This sermon was preached at Epiphany Lutheran Church in the Bronx on October 9.
Today’s gospel is so rich with meaning that it takes a little time to unpack.
Let’s follow an Ignatian convention and use our imaginations to place ourselves in the midst of this story.
We see Jesus crossing the border between Samaria and Galilee, proceeding on his fateful journey to Jerusalem where he knows he faces death.
In our mind's eye we try to see Jesus as he actually was: perhaps covered with the dust of his long walk, sweat trickling down his brown face, walking slowly through the crowds that gather around him. Imagine standing in the midst of these curious people.
We see Jesus pushing with quiet resolve towards the end of his journey. Still he takes time to notice a group of men who are suffering the agonies of a painful incurable disease.
We look with horror and disgust on these suffering lepers who are disfigured by boils, carbuncles, fungus infections, impetigo, scabies, patchy eczema, ulcers, phagedenic ulcers, and more. (https://www.nlt.org.uk/about/biblical-leprosy/)
We see Jesus pausing with compassion as they cry out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” (Luke 11:14)
Perhaps respecting the distance they are keeping from him and the crowd, Jesus does not approach them. He raises his voice: “Go and show yourselves to the priests.”
We see Jesus standing back but we sense his mighty power as the men are “made clean” by the simple act of walking away.
And we see Jesus still in the midst of the crowd as one of lepers – his flesh now clear – turns back, praises God, collapses at Jesus’ feet.
And thanks him.
What is the expression we see on Jesus’ face? Bemusement? Patience? Annoyance? Compassion?
Amid the murmur of the crowd we hear his resonant voice:
“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?” (Luke 17:18)
And more:
“Then Jesus said to him, ‘Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” (Luke 17:19)
There are some things about this story that can only be detected in our imaginations because the writer of Luke is silent.
I wonder, for example, how the priests reacted when ten men they knew to be hideously disfigured lepers suddenly appeared to them clean and whole.
Did the priests think they had done it? Did they say, yeah, sure, you’re welcome?
And if the one man who did prostrate himself before Jesus was a Samaritan – a despised ethnicity among the Jews – who were the other nine? And what is the significance that the grateful man was a member of a loathed minority?
Be that as it may, what are the crucial elements of today’s Gospel message?
Suffering? Compassion? Gratitude? Ingratitude?
Thankfulness?
With Thanksgiving still 46 days away, perhaps it is not too early to consider the things we are thankful for, even if we have overlooked prostrating ourselves as Jesus’ feet to thank God for so many gifts?
To start with, we can all be thankful that biblical leprosy is far behind us. Also called Hansen’s Disease, leprosy is now a chronic, curable infectious disease treated by antibiotics.
Thank you, Jesus, that the repugnant form of the disease is gone, and we must confess that we are even more awed by your miraculous powers to simply waive it away. Being cleansed of leprosy would have been such a relief that we might also assume that the other nine lepers were as grateful as the tenth, even though they didn’t come to tell Jesus. If I had been one of them, I would have danced and sang and imbibed my joy long after Jesus left the border. Did the other nine wake up three days later and ask, “Who was that masked man? I wanted to thank him.”
The reactions of the missing nine force us to look inward: how often do we fail to express our thankfulness to others we owe so much?
I grew up in a loving family in Central New York State. As I entered my rebellious teens I disappointed my parents by doing poorly in high school. I rushed to join the Air Force as soon as I turned 18. Four years later, now in college, I argued with my father – a World War II combat veteran – over the morality of the Vietnam War, and we often tangled.
As I grew older I became closer to my parents and we enjoyed a warm, loving relationship. Both Mom and Dad are long gone now, but I wonder: did I ever fully express my gratitude to them for all they did for me and my siblings? Did they know how truly thankful I was, and am, for them?
As I progress into my upper seventies, I am aware how blessed I am that my spouse, all four of my siblings, and all six of my adult children, and all five of my beloved grandchildren, are alive and well, because I know so many who cannot make a similar claim. Have I adequately expressed to God my thankfulness?
Martha and I have a comfortable roof over our heads, warm beds in the winter, food on our table, and gratifying team ministries to pursue in the Bronx. Have I adequately expressed to God my thankfulness?
But we must also acknowledge that all of us pass through valleys in our lives for which we cannot be thankful.
Except for the Air Force and a few happy years as a newspaper reporter in the nineties, all my jobs have been with not-for-profit church organizations. Two of them – the World Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches in the USA – fell upon hard financial times in the nineties and the aughts and had to “right size” by cutting back staff. Communications officers are often the first to go, and each time I spent months living from hand to mouth while collecting meager unemployment. During these times I could not bring myself to express my thankfulness to God.
I worked 20 years as head of communication for American Baptist Churches, supervising media, editing magazines, writing editorials, and feeling very grateful for the opportunities God had given to me. But 20 years is a long time in the high-pressure non-profit world where limited funds are fiercely fought over and in 1992 – burned out and discouraged – I was fired.
Again, I had trouble thanking God for that.
But was getting canned such a bad thing? Certainly I am not the only person who has had failures and disappointments in life.
Dr. Diana Butler Bass, author of Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks, was also summarily dismissed from a job she loved. And, as the title of her book suggests, she found the experience transformative.
“I learned new things about myself, about God, about life—all of it possible only because I was fired,” She writes. “I feel thankful.”
I, too, for example, am thankful that God restored balance in my life. I was fired and in that experience God taught me there is more to life than identifying oneself with a job or a position. I learned there is more to life than being a Baptist editor. I learned that I could be flexible enough to switch gears, to set new goals, that God was still there in the new circumstances of my life, and that life was still good.
Some time ago I received a message from one of my former students when I was on the adjunct faculty of a sectarian college in Pennsylvania. This woman was now on the faculty at another college and she came to work one Monday to find her desk has been cleared out and she no longer had a job. If you’ve ever been through a similar situation, you know how devastating it can be. But I found that I was in a good position to reassure her that this was her opportunity, as it had been mine, to learn new things about herself, about God, and about life. These abrupt life changes can be transformative if you discover the power of giving thanks through them.
“In normal life one is not at all aware that we always receive infinitely more than we give,” writes Diana Butler Bass, “and that gratitude is what enriches life … Gratitude gives us a new story. It opens our eyes to see that every life is, in unique and dignified ways, graced: the lives of the poor, the castoffs, the sick, the jailed, the exiles, the abused, the forgotten as well as those in more comfortable physical circumstances. Your life. My life. We all share in the ultimate gift—life itself. Together. Right now.”
Surely all ten lepers in today’s lesson knew they had received infinitely more than they had ever been able to give, and I have no doubt they were each grateful in their own way.
No doubt their gratitude gave them a new story, and made it possible for them to be thankful for the fact that we all share in the gift of life, God’s ultimate gift.
God, whether we think to come to you to prostrate ourselves at the feet of Jesus to say it, we are thankful.
And when we are truly thankful, you will transform our lives in ways we cannot imagine,
