Luke 17:11-19 is the story of the healing of the ten lepers and the thankful Samaritan. Thanksgiving is not such an obvious response to life and world. The senseless suffering in human life, the at least temporary success of evil, is enough to remind us of the faith, hope and courage it often takes to give thanks. Today, we need to look for ways to say and to write “Thank you” to those in our circle of friends and acquaintances. We need to develop the habit of gratitude. In fact, a large part of the stewardship of life includes offering gratitude to others.
I would like to focus on the surprising nature of praise and thanksgiving. We also need to have more openness than many of us do now that the Holy Spirit might inspire us in surprising ways. One of the most helpful ways to read this segment is in answer to the plea of the disciples in 17:5, "Increase our faith." If so, in verses 1-4, faith forgives; in verses 5-6, faith can accomplish everything; in verses 7-10, faith is humble; and here in verses 11-19, faith is proper praise and thankfulness. The story invites us to take the opportunity to witness to what God has done in our lives with a spirit of thanks and praise. What transforms this healing story into a demonstration of faithfulness is the action taken by just one of the 10 lepers.
The American tradition of setting aside a day of Thanksgiving is a case in point. It was not easy. We do not find the most intense moments of thankfulness in times of plenty, but when difficulties abound.
Think of the Pilgrims that first Thanksgiving. Half their number dead, men without a country, but still there was thanksgiving to God. Their gratitude was not for something but in something. In 1777, over 100 years later, the continental congress proclaimed a national day of Thanksgiving after the American Revolution victory at the Battle of Saratoga. However, it was twelve years later that George Washington proclaimed another national day of thanksgiving in honor of the ratification of the Constitution and requested that the congress finally make it an annual event. They declined. Yet, the custom grew in various colonies as a means of celebrating the harvest. Another 100 years later, in 1865, and the end of a bloody civil war, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November Thanksgiving. It might surprise you to learn that it took still another 40 years, the early 1900's, before the tradition really caught on. For you see, Lincoln sanctioned Thanksgiving to bolster the Union's morale. Many Southerners saw the new holiday as an attempt to impose Northern customs on their conquered land.
Thanksgiving today is a mild-mannered holiday full of football, hot apple pie, and family reunions. However, that is not a realistic historical picture of Thanksgiving. It is more often born of adversity and challenging times. So many of the greatest expressions of thanksgiving have occurred under circumstances so debilitating one wonders why people give thanks. It would seem the more reasonable response would be bitterness and ingratitude.
This text revolves around praise, a concept that permeates the gospel of Luke from beginning to end. There were joy and gladness and rejoicing around the births of John the Baptist and Jesus (Chapters 1 and 2), and at the very end of the gospel we learn that the apostles are in the temple praising God (24:53). Thus, Luke gives the reasons for joy. God has appeared among us in Jesus. He invites us to praise by the appearance of Jesus. He invites the reader to grow closer to God through our acts of praise. In moments of obvious visits from God, we will not have to remind ourselves to praise or even encourage ourselves to be grateful. Rather, praise will gush forth spontaneously.[1] However, not everyone shows this kind of involuntary and spontaneous praise — a reality that provides the dramatic tension in the story of Jesus and the 10 lepers. This healing story opens the door for a discussion of a deep healing of mind, body, and spirit. God wants to make us well in a deeper sense than most of us realize.
In verses 11-19, a story of genuine faith unfolds right before the eyes of the disciples. Yet the one whom Luke proclaims faithful is distinctly an outsider. The point is the contrast between gratitude and ingratitude, between Jews and a Samaritan, and between the miracle of healing and the eyes of faith. I would now like to explore this story of Luke, in which the final pronouncement discloses the meaning of the story.
11On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. 2 As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. This fact prepares the reader for a healing story. Keeping their distance, since they were unclean, 13 they called out loudly to the approaching Jesus. Jewish culture required lepers to announce their presence and their defective state so that purified Jews could avoid them and avoid any risk of contamination. Believed to be a disease not just of the skin, but of the soul as well, that culture attributed leprosy to a divine judgment, earned by parental disregard of purity laws or the leper's own slanderous tongue, dishonest behavior, disrespect for the worship life of the Jewish life and the priesthood, or some other violation of Mosaic Law. The lepers keep their distance, for they were under the strict proscriptions of Levitical law (Leviticus 13-14, especially 13:45-46). Lepers are to wear torn clothes, have disheveled hair, cover the upper lip, and warn everyone by crying out that they are unclean. Lepers are to live alone outside the camp. Cultural values ostracized these lepers from their families, their homes, their livelihoods, and their community. Deprived of all social contacts, cultural values banished lepers to the boundaries of the village and forced them into beggary — relying on mercy and generosity for their survival. In this case, however, they address Jesus directly, saying, "Jesus, Master, (a traditional title of respect and authority) have mercy (a term that could encompass either a petition for healing or a gift of money or food) on us!" 14 When he saw them, he said to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were made clean. Jesus acts on their behalf. They begged for mercy, and Jesus offered mercy to them in a way that transformed them physically.
15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed (ἰάθη), something the other lepers did not notice, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He acknowledged his debt and gave thanks. Now, a healing story becomes a testimony on faithfulness because of the action taken by just one of the l0 lepers. Everything about this healed leper is surprising. In fact, 16 He prostrated himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him. The other nine are doing what Jesus said and continue to the priest in Jerusalem. Even if the benefit had not been as dramatic or miraculous, according to tradition all 10 men owed Jesus a debt of thanksgiving. Only now do we discover another important fact about this leper. And he was a Samaritan. Luke has a special interest in foreigners that shows up here. He would not have to be such, since the point remains the importance of offering thanks. It also makes little sense to judge the nine for doing what Jesus said in going to the priest in Jerusalem. 17 Then Jesus asked, "Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Jesus asks a good question, one for which neither he nor we who read will have an answer. However, that does not stop us from imaging answers. They are back at work, back to business as usual, nothing more than merely normal. What a shame, to have met Jesus, the Lord and Giver of Life, the one who loves to eat and drink with sinners and take us and embrace us just as we are, and to come away with nothing more than normal. Why did the other nine not stop to thank Jesus?
One waited to see if the cure was real.
One waited to see if it would last.
One said he would see Jesus later.
One decided that he had never had leprosy.
One said he would have gotten well anyway.
One gave the glory to the priests.
One said, "O, well, Jesus didn't really do anything."
One said, "Any rabbi could have done it."
One said, "I was already much improved."
18 Was none of them found to return and give praise (or glory) to God except this foreigner?" Luke has this type of behavior repeated several times to mark the occasion of a miraculous event that signifies God’s active presence (see Luke 2:20; 5:25-26; 7:16-17; 13:13; 18:43). Praise gushes. Sadly, in many congregations, such an outburst of praise for what God has done in this moment would not be welcome, except maybe after going several committees, and only then for thirty seconds during announcements. In the eschatological situation of the coming and work of Jesus, thanksgiving and adoration, as self-evident implications of his message and its reception in faith, could always be inexpressible. Yet, in this passage, the Samaritan has offered thanksgiving and adoration to Jesus. In fact, in apostolic times, the time of looking back on the history of Jesus, thanksgiving and adoration of God for the divine action in sending the Son for our salvation have had to take a principal place.[2] 19 Then he said to him, "Get up and go on your way. Only of the Samaritan leper will Jesus say that your faith has made you well (σέσωκέν)." Luke uses this phrase four times. He uses it twice applied to women (7:50; 8:48), once to a Samaritan (17:19), and once to a Jew (18:42). Genuine faithfulness transcends all distinctions of gender, race, and nationality. This final pronouncement, and not the actual cleansing of the 10 lepers, best defines the essence of this segment. Through his faithful praise, the Samaritan has received divine blessing. This progression of words to describe the experience of the Samaritan leper appears intentional. He recognizes that he is now ritually clean, but this means that Jesus has “healed” him of his disease. When he returns to offer his sense of gratitude to Jesus for this healing, Jesus is the one who sees the faith of the Samaritan and proclaims him well, the same word that in other contexts will translate as “saved.” Jesus shows that healing is deeper than the body. We need healing of mind and spirit as well. His faith and gratitude have led to a deeper experience of God making “saving” him in body, mind, and spirit. Of course, this suggests that for Jesus, salvation, making people well in a deep and profound sense, was not something limited to Jews. He made it clear that such “making well” was open to anyone who has faith.
I would like to offer a few words about the Samaritan, remembering that Luke made his primary point when Jesus proclaimed him well due to his faith. The Samaritan identity of this man suggests two quite different observations about this text. First, because he is outside the faith of traditional Judaism, the concern of the Samaritan to return and give proper worship now reminds readers of another healing of a non-Jewish leper. In II Kings 5, the mighty warrior Naaman, who is also a leper, receives a miraculous healing from his disease under the instruction and guidance of the prophet Elisha. In 5:15, Naaman responds to his experience of healing with faithfulness, not just gratitude. This Samaritan leper also responds to his healing with faith that results in authentic worship. Second, the healed leper’s Samaritan identity could suggest that he originally “turned back” for an entirely different reason. Jesus had commanded the 10 to go to the priests — for the nine who are Jews, this still means journeying to Jerusalem. Yet, for a Samaritan, the center of worship and the location of his priests were at Mt. Gerizim in Samaria. When he saw Jesus healed him, this Samaritan may have turned back to make his own pilgrimage to Mt. Gerizim. However, even in route to that separate place of worship, this Samaritan finds a third and satisfying place to offer this thanks to God in worship. He prostrated himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him. Instead of directly addressing the prostrate form before him, Jesus first wonders aloud to his audience (the disciples) about the absence of the other nine and the presence of only one. Only then is this one -- an "outcast" by the norms of Jewish society -- identified in verse 18 by Jesus as "a foreigner" and held up as a positive example before the disciples. The term Jesus uses to describe him is the same as is inscribed on the wall of the temple that separates the Court of the Gentiles from the sacred inner courts reserved only for Jews. By using such a harsh, segregating term to describe this man, Jesus highlights the fact that this Samaritan, who was outside the people of God as identified by Judaism, has become through his faithfulness one of the “saved” ones. In a sharply divided society, Jesus showed openness to the outsider. All ten were outsiders, but one was an outsider in special sense. Society erects many barriers. The natural response for most people is to refrain from crossing the lines society establishes. We do not relish the embarrassment, scorn, or rejection society can bring. In some cases, we might feel like we are putting ourselves out on the limb and fear someone will chop off the limb! Yet, we are part of society. We help make the barriers and support their continuance by our words and actions.[3]
Some scholars have identified this, along with several other Lukan texts, as a "quest story." I wonder how many people are on a quest for something they cannot quite define. They long for “it,” without being exactly sure what “it” is. The Greek language allows the sometimes translated “saved” as “healed” or “made well.” I suspect many of us long for some way to become well. We want our relationships with significant others in our lives to be well. We want our bodies well. We want things well with our souls.
In offering thanks to others, we acknowledge our dependence upon another. We need to learn to surprise people with our gratitude to God and to them. Yes, many experiences can cause us to be resentful about the hand life has dealt us. The leper could have done that in a large way. Gratitude focuses our attention upon the positive dimension of life rather than its trials and barriers. We do not express gratitude because life is perfect. Life does not run smoothly for anyone. It has twists and turns, hills and valleys. Yet, along the way, focusing on those aspects of life that have helped us along the way will lift our spirits. Expressing gratitude will also lift the spirit of others. This story might inspire us to surprise others with our gratitude.
Today, I am convinced that many of us need a deep healing of mind, body, and spirit. We need a moment that lasts a lifetime when the Holy Spirit touches and makes us well.
We recognize our need for physical cleanliness. One study says that we have five pounds of flaking skin that needs regular washing. In ancient times, people wore sandals and walked to most places on dusty and dirty roads. It was customary to offer guests an opportunity to wash their feet when they arrived for that reason.
Today, the highway of life can add pounds of crud and dirt to our souls that need cleansing from God for us to be well and whole. Dirt is the order of the day! We see the gluttonous desire for more dirt. How much dirt can we dig up on celebrities and politicians? They make it easy, of course, but we seem to want to know more. How many entertainment/celebrity gossip shows fill our TV screens each day? How many new Web sites appear online with electronic immediacy to offer the "real" story behind still breaking headlines? How many careers have been started and ended by an individual's infamy in gossip? How many Wall Street fortunes have been made and lost on the dirt of rumor and innuendo?
Yes, we want to hear about the dirt – and then, we ourselves become dirty. Secretly, I wonder if when we come to part of the Lord’s Prayer that says, “Lead us not into temptation,” we whisper, “but let me flirt with it just a little.”[4] Yes, we need cleansing and healing to become whole.
Offering thanks and gratitude will not solve every issue in your life, of course. However, developing a spirit of gratitude in your life can take courage. The highway of human life is full of dirt and crud. We can focus on that and complain. It can be an act of courage to express gratitude, praise, and thanks.
To say "thank you" means you have acknowledged your dependence upon what another person has done that has affected your life.
I am thinking of the many people we rely upon who will simply do what they are supposed to do. We will never be able to thank them personally, but we can still have a spirit of gratitude for them. I received tickets to an IU basketball game in 1996. I allowed my oldest son Michael to drive. Every time a car came on the other side, our car moved just a bit to the right. Sometimes dangerously close on the right. So, I asked him why he did that. He said, "I can't get over the fact that they are going 55, I am going 55, and we are passing just a few feet apart." Then he asked, "Didn't you ever feel that way?" I had to admit that I did when I first started driving. I just take it for granted now that everyone is going to do their job, and in this case an important--staying on the proper side of the road.
Once upon a time, there were two men, Mr. Wilson and Mr. Thompson, both seriously ill in the same room of great hospital. Both had to be unusually quiet and still - no reading, no radio, certainly no television and no visitors. Their only entertainment was to talk to each other. Mr. Thompson had to spend all his time flat on his back. They did allow Mr. Wilson, on the other hand, as part of his treatment, to sit up in bed for an hour each day. His bed was next to the window and every afternoon, when they propped him up for his hour, he would pass the time by describing to Mr. Thompson what he could see outside. And Mr. Thompson began to live for those hours. Mr. Wilson would look out the window and describe a beautiful park with a lake, where there were ducks and swans and children throwing them bread and sailing model boats. He saw softball games and football games and kites flying; flowers and trees and stretches of grass and young lovers walking together; the skyline of the city off in the distance and the cars and horse-drawn carriages making their way through the park. One day, there was a parade, and Mr. Wilson described every float, every band and all the participants in the procession. Mr. Thompson listened intently, enjoying every minute. He could visualize everything Mr. Wilson described. Then one afternoon, Mr. Thompson thought to himself: "Just wait a minute! Why should Wilson have all the fun? Why does he have all the pleasure? Why does he get to be by the window?" In a few days, Mr. Thompson turned sour. He was biter, angry, resentful. He brooded and seethed. He became obsessed with wanting to be by the window! And each passing hour, he became increasingly resentful of Mr. Wilson. Then one night, quite suddenly, Mr. Wilson died. They took away his body the next morning. As soon as it seemed decent, Mr. Thompson asked if they could move to the bed next to the window. So, they moved him, tucked him in, made him quite comfortable and left him alone. The minute they had gone, Mr. Thompson struggled to prop himself up on one elbow so he could look out the window. Imagine his surprise. It faced a blank brick wall![5]
Sometimes compassion is most powerful when it surprises. Mr. Thompson started to look at what he did not have, instead of receiving the gift of what he had. Yet, he realized in that moment the compassion, the mercy, that Mr. Wilson had shown to him. Will you try something during the next few days? In the spirit of Jesus, will you surprise somebody with your love and compassion? Jesus surprised people with his compassion, and so can we.
Further, many things happen in life that causes us to be resentful about the hand life has dealt us. That leper could just easily have been resentful of the wasted years he was a leper. Resentment is the effortless way out. We are thankful, not because life is always so wonderful, not because we are always so wonderful, but because of the confidence we have in God. Alcoholic parents raise us, we suffer deep scars from an abusive relationship with a parent, and we get into the wrong crowd at an early age and damage ourselves forever. This is real life: full of obstacles and barriers. Yet, we are here today because we have overcome them. Most of us can look back and see that such obstacles and barriers have made us better persons and better Christians.
One day, a woman came into the office of Dr. Maxwell Maltz, plastic surgeon. She was concerned about her husband. She told the doctor that her husband received injuries while attempting to save his parents from a burning house. He could not get to them. They both died. His face received burns and disfigurement. He had given up on life and gone into hiding. He would not let anyone see him - not even his wife. Dr. Maltz told her not to worry. The doctor said he could restore the face of her husband. She explained that he would not let anyone help because he believed God disfigured his face to punish him. Then she made her shocking request: "I want you to disfigure my face so I can be like him! If I can share in his pain, then maybe he will let me back into his life. I love him so much. I want to be with him. And if that is what it takes; then that is what I want to do." Of course, Dr. Maltz did not do that. He did go to the man's room. He knocked on the door. No answer. He said, "I know you are in there, and I know you can hear me, so I've come to tell you that I can restore your face." Still no answer. "Please come out." No answer. "Your wife wants me to disfigure her face, to make her face like yours in the hope that you will let her back into your life. That is how much she loves you. That's how much she wants to help you!" There was silence. The doorknob turned slowly. He came out of his room to make a new beginning in his life.[6]
It takes courage to be thankful. He focused on what he had lost – his parents and his looks. He did not focus on what he still had – a wife who loved him. Please do not let the crud and dirt in the highway of life cause resentment to deepen the loss that you have already experienced.
Viktor Frankl, the eminent psychologist, and founder of the so-called Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy (Logotherapy), provides a revealing example of what it means to express gratitude for wholeness and wellness. Frankl, who died in 1997 at the age of 91, was a prisoner in the concentration camps during World War II. Dr. Gordon Allport, in his preface to Frankl's significant work, Man's Search for Meaning,[7] says that
"there he found himself stripped to a literally naked existence. His father, mother, brother and his wife died in the camps or were sent to the gas ovens, so that except for his sister, his entire family perished in these camps. How could he -- every possession lost, every value destroyed, suffering from hunger, cold and brutality, hourly expecting extermination -- how could he find life worth preserving? A psychiatrist who personally has faced such extremity is a psychiatrist worth listening to" (7).
Frankl answers Allport's question when he recounts his experience immediately following his liberation from the camps:
"One day, a few days after the liberation, I walked through the country, past flowering meadows, for miles and miles, toward the market town near the camp. Larks rose to the sky and I could hear their joyous song. There was no one to be seen for miles around; there was nothing but the wide earth and sky and the larks' jubilation and the freedom of space. I stopped, looked around and up to the sky -- and then I went down on my knees. At that moment there was very little I knew of myself or of the world -- I had but one sentence in mind -- always the same: "I called to the Lord from my narrow prison and he answered me in the freedom of space." "How long I knelt there and repeated this sentence, memory can no longer recall. But I know that on that day, in that hour, my new life started. Step for step I progressed until I again became a human being" (96).
Frankl, released from the most "leprous" episode in the history of humankind, could do nothing but kneel before his Creator in a posture of overwhelming gratitude. From that point of thanksgiving, he marked his renewal as a human being. Likewise, our wellness, our wholeness, our very healing and health, our becoming wholly human depend on our being able to celebrate and give thanks for the "freedom of space," for the liberation and cleansing God has brought to us, often mediated by influential people we love and the people who love us.
When Jesus touches and cleanses us, releasing us from the prisons of grease, grime and gossip, how does he do it? Through people. Through relationships which have changed us. Unfortunately, we often forget to go back and offer our gratitude to these God-inspired and enabled persons who have changed our lives.
Sue Bender, in her book Everyday Sacred,[8] describes how she began to develop an attitude of gratitude. It had, she says, something to do with an exploding turkey:
Last month my husband Richard and I decided, at age 60 and 63, it was finally time to be grown-up and responsible. Neither of us is practical about business or financial matters. We went to a lawyer and started the process of making a will and a living trust for our sons.
"What would you like to do in case there's an 'exploding turkey?'" the lawyer asked. "Exploding turkey?" I asked.
"What if the whole family was together at Thanksgiving and the turkey exploded?" he asked. "If the four of you were killed at that moment, who would you want to have your worldly goods?" That turned out to be a terrific assignment. A chance to think about the people in our lives, a chance to be grateful and express our gratitude. I decided to create a new ritual. I would stop at the end of the day, even a particularly difficult day, and make a list: a gratitude list. Who or what do I have to be grateful for today? (110).
I can imagine a preacher using the story in a sermon. I can also imagine a writer making an invitation. It would go something like this. Take a blank sheet of paper. We are going to take a few minutes now to play the role of the Samaritan in Luke 17:11-19 by returning to the one person who has been a healing force and presence in our lives. Many of us will think of our parents. For this exercise, let us assume that our parents have been there for us as the wonderful parents they are. Let us go beyond the parental influence to the influence of a friend, teacher or mentor. Please do three things: Print the name of this person on this paper. Then, jot down a brief paragraph summarizing this person's role in bringing cleansing and wholeness to your life and express your gratitude for him or her. Finally, covenant with me to contact this person during the week to share your thoughts.
It is not that life is so wonderful. It is not. It is not that people are so wonderful. We are not. It is because of God, it is because of confidence in God, that we can be grateful. If you really want health of mind, body, and spirit, you might have to dig down deep and be grateful. If you really want to be well, let praise gush forth. If you want to be clean morally and spiritually, let Jesus come in and make it so. Here are some proverbs that remind us of this truth.
Anxiety weighs down the human heart,
but a good word cheers it up. (12:25)
The light of the eyes rejoices the heart,
and good news refreshes the body. (15:30)
Like vinegar on a wound
is one who sings songs to a heavy heart. (25:20)
A glad heart makes a cheerful countenance,
but by sorrow of heart the spirit is broken. (15:13)
A cheerful heart is a good medicine,
but a downcast spirit dries up the bones. (17:22)
In fact, why not surprise people this week. Just like that Samaritan, you can return to people who have blessed you and thank them. They really will not expect it. I know they are just doing their jobs. They know it. In fact, you can be that person in the life another, who desperately needs to have someone show them mercy or compassion.
[1] (Mark Hillmer, “Luke 1:46-55,” Interpretation, October 1994, 391-93). He was professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary.
[2] Pannenberg Systematic Theology Volume 3, 210.
[3] Jimmy Carter, Sources of Strength, New York: Random House, 1997, pp. 74–75
[4] Brad Ronnell Braxton, "The Greatest Temptation," The African American Pulpit, 1 (Winter 1997-1998), 31-39.
[5] James Moore, Some Things Are Too Good Not to be True, 1994.
[6] (Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics).
[7] (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984)
[8] (HarperSanFrancisco, 1995)
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