Luke 17:11-19
October 13, 2013
Sermon preached by rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
There’s a true story of a pastor at a little Presbyterian church in a town in the Mississippi Delta. During the pastor’s first year, three men visited him inquiring about one of his members, a widow who lived by herself. They asked the pastor: Was she getting out? Were her friends in Aberdeen keeping in touch? Was there anything they needed to know? The three men explained the situation, gave him their cards—one lived in New Jersey, another in Oklahoma, the other in California—and he was told to call them if there was anything they could humanly do to make her life happier or easier.
These three men arrived each year bearing presents their wives had picked out in shops of San Francisco and New York. The men employed a family who mowed the woman’s lawn, trimmed the bushes, checked tree branches, and gutters. One of the men prepared the woman’s tax returns each year, another contracted repairs on her house or made them himself. Sometimes they helped her shop for a new car. They were meticulous in checking on everything and anticipate every difficulty the woman might face.
Each year they visited the president of the Bank of Mississippi branch in town since there was a regular turnover of young bank executives. They passed out their cards, explained that the manager was to notify them of any worldly need this woman might have, and they explained to the bank president the situation.
The situation was this: almost seventy years ago the three men had been three soldiers standing on the ground floor of a house in Normandy just a few days after D-Day when a German potato masher grenade came bouncing down the stairs. A fourth soldier threw himself on the grenade, absorbing most of its impact. That man was this woman’s husband. The three men lived because of his death.
After the war was over the three men began making their way to Mississippi on a regular basis to make sure that this man’s widow would lack for nothing they had within their power to provide for her. They had been doing that for more than twenty years.
Isn’t this a remarkable story? I’ll tell you another remarkable thing: There were eighteen soldiers on the first floor of that house in Normandy. All eighteen of them were spared by the action of that one soldier’s leaping on a grenade, and after the war was over only three of them made their regular pilgrimages to Aberdeen, Mississippi.
What does it take for us to recognize that life is a gift, and the only possible human response is gratitude?
Ten Lepers
On the way to Jerusalem, Jesus was going through the forbidden territory of the Samaritans. In the outskirts of an unnamed village, ten lepers approached Jesus from a distance. According to purity laws, they remain outside the village and maintain their distance from Jesus and his disciples.
The ten lepers cried out loudly, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” Jesus responds to their plea for mercy by instructing them to show themselves to the priests, presumably so that they can be examined, pronounced clean, and reinstated into the social life of the village. Jesus neither touches the lepers nor tells them they have been healed. He simply instructs them to go to the priests.
All ten lepers trusted Jesus enough to turn and go. Then, as they went, they are cleansed. They did not go in response to their healing; rather, they are healed as they went on their way.
While nine lepers directly obeyed Jesus’ instructions to go to the priests, one leper interrupts his obedience in order to offer thanks. And for a second time in a loud voice, this leper praised and thanked God. The only human response he can make was to show gratitude. Our writer lets us know that the one who returns in gratitude is a foreigner, a Samaritan.
The ethnic identity of this one leper demonstrates once again that in the salvation Jesus brings, the marginalized people have a special place. Jesus ministers to those previously were denied access to God. Not only was this man diseased with leprosy, he had the double marginalization of being Samaritan. Jesus crosses multiple boundaries to extend mercy to this leprous Samaritan.
Jesus said, “Get up and go on your way, your faith had made you well.” But our translation doesn’t capture the full meaning of being well here. It means that the man’s faith has saved him. His faith has made him whole, complete and blessed.
Thank You
When the one leper who came back to thank Jesus by prostrating himself at Jesus’ feet, Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?”
Were the other nine ungrateful or were they just too terribly busy? Sounds like us. They had just gotten their lives back to return to their families and loved ones. Everything they had lost from their disease could now be restored to them. They probably wanted to put this awful life behind them and never look back. Were they just too busy and didn’t have the time to express their gratitude?
In this season of stewardship and canvassing for pledges to support the life and ministry of this church, I wonder about our willingness to give. Do we give out of guilt or out of being the recipients of God’s abundant grace and therefore we give back out of abundant gratitude.
Sometimes we find ourselves having a difficulty in saying, “Thank you” because we fear that if we admit our gratitude, it would obligate us to give back. It’s this idea that if we let someone know that we are grateful for something that we really appreciate then we fear that we will need to pay back this favor or blessing. It’s like if I paid for lunch today, you would want to buy me lunch tomorrow. And you would want to pay off this obligation sooner than later.
Do you feel that if you are grateful to God, even in some undefined way that that would obligate you to tithe? We might think that as long as we don’t admit that we have anything to be thankful for, we don’t owe anything to God.
So we tend to act as if we were deprived and poor never needing to give thanks for the abundance that we have in order for us to not be grateful and feeling obligated to give back.
The renowned storyteller Kathryn Tucker Windham told a story of the first black sheriff in a rural Alabama county. Today I have two stories from the Deep South.
While he was growing up, his family did not have enough money for him to have a pair of shoes, so he went barefoot for the first eight years of his life. He didn’t mind most of the year, but in the winter months, his feet would get so cold that they would crack. One day, while he was taking lunch to his father, the white woman who owned the general store in town called him into her store. She asked him about his family and why he didn’t have any shoes. Then she proceeded to wash his feet, rub them with Vaseline, and give him his first pair of shoes and socks. The young boy was so excited that he left his father’s lunch in the store and ran home to show his mother. When he arrived home, his mother asked him if he had thanked the woman. He sheepishly admitted that in his haste he had not, so she sent him back to say thank you. The sheriff told Ms. Windham that he went back every week to see the woman, now in a nursing home, and thank her for his first pair of shoes.
Certainly the sheriff was not ungrateful as a young boy when he received that first pair of shoes, but in his excitement over this new development in his life, he failed to offer thanks right then. In that case, it is such a simple thing to overlook a thank you. While the young boy received a pair of shoes, the lepers received a gift of their lives back as they had once known. The boy went back and said thank you that day—and kept returning years later.
Are we who have received so much, ready to express our gratitude?
Saying thank you is one of the most significant things we say not because it leaves a good impression or being polite or helps us gain a new friend or client. When we say, “Thank you,” we discover to whom we belong. When the Samaritan leper said “Thank you,” he is saying that this story is fundamentally not about him but it is all about God. He said I have been healed not because I trained, or I researched, or I dieted, or even because I prayed; I have been healed because God chose to reveal his power on me.
When we praise God, we say, “Thank you.” We affirm that we are not the center of the universe but God is. We are saying that God is in control of my life and our worship to God begins when we acknowledge that all things have come from above. And because all that we are and all that we have are the abundant blessings that have come from God that we can’t do anything except to say, “Thank You, O God!”
Beyond Ourselves
Do you know why Luke recorded the fact that the one leper who returned to Jesus to express his gratitude was a Samaritan? It’s because Luke knows that we wouldn’t have a problem welcoming other people like us into our church. But welcoming others who are out in the margins, close to forbidding territories, people who have been marginalized by illness and diseases that we would keep at a distance. They are the people Jesus is also telling us that salvation has come to them as well.
Jesus and his disciples are out near Samaria—land of infidelity, the place where dwell all those Samaritans who have historic differences with orthodox Jews over issues of belief and worship.
It would have probably been shocking enough for Luke just to report that Jesus dared to reach out beyond the boundaries and heal this Samaritan. But Luke has Jesus take it beyond even that. The Samaritan is the only one to show gratitude toward Jesus for his healing and Jesus makes this man a positive example of how we ought to behave. Jesus made this untouchable from the margins a model for discipleship!
Jesus is telling us that he is Lord of all. All territory on this earth belongs to him—and all people as well, even this man who is terribly ill, even this Samaritan. Jesus is reclaiming all the world for God—nothing is outside God’s salvation and grace.
This is the reason why our church’s 2014 Proposed Budget includes a significant contribution to Redwood Glen Camp and Conference Center so that out of our abundance and gratitude, we can help strengthen Redwood Glen’s programs to reach out to all the outsiders and marginalized people.
This is the reason why we are supporting Ivy and Emerson Wu as our American Baptist missionaries to Macau so that they can guide youth and young adults to consider other careers that would use their God-given gifts and abilities rather than to just settle working in the casino and gambling industries that have little if any redeeming values.
This is the reason why we are sending another eager and dedicated team of people to go to Chiang Mai, Thailand again next year to bring fresh water to a village so that they won’t get sick and build up a local economy that could sustain their livelihood and not have to send girls and young women to work as domestics and running the risk of being trafficked.
We have so much to give and out of our grateful hearts, we choose to go beyond our gratitude and help Jesus Christ bring healing, wholeness and saving grace in the world.
Open Hands
I used to assume that those who received the good things of life—life, health, friends, happiness, family, wealth, success, joy—would naturally be filled with gratitude.
But now I believe the exact opposite. Only those who are able to open their hands to receive life as a gift like the Samaritan leper did and respond in deep gratitude are able to truly to receive life, health, friends, happiness, family, wealth, success and joy. Only those of us who are willing to open our hands to receive the gracious love of God in Christ’s saving power would be able to respond in deep gratitude of the undeserved blessings and abundance that we have.
Have you ever noticed that the hands of a newborn are clutched tightly? Toddlers grab and grasp everything they see. But it is only when we have lived life long enough to discover that the journey of life begins when our hands are opened. Only those who can open their hands can receive life as a gift; only those who open their hands to give can express their gratitude in receiving.
The human pilgrimage teaches us to open our hands to receive the good gifts in thanksgiving and to open our hands to give the good gifts in gratitude until that day when we return to the Lord that our hands stay fully open to go beyond gratitude.
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, we are forever discovering the wide scope of your lordship. Forgive us when we attempt, in our words and actions, to limit the size of your kingdom to people who look like us. Help us to be grateful for all the abundance that we received. Help us to see your loving intent to save the whole world, to die for all people and to embrace all into your kingdom. Amen.