“Friends With Gratitude”
Scripture Reading: Luke 17:11-19
Sermon Transcript for October 14, 2007
By Pastor Nancy Blevins
This morning our theme is one that begins the month of stewardship. And you might recall that Bob, last week, spoke with you about a poster you will probably see around the church and a letter that you might receive that says words out of the Gospel according to John in which Jesus says, “I don’t call you servants, but I call you friends.” I call you friend. The Gospel lesson this morning is out of the Gospel of Luke, the Good News according to Luke, Chapter 17. And I guess the question that we might ask is, “Are you friends with Gratitude?” As you ponder that, listen to these words and they will be displayed up on the screen as well. “It was on the way to Jerusalem that Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached Him. Keeping their distance they called out saying, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.’ When He saw them, He said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priest.’ And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked Him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, ‘Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?’ Was none of them bound to return and give praise to God accept this foreigner? Then he said to him, ‘Get up, go on your way, your faith has made you well.’” Amen.
Now this is a little story that takes place on the way to Jerusalem. And Luke, throughout his gospel, has followed the travels of Jesus from coming to the earth in the womb, but then now on His way to Jerusalem. And we know the end of the story as to what will happen when Jesus gets to Jerusalem. So, if you know that part, you have to back yourself up and realize that hasn’t happened yet. Jesus is on a journey and with Him are His disciples following behind Him. Now, He’s told them He is going up to Jerusalem and what will happen there; but it is just like the wind, it is going right past them. They go into a village. There’s been enough publicity about Jesus that there’s kind of an uproar as He comes anywhere nowadays. Over here are ten lepers. We don’t know, they could be men, women, and even some children. Leprosy was a disease and it was caused by fungus, bacteria, and sometimes it was worse than others. But the skin, when it got to its worst condition, was white and flaking off. In the priestly sense of being one that could come into worship, to be accepted in community, they had what they called “Purity Laws”. And if you had a disease like that, you weren’t allowed not just to come to church; you couldn’t even be near your family. And you had to go around saying, “Unclean! Unclean!” so that no one would accidently come in contact with you and by virtue of coming in contact with you, make yourself unclean. In a sense, in a religious unclean.
And so here’s this group on this side watching this big bunch of people coming in. People, not just the twelve, but many others following Jesus because they want to be close to Him. And as you might see on the situation at parades and things now, people run up, little kids especially, trying to get candy because things are thrown out at parades often. Well, with this big processional, without trumpets or anything like that, just the fact that Jesus is there, there is a crowd gathering. So the lepers see this as a prime opportunity. And they just did what beggars do because they were beggars. They were beggars because they couldn’t have a job as a leper, they couldn’t be with their families, they had to live on the outskirts of the village. They were outcasts. So for food, they begged or a few coins to be thrown their way, they begged, for hopefully, maybe even a blessing, as the healer was passing by, they begged. And one of the ways that they did that was to say, “Have mercy on me”. That’s what they were doing that day when Jesus passed through the village on His way to Jerusalem. “Have mercy upon me.” They may have even called out His name, “Jesus”. A healer was on the way. Have mercy upon me. They had been banished and they were grateful, maybe, that someone was coming their way with a crowd and the odds were good that maybe they would have a little more opportunity that day.
One of them turned out to have even more reason to be grateful. What about you? When are you most grateful? If you said that gratitude was an attitude, when does the attitude of gratitude really pop up in your life? Is it when everything is going your way? Is it when Plan A is working out just the way you hoped it would? I don’t know about you, but sometimes when everything is going wonderful, just the way I expect, it’s not the first little idea that pops into my head to be grateful. It’s only when you’ve had some bad days that you can be grateful for the good days, isn’t it? Because you know the difference! So here is this guy that has this disease. The tenth leper is what this story is about. The tenth leper – one in ten suddenly has an attitude of gratitude.
Think about it like this—perhaps they had heard of Jesus but the Jesus that they had heard about was one that spit in the mud and put mud on people’s eyes that were blind and they saw after that, they weren’t blind any more. Or this woman they had heard about, she went up and touched Jesus’ robe and suddenly she wasn’t bleeding anymore. But what Jesus did this day, how could they be sure it was going to work? Do you know what Jesus did? He didn’t touch them. It says, in effect, well let’s put it this way, let’s say that you have shingles, that itchy disease. Or maybe you have a really bad case of acne. And you have an appointment with the dermatologist. I had a dermatologist; it was known as Clearasil. Right there, right in the middle of the cabinet. Well, let’s suppose that you were able to get an appointment with a very outstanding dermatologist. You are in the waiting room; there are a lot of people there, some you see they’ve got little scratches, rashes, that kind of thing, acne. And this famous dermatologist walks out and here she steps into the midst of the waiting room and says, “Go to church Sunday. I’ll see you and you’ll be fine.” That’s what Jesus said. He didn’t say, “Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.” As far as they knew, they wouldn’t have any more contact with Him. What He said was, “Go and show yourself to the priest. Go to Temple.” Well, if you were a leper and you thought, “Well, I’m healing; I’m not contagious any more.” You had to get the blessing of the priest before you could come to church, before you could come back in to the community, before you could get a job. I don’t know if they gave you a certificate, I don’t have a clue as to how they did it but you were pronounced clean.
How much faith would it take for you to walk away from that doctor’s office? A lot! That’s what the Gospel of Luke is all about especially in Chapter 17. It’s all about faith! Chapter 17 it starts off and it says in Versus 1-4, we talk about the faith that forgives. Later about the faith that trembles, the faith that’s the size of a mustard seed, faith that can move mountains. And here we have a faith that says, “Well, while I’m on my way, I’m healed.” The faith of gratitude that throws itself at Jesus’ feet. It took a lot of faith to turn away from someone that you knew was a healer and believe that you were healed without them touching you, without them even saying any kind of special words over you, without what had been done in the past.
Can we receive with gratitude when Jesus does something in our life a different way? An uncomfortable way? A way that makes us step out in faith? Can we receive in gratitude a blessing that might take a step of faith? Jesus sees these lepers; they are over here in this crowd. And He has His disciples over here. And He is moved within Himself without their desperate plague, their agony. And Jesus offers them a solution that’s different. Yes, He gives them what they wanted. It’s mercy.
But Jesus seems a little miffed, doesn’t He? One in ten, were there not ten? Only one returns to offer thanks? Don’t you want to say, “Well, now wait a minute Jesus. Wait a minute. They are being obedient. You told them to go. They are following the rules; they are good church people. They are just doing what you said.” And they got healed too. But that one, what was different about that one? See, his disease had made him part of that community, part of the leper colony. And when Jesus healed him, he knew that it was Jesus that was healing him all the way to the priest. He wasn’t able to go where those other nine were going to go. We find out why—he was a Samaritan. So not only was he a leper, and at once he had a colony of people that had that in common just like those who go to the chemo room have that in common. There’s an unspoken brotherhood and sisterhood in that room of healing. But Jesus just yanks that away from him because he was a Samaritan, a double outcast. He was not a respectable member of society. He considered himself a Jew, more or less, from Joseph’s tribe versus the tribe of Judah. But he wasn’t one of them. And if he went to the Temple, there was a wall there that separated the court of the Gentiles from the inner court for the Jews. The true Jews were able to worship. And Jesus even brings that out as he called him a “foreigner”. That word was inscribed on the wall in the Temple so they would know their place. Jesus had just yanked him out of community. But he knows he has been yanked on the inside too. He’s been yanked because Jesus has even considered that he is worthy to be healed, that he is worthy to fall at his feet and let the rabbi, a Jewish rabbi, touch and be touched by him. A gentile, an outcast not only made clean on the outside but made clean on the inside. And that’s where his gratitude flows from. Not that he’s now more acceptable to other people but that because of Jesus, because of God through Jesus, saying, “I have fulfilled the prophecy. I am the Messiah. And you are one of mine.” He broke the barrier down. You are one of mine.
I suppose we think that if we were healed from a tremendous disease that we would be more grateful. Tony Snow, who was Press Secretary for President Bush, had cancer and he was interviewed. His cancer has come back and he says, “It’s a gift.” And someone you may not know, I know a woman who taught me an attitude of gratitude when she pulled off her scarf when I was complaining about a bad hair day. She had none. She became one of my best friends. She had breast cancer. She went, and I went with her, to that chemo room many times. Many times until it got to be kind of a refrain that I was kind of tired of hearing she would say, “Well, it’s not breast cancer.” I helped to cultivate an attitude of gratitude. Not that I didn’t have breast cancer, but that it reminded me how much we take for granted. She said, “My cancer, Nancy, has been a gift. Not that I would wish it on anyone or even that I would wish to have it. But it was a gift. And, she says, every day (and this is what Tony Snow said also) every day is so much more precious to me now. And I was just going blissfully along thinking that if my Plan A worked out, that was enough for me. And when my plan didn’t work out, and I had this disease to deal with, then suddenly the entire world around me changed and I became different on the inside and I’m grateful.
In your insert today there is a blank sheet that says, “Notes”. That’s for you to use today in a few moments. I’ll give you a quiet time briefly. Maybe there is somebody in your life besides your parents, besides your Sunday School teacher or friend that brought you to church. Maybe there is someone in your life that moved you to a new way of seeing into a different group, into a new awareness of how precious life is or how precious you are in God’s sight. Maybe someone, by their example, did something so small that even made you become more respected in your own eyes. That moved you from a sense of failure to a sense of success. Someone who helped you by their example to be a good citizen, a good neighbor or yet, you’re in church, maybe someone who taught you about Jesus. But the question is, “Will you remember? Will you have some gratitude that you can express? Maybe you forgot. And in the scheme of things now as you look back at your life you’ll going, “I’m really grateful…” I’m really grateful for a US Government teacher. I hated government, but his name was McDonald and he taught it. And he told me to fill out an application for a scholarship. Only one person in my family had ever gone to college. And Jim McDonald said, “Fill it out.” That was before the days when you knew what you ranked in a class that you were close to the top or not close to the top. And because I liked him, though I didn’t like the class, I filled it out. I got a scholarship; a full scholarship. See, I didn’t know I was smart, at least enough to get a scholarship. Or poor enough, I didn’t know I was poor, poor enough to get a scholarship. Jim McDonald moved me from this group, from this way of life to a different way of life.
Now I have the opportunity to tell him that. Some of you have people in your life that you are grateful for but they have passed from this life or maybe passed out of your life. If so, maybe you just want to write that name down now on that blank piece of paper and just hold your hand over it and say, “Lord, I don’t see him in this life anymore, but let them know I am grateful. And Lord, if I need to contact that person, give me an opportunity and I will be faithfully grateful.” And maybe if all you can do is give thanks to God, give thanks to God.
Let us pray, “God we might not have an incurable disease that shows us a new way of living, but we have you and Jesus who’s shown us a new way of living. And we are grateful. For the here, for the now, for the promise of life in Christ we give thanks. And we pause for you to give us the name, for you to give us the situations in which we might start a journey of gratitude in our life. To your glory we pray, Amen.”
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