October 12, 2025 Sermon

Sermon Title:  “Be Grateful”

Scripture:  Luke 17:11-19

(Other lectionary suggestions include Jeremiah 29:1 and 4-7, Psalm 66:1-12, and II Timothy 2:8-15.)

Luke 17:11-19

Jesus Cleanses Ten Lepers

11On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. 12As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, 13they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” 14When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. 15Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. 16He prostrated himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. 17Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? 18Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” 19Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

          It has always seemed right to me for a religious person to be grateful. In today’s Scripture reading, Jesus appears to be a little irked that there was only ONE person and not ten who came back to say, “Thanks for the healing.” The Gospel writer of Luke always seems to focus on the outsider. If you think about it, remember that the story of the Good Samaritan is found only in Luke - and who was more of an outsider than the Samaritan? Jesus would have liked to have had more healed persons show up and say “Thanks.” But maybe Jesus was a marked man by this time, and maybe those healed wanted to play it safe and NOT be associated with Jesus. Luke doesn’t say the nine who didn’t come back were any less cured, but he does imply that they were less grateful. And look here:  only the outsider, only the foreigner, gives God the glory, showing up their Jewish brethren. By the way, the word “Jew” comes from the word JUDAH, which in Hebrew means “praise.”

          New Testament scholar N. T. Wright points out that the lepers who didn’t return to thank Jesus aren’t the ONLY people at fault. “It is all of us who fail to thank God ‘always and for everything’ as the Apostle Paul puts it in Ephesians 5:20. We know with our heads, if we have any Christian faith at all, that our God is the giver of all things;” the food we eat, the air we breathe, every good thing. All good things come from God’s generosity. And another thing.....When Jesus tells the lepers to get up, early Christian believers knew that term referred to the Resurrection. “Like the prodigal son, this man ‘was dead and is alive again.’ New life had arrived in this village. And faith and healing go hand in hand. Says Wright, this rhythm of faith and gratitude simply is what being a Christian, in the first or 21st century, is all about.” Amen.

Pastor Skip