THANKFUL HEARTS

A Sermon for Thanksgiving Eve
November 22, 2006
Pastor Laura Gentry

Luke 17:11-19
On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, “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?” Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” (New Revised Standard Version)

Now why in the world did that Samaritan return to thank Jesus? I mean, that wasn’t a requirement. Jesus had just told them to go show themselves to the priests. When they did—to their great surprise—they were healed of their leprosy. Nine of the ten were so excited about the healing that they took off.

Luke doesn’t tell us why or where they went, but we can assume they were eager to get back to their homes and families. After all, being lepers meant that they were precluded from being a part of society and were forced to live as despised beggars outside the city gates. By healing them, Jesus had given them completely new realities—he had given them back their lives. And yet, back to thank Jesus just didn’t make it onto their to-do list. So why did it seem necessary to the Samaritan?

I remember when I was a child at my birthday and at Christmas time, I couldn’t open my gifts without a pad and paper at my side so that I could jot down every last gift and who it came from so that I would be sure to write them a thank you note. My mom really drummed it into my head that whenever anyone gives you anything, you must must must send them a thank you note to show your appreciation (even if you didn’t much care for the gift). Thank you notes are just good etiquette.

Perhaps the Samaritan had a mother like mine and he could picture her saying something like: “Whenever you get cured of leprosy, be sure to send a thank you note!” But I think his return to Jesus was much more than politeness conditioned by etiquette-conscious parents.

So why did he return? Well, he was not only different in his gratitude, he was also different in his race. In fact, Luke doesn’t ever tell us his name. We just know him by his cultural identity, as a Samaritan. He was the only one among the ten who was a Samaritan. As I said, being a leper was a terrible lot for an ancient person, but so was being a Samaritan. This man has been hated and discriminated against on two counts. He was an outsider of outsiders. Perhaps this is the reason—because he’d suffered more— the healing of the Samaritan leper provoked a more profound gratitude.

But we’ll never know for sure because Luke doesn’t ever tell us. Luke is more concerned about depicting Jesus and this is a very interesting story about Jesus. It is shocking, really. Jesus shows that the boundaries of God’s grace are much wider than was previously assumed. Religious folks of Luke’s day would have believed that God’s grace would not include non-Jews, let alone lepers! And yet, here we see Jesus sabotage everyone’s small thinking about God by daring to cross the cultural and religious barriers to reach out to the lepers, including the Samaritan. Grace knows no limits!

And this returning Samaritan appears to realize this. He does not send a halfhearted thank you note like I did when I was a kid at Christmas time. No, he turns back and praises God with a loud voice. But the drama does not end there. He prostrates himself, it says. That means he lays on the ground in front of Jesus with his face right down in the dirt. Now that’s humility! That’s gratitude.

With every part of his being, the Samaritan knows that his healing was a gift, not an entitlement. He has been liberated by Jesus. His former, painful isolation has been terminated. He is now free to connect with people and the first one he wants to connect with is Jesus. Alone for who knows how long, his heart must have craved intimacy and now he is seeking it with God through Jesus.

One of the problems in our society today is a sense of entitlement. We go around with the sense that we’re entitled to everything we have and we don’t owe anybody anything, that we’re not responsible. There is an individualism in our culture that makes us self-centered. And this distances us from other people, especially people whose lives are very different from our own. We can’t relate or empathize with them. The other day, I saw a man wearing a T-shirt that said, “That’s YOUR problem, baby,” and I think that characterizes the general attitude of our society.

The nine lepers who took off to re-join their families must have had the kind of entitlement mindset. But one of them turned back. He turned back from this attitude and came to Jesus in gratitude and humility. He understood that God didn’t have to heal him. He understood that he was not entitled to this goodness at all, but that God’s boundary-crossing grace came to him as a gift.

Here we are again on the eve of Thanksgiving; the time of year designated to be grateful—kind of like obligatory thank you notes. We can gloss right over the giving thanks part and head straight for the turkey, or we can see it as an opportunity to cultivate a renewed sense of gratitude in our hearts. We can let the Samaritan leper teach us to proclaim our complete dependence upon God and lay ourselves at God’s feet, recognizing that what we have is not our entitlement. It is a gift.

We can learn from this leper that to be grateful means to reconnect, to see ourselves as part of God’s larger family, to understand that your problem is MY problem, too. We need one another and together, we need God.

And recognizing all this frees us to have grateful hearts, happy hearts—hearts that rejoice in the half-fullness of the cup rather than hearts that whine about the half-emptiness of it. God has crossed all boundaries to reach us and having grateful hearts frees us to do more boundary crossing of our own, to reach out and love as God loves.

What happened to the Samaritan after his encounter with Jesus? You guessed it: Luke doesn’t tell us. All we know is that Jesus said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” My guess is that the Samaritan WAS made well, that he was changed by the encounter. My guess is that he went home and saw his family and friends with altogether new eyes—with eyes of profound gratitude. I am willing to bet that he never took anything or anyone for granted after that. And he probably laughed a lot and was enormously fun to be around.

You and I know people like that. And this Thanksgiving, may we be reminded that we are called to BE people like that ourselves. To be happy and healthy and whole and well, we must admit our need for God and one another and be immensely grateful for all we have.

Let us pray: God of boundary-crossing grace, enkindle in us a fire of profound gratitude for all that you have given us. Forgive us for the self-centeredness that so often creeps into our lives. Help us to return to you, as the Samaritan did, to show our thanks for your many gifts. May we live as your grateful and joyful people this Thanksgiving and always. Amen.

© Laura E. Gentry 2006