Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, amen. The text for the sermon is the Gospel, which was read earlier.
“Unclean! Unclean!” That’s the shout of those who were lepers. It was their warning to others to stay away from them, lest a person were to contract leprosy as well. This was a most unpleasant disease to have, as it would require a person to be considered an outcast and made to live outside of the general populous. Numbers records the command of God to Moses, “Command the people of Israel that they put out of the camp everyone who is leprous or has a discharge and everyone who is unclean through contact with the dead. You shall put out both male and female, putting them outside the camp, that they may not defile their camp, in the midst of which I dwell.”
Our text lays out an interesting encounter. Jesus is entering a village and is met by ten lepers, at a distance, of course. Their request was simple: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” Who did they think they were addressing? Obviously they must have thought highly enough of Jesus to think that He might be able to do something about their leprosy. Early in His Galilean ministry, Luke records how Jesus healed a single leper. The leper was healed and given a single and simple task: tell no one but show himself to the priest and make a cleansing offering. However, that task seemed too hard and Jesus finds great crowds coming to Him to hear and be healed of all their various ailments. Now ten lepers come to Him asking for mercy. In the case of the one, He sends him to the priests to verify the cure. Here, Jesus sends them off to the priests, and they are cleansed enroute.
What takes place for these men is indeed a miracle. Now they can rejoin the regular populous and stop being outcasts because of their leprosy. They can now return to work and provide for their needs and those of their families. In other words, everything is back to normal for them. Praise be to God, or rather, praise be to Jesus! Well, not really.
What was Jesus expecting to happen? He had only commanded them to show themselves to the priests. He didn’t tell them to return to Him to give thanks. But one does return, praising God for his healing. He falls as Jesus’ feet, giving thanks. This is true thanksgiving! He returns to Jesus, not out of obligation of what had been done, but of sincere thanks and praise for his healing and the right to return to the general population. He is no longer considered an outcast. He no longer has to live outside of the people for fear of contaminating them. What makes this even more incredible of an account is that the one leper who returns is a Samaritan. The assumption is that the other nine were Jews. Though Jews and Samaritans usually had no fellowship, misery loves company. You can see this ragtag group of ten lepers gathered together because they were the only ones to keep company with.
Jesus commends this “foreigner” for his act of worship and asks in disappointment about the other nine. He asks, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” You see, for these lepers, thanksgiving was the furthest thing from their minds. After Jesus cleansed them, all ten departed. There was only who returned and gave thanks. The Samaritan recognized that Jesus had healed him. Jesus deserved his thanks, as well as that of the other nine. The more we recognize the Source of our blessings, the easier it is to see the connection between the gifts we receive, the thanks we give, and the praise we render to Jesus.
Jesus speaks wonderful words to the former leper when He tells him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.” It was the faith of the ten lepers in Jesus Christ that saved them. They believed Jesus and His Word enough to go to the priests. They had faith in Jesus that He would heal them.
All of His ministry, Jesus was in the business of healing and forgiving. Today He still is. He heals our physical illnesses and our spiritual sickness. He forgives leprous sins that eat away at our spiritual lives, and He gives us the faith to live a new life of appreciation and thankfulness.
Those words of Jesus are words that we long to hear, aren’t they? The wonderful gift of faith that we have in Jesus is what makes us well, what forgives us our sins. Jesus has not healed you from leprosy, but He has healed you from something infinitely greater than leprosy: your sin. Jesus died on the cross to deliver you from the diseases of sins, death, and the devil. You and I have been healed from this disease. In the waters of Holy Baptism, the forgiveness won by Christ on His cross was applied to each of us. There, God called us by name, placed His name upon us and forgave us all of our sins. That is more than enough reason to give thanks and praise to God!
Gratitude flows out of life in the Spirit of God, a new life begun at Baptism and strengthened at the holy Supper, the Eucharist, a Greek word that means “thanksgiving.” We celebrate with appreciation and thanks the death of Jesus for our sins and the life of the Spirit in us. So we follow the example of the Samaritan in spontaneous gratitude, in thankful witness. And, as we thank God for all His blessings, we learn to practice gratitude toward one another.
For us, we are thankful for all that we have: our material blessings, the privilege of being called children of God, the wonderful gift of forgiveness of our sins. For all this and more, we cry out with the psalmist, “Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!” Amen.