This week at St. Peter, we are having a special harvest generosity celebration. For the sermon, I’m looking at the story in Luke 17:11-19 of Jesus healing 10 lepers, but only one of them returning to give thanks. We too are invited to pause and notice what God is doing around us, because noticing leads to gratitude, which leads to faith and action. Our other Scripture readings were Colossians 1:1-14 and Psalm 67.
For this sermon on gratitude, I also drew heavily from this sermon I preached in 2019 at Ascension Lutheran Church in Fond du Lac, which in turn drew on this 2016 column from David Lose.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
I’m going to start today with a confession. I am terrible at writing thank you cards. In my office at home, I have a list of the gifts I received from family and friends at my ordination and the thank you notes I planned to send.
I don’t know the exact etiquette for ordination thank you notes, but I imagine you’re supposed to send them sometime within the first five years after the ordination. I’m mostly safe admitting that, because I didn’t know any of you back then.
But, I did receive a really nice fish cross nail wall hanging from this congregation, so since I’m sure I didn’t write a note for that either, let me say “Thank You” now for that gift. It’s hanging prominently in our house.
Shortly after I started as pastor here at St. Peter, I heard someone give a talk about the importance of gratitude as a daily practice, so I bought a box of 100 thank you cards with the goal of starting each day by writing one – sending five a week.
I’m proud to tell you that after five years, I used the last one from that box in July.
Just in case my parents are watching online, I should be clear that this failing is not their’ fault. I remember as a kid every birthday and Christmas having to sit down and write thank you notes the same day.
I was taught you were supposed to say what you’re going to do with the gift, so people know you appreciate it. I still struggle sometimes to write notes that say more than, “Dear Grandma, thank you for the book. I am excited to read it. Thanks again, Daniel.”
Gratitude is not always something that comes naturally to me. I think that’s why I like this story of the grateful leper so much.
At the start of the story, these ten lepers don’t have much to be grateful for. Because they have leprosy, they’re considered unclean, and they’re excluded from society. They live outside the villages, and according to the law, they have to announce that they’re unclean whenever other people are around.
These guys are living on the edge of society in several senses. Luke says Jesus encounters them while going through the region between Samaria and Galilee.
That’s interesting, because if you look at a map, there isn’t really a region between Samaria and Galilee. They border one another. These lepers are living in an in-between space, not really included in either Samaria or Galilee.
And it’s not a happy border area. I won’t go into it now, but there’s a long history between Samaria versus Galilee and the rest of Israel. The Jewish Israelites don’t like or trust the Samaritans, and vice versa.
These ten lepers are living in an in-between space, rejected by everyone. We probably shouldn’t be surprised Jesus enters into that space.
When they see Jesus pass by, they recognize who he is, and they call out to him for mercy.
Jesus follows the Jewish law and sends them to the priests who are responsible for certifying who is ritually clean, and on their way, they’re healed.
Nine of them keep going, but one of them comes back to praise Jesus. I wonder if it’s because as a Samaritan, he’s so used to being an outsider.
Luke doesn’t explicitly say, but we assume the other nine are Jewish. These ten are only together because they’re living in this in-between space rejected by everyone else. This Samaritan, this foreigner, he has more to gain.
He is not only cleansed from his leprosy; Jesus accepts him as an outsider. That’s good news for all of us, who are outsiders. The healing and wholeness Jesus brings are for both Jews and Gentiles like us.
This guy understands what Jesus has done for him. He throws himself at Jesus’ feet and thanks him. He’s overwhelmed with gratitude.
This sort of gratitude is both what builds faith and the natural result of faith. In fact, I don’t think you can have faith in God without gratitude. Faith comes from recognizing what God has done for you in Jesus Christ, and when you truly understand Jesus’ love for you, you can’t help but be grateful.
Martin Luther was once asked what the definition of “true worship” was, and he responded, “The 10th leper.” This is why we gather as Christians. This is the example we’re following when we worship.
I hope you get something out of this worship service. I hope there’s something inspiring in this service, and you go home with All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name stuck in your head. But the primary purpose of this worship service, the reason we’re here is to give thanks to God, to come before God as people and acknowledge who God is, acknowledge the truth that God is God and we are not.
One of the things we ought to get out of worship is the regular reminder to be grateful. We hear what God has done throughout history, and we are grateful.
We hear what God has done for others in our own community, and we are grateful. We recognize what God is doing in our own lives, and we are grateful. As the Psalm says, God has blessed us, and so we are glad and sing for joy.
At the beginning of worship we confess our sins, our shortcomings, our need for Jesus. And then we hear the promise of forgiveness, so we can be grateful for God’s grace.
We read from God’s word to hear stories of God at work. Our prayers include asking God to work in various situations, and at the same time we give thanks for where we have noticed God working.
When we come to the Lord’s table for communion, we remind each other to give thanks. It’s the part of the liturgy called the “Great Thanksgiving.” Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. It is right to give our thanks and praise. It is indeed right and salutary to praise God, not just in church, but all the time.
All of this of course is practice for our eternal purpose of praising God, but it also shapes how we see the world now.
Gratitude is the natural response to understanding what God has done, but it’s also something that takes practice. Gratitude requires noticing the world around us, noticing God’s activity, noticing the blessings God has given us.
Do you think the other nine who didn’t come back were ungrateful?
Perhaps, but I doubt it. I suspect they were just as grateful, but they didn’t do anything about it.
Actually, I have some sympathy for them. Imagine how they felt when their Samaritan friend came back later and said, “So, I went back to see Jesus and thank him, and he was pretty disappointed none of you guys came back.” Probably a pretty awkward conversation!
Luke doesn’t tell us exactly what motivated him to go back. All he says is, “One of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice.”
He saw that he was healed. All 10 of them were healed of their leprosy, but only one of them, Luke says, saw that he was healed, and for him, it was more than just physical healing. Jesus says to him, “Your faith has made you well.”
He receives the blessing of physical healing, but he also is made whole by naming the blessing he’s received. He’s the only one who truly grasps what Jesus had done for him.
The other nine don’t do anything wrong, but all they receive is the physical healing. They are not made well in the same way because they don’t stop to fully see what’s happened to them.
The seeing is the key, and that’s something we can practice. We can practice seeing the world around us through a lens of gratitude. One of my friends in college would regularly pause in the middle of a conversation, right there on the sidewalk to say, “Stop! Appreciate.”
That’s what we’re trying to do this weekend, to give thanks for each other, rather than taking your generosity for granted.
Paul begins his letter to the Colossians by writing, “In our prayers for you, we always thank God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, or we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints.”
The Stewardship Committee and Church Council and I wanted to take this weekend to say “Thank you” to the rest of our congregation—to all of you—for your faithfulness and generosity and giving over this past year and a half.
During the pandemic, just since last April, our congregation has given away nearly $70,000 to ministries outside of ourselves, everything from disaster response to supporting refugees and missionaries, to Bremwood and our synod’s ministries, to supporting the basketball court project and the food bank.
Nearly $70,000 in 18 months is worth celebrating, and we’ll have a lot more to celebrate next year with the 150th anniversary as well! But this isn’t just about a few people thanking everyone else. This is about all of us thanking each other and most importantly thanking God. So, thank you for your offerings, your prayers, your time spent volunteering and loving your neighbors. Thank you for coming today to worship!
It takes effort, intentionality to stop taking the world for granted and instead see through a lens of gratitude. It’s a lot easier to see the problems, to see the needs, to see what’s lacking, right?
Looking for things to be grateful for is countercultural, but if you spend the effort to look, there are always blessings for which you can give thanks. It’s the famous quote from Mr. Rogers, “Look for the helpers.”
Things are not always good. There are very real, serious problems around us in this broken world. We need to care about those problems. We are called to work for justice and peace in the world. It’s hard to keep a perspective of gratitude when tragedies and car crashes happen.
But at the same time, there are also blessings all around us, for which we can choose to give thanks, and maybe being grounded in recognizing what God has done for us gives us the strength to keep going through tragedies.
Jesus’ final instruction for the grateful leper is to get up and go on his way. Giving thanks leads back to action, to an active faith.
But our action as Christians is always in response to God’s action for us. Our love comes out of gratitude for God’s love. First and foremost we are grateful because we have been redeemed by God.
Pastor David Lose writes, “Giving voice to gratitude is a choice with consequences, for as we express our gratitude, we affect those around us, even shape the reality in which we live.”
He talks about a friend he has who always answers the question, “How are you?” with “I’m grateful.”
I like that, and I invite you to join me in trying it this week. “How are you?” “I’m grateful.”
I assume it will startle people, and that’s ok. I also think the response to “Bless you” after a sneeze should be “You too” so maybe I just like giving unexpected responses.
But perhaps it will give people a moment to pause and notice what God is doing around them. And noticing leads to gratitude, which leads to faith. I invite you to try it. Let’s practice.
How are you?
I’m grateful.
How are you?
I’m grateful.
Go on your way, your faith has made you well.