An Attitude of Gratitude
Luke 17:11-19
Last week we had the disciples asking Jesus to increase their faith after he tells them to forgive seven times a day when asked. Immediately after the parable of the master and slave that was part of that pericope last week we have this story of the lepers encountering Jesus as he travels toward Jerusalem. Was this yet another opportunity for the disciples to have their faith stretched?
Luke loves to have Jesus telling stories with unlikely heroes and surprise twists. Today’s is no different. The lepers stay “at a distance” – standard protocol of their time because of people’s fear and prejudice. When you try to listen to this story with first century ears, you can almost hear the gasp of the crowd who originally heard these stories. First Jesus tells them to forgive seven times a day (gasp!) then he comes across a group of ten lepers (gasp!) Jesus tells them to go show themselves to the priest and as they go they find that they are healed. Only one comes back to say thank you and he was a Samaritan (gasp!).
Who makes you suck air in amazement? What kind of twist would make you gasp? That’s where you could apply this story in your life.
Did you notice in the story that Jesus doesn’t do anything in particular to heal the lepers? He simply tells them to go show themselves to the priest. The reason one would go to the priest is to be certified as clean. They evidently go and discover en route that they are, in fact, healed.
We don’t know a great deal about what happened next except that only one came back to say “thank you.” Did only one of the ten realize that this profound experience was the work of God – the work of the Holy? I wonder what the other nine did with their lives after that day.
We could probably speculate what happened to some of them. One leper probably went on with his life but always seemed to be stuck in the past pain of being a leper. Any problem he had was because he had once been a leper. Anytime he didn’t succeed at something, he blamed it on the fact that he had once been a leper. The past would always haunt him even though he had been set free from it. He had what I would call an attitude of “stuck.”
I imagine another saw his experience of being a leper as a financial opportunity. It would be hard for people to believe that he had once had leprosy so maybe he would write his memoirs entitled, “If I Had It.” His response to his past leprosy would be an attitude of spin.
I can imagine one of the lepers might have been so scarred by the experience that he continued to live separated from others. Maybe he was afraid that they would find out about his past. Maybe he feared his healing wouldn’t last or that it had all been some terrible mistake. He developed an attitude of isolation.
Then there was the Samaritan leper – the one nobody hearing the story would have wanted to like. That’s the beauty of this story. He recognized that his life had been healed and he was thankful. He had an attitude of gratitude.
This past week as word got out into the community and across the Internet about the hateful graffiti spray painted on the back of the church, I was really pleased with the outpouring of support and care we received from all over the cities and from across the nation. (Elder Mitulsky, city council members, Asst. Police Chief, MCC pastors across the country, neighbors)
A reporter asked me this week whether I was taking any extra precautions as a result of the threat that seemed to be aimed at me personally. This was before I heard there was a rock band called “Slay the Priest” which helped me take the threat not so personally, although that does not absolve those who spray painted such a phrase on a church building. The Cherish our Church volunteers did a great job of removing the graffiti this past Saturday. I told the reporter that we would continue to do what we do – tell the truth of our lives, live in faith not fear, and challenge those who use the Bible as a weapon. He wanted to know if this threat caused the congregation concern and I told him about the experience last Sunday of telling all of you about the graffiti and how there was no fear or alarm, because we have experienced the Holy. We don’t have to live in fear. This congregation, I told him, has an attitude of gratitude.
Why would anyone want to choose any other attitude? We have experienced the Holy and know that grace is greater than any threat, stupidity or nonsense. We have experienced community and know that together we can do anything we set our hearts on. We have experienced the love of God poured into our thirsty spirits at a time when many of us thought we would dry up and blow away. If we couldn’t express our gratitude, I think we would burst!
Mark Hillmer, a professor at Luther Seminary notes that when we are in the presence of the Holy, “we do not have to remind ourselves to pray, we do not have to encourage our souls to be thankful. Praise gushes.”
I hope you are ready to be a gusher this morning – to live to the fullest the amazing life God has graced you with. I hope if you came into this place with any other attitude but gratitude that you will be willing to let it go and let God fill whatever void you’re trying to camouflage. I hope that if you came here today caught by fear, regret, hopelessness, anger, bitterness or depression, that you will open yourself to our worship which connects us to an experience of the Holy and inspires all of us to live with gratitude.
Attitude is a choice. Lots of things contribute to the mix of our experience that often shapes our attitude, but in the end, one’s attitude is a choice. I think the Samaritan leper got it right.
Sources:
www.homileticsonline.com Leper Number 10, November 2003.
Mark Hillmer, “Luke 1:46-55,” Interpretation, October 1994, 391-93.