children and God loves them all.
Let the simple little hymn of our childhood continue to ring in our ears: “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight.” It is a children’s song, but God would have us know a supremely important aspect of our own childhood, and that is that we never outgrow being the children of God our Father. God longs to take us--all of us--into his lap.
III.
Another major lesson in this story is that having faith means getting up and doing something. It is as the Letter of James reminds us, that faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. The people in this story were told by Jesus to get up and go and do something: show themselves to the priests, submit to a physical examination. Verse 14 of our text says that “as they went, they were made clean.” The lepers were not healed immediately, but instead were healed as the obeyed Jesus’ command to go and do something. If they had not taken action, they would have continued to languish in their isolation and rejection.
Faith is not a feeling; it is a venture. In what ways is God calling you and me and this church to move, to step out in faith? It seems that we ask God for things and God’s reply is, “Go and do something.” Our faithfulness in the going and doing is the proof of our faith. Faithfulness in the going and doing is also the bringer and strengthener of faith.
God desires that we see our lives as a journey. The best kind of journey has lots of interesting side roads and rest stops, but it is a journey. A journey means progress toward a destination--or perhaps a number of destinations, one after the other. Faith is not a state of mind; it is a lifestyle.
God’s blessing on us is in the going and the doing. It is on the journey, in the going, that we experience the beauty of the world. It is on the journey, in the going, that we experience the helping hands of family and friends and fellow church members. It is on the journey, in the going--and not immobilized in our spiritual easy chairs--that we experience the presence and the power of the spirit of God, the companionship of Jesus, in our lives.
And when we experience that power and presence, it should be as natural as breathing to pause now and then, and smile in our minds--smile in our minds--and say, “Thank you, Jesus.”
Meister Eckhart, a mystic, writer and theologian said, about 700 years ago, “If the only prayer you ever said in your whole life was ‘thank you,’ that would be enough.”