Uncommon Thanks: Luke 17:11-19

A Thanksgiving question: “Do you take the time to give thanks”? Perhaps a better question might be, “Have you even taken the time to reflect on all the things that grace your life. As the old hymn states, have you counted your blessings, have you named them one by one?”

Margins

In Luke’s account of Jesus’ life, he tells the story of Jesus’ encounter with ten leprous outcasts. The Biblical description of where Jesus encounters these lepers is itself informative. Luke states that Jesus encounters them “on the border between Samaria and Galilee.” Today we might call this area a sort of “no-mans land.” According to Levitical law, these ten lepers would have been expelled from the community and would have lived on the borders of society. Not really welcomed into traditional Jewish society, they were reduced to living in the “grey” areas that separated traditional Jewish culture from that of the despised, half-bred Samaritans.

It seems that Jesus often found himself in marginal places, pursuing what polite society might have called marginal people. When criticized about His behavior, Jesus reminded His self-righteous critics that he had come to seek and to save the lost. Of course, this was not Jesus’ first nor His deepest journey into dark places; the furthest, the deepest, the darkest journey, was His first one, the one that transported Him from his Father’s side into a sinstained humanity. That was truly a journey into darkness.

A Common Need.

The ten outcasts likely traveled to this small colony from different villages. It is even possible, if not probable, based on their location, that the the small colony consisted of both Jews and Samaritans. Racism was (and perhaps is) a convenience of the comfortable. For example, when you are praying in a foxhole with your fellow soldiers and bombs are landing around you, you probably don’t ask the guy praying for you what his racial designation is. What connected these ten was a common need. They were infected with the flesh-eating, socially-debilitating Mycobacterium Leprae.

I would like to remind you that we all also share a common need. According to scripture, like the lepers, we are all also infected with a common and deadly disease. It matters not if we are rich or poor, black or white, or what side of the tracks we grew up on. We are all part of a colony infected with sin. This disease is eternally deadly and likewise makes us outcast, separated from our eternal family and Father.

A Common Healing

Luke records that the ten lepers, when they saw Jesus, “called out in a loud voice, ‘Jesus, Master, have pity on us.’” The text reveals that Jesus did not immediately heal them, but rather asked them to make a journey of Faith and to “show yourselves to the priest.” While they were on this journey they were healed. Curious thing about how miracles usually happen. They usually happen at an intersection. That intersection is the place where God’s power is met by our Faith. Jesus often asked the recipi

ents of His miracles, “Do you believe I can heal you?” As a minister, I do not claim to know the ways of God. I do not know why he heals some times and not other times. I do know that his primary mission on Earth was not to be some sort of glorified physician healing the temporal ailments of our temporal bodies, but rather to be the Great Physician who would eventually heal us for eternity. For that I am grateful. I did, however, want to point out that much of God’s great work on Earth has always happened at the intersection of His power and our Faith. Ten lepers were asked to leave Jesus un-healed. They were asked to make a journey of Faith. That journey consisted of “steps of faith” that led to a “place of Grace.” There is an important lesson there for us,; that is, that steps of faith often lead to places of Grace. Keep walking; the miracle is in the journey.

An Uncommon Thankfulness

Many of you probably know where this devotion is heading; if not, you can probably guess from the title. Although the ten lepers received a common Grace, only one returned to Jesus to give thanks. Only one took the time to acknowledge the source of the Grace — Jesus. We could speculate about what happened to the other nine. They were so overjoyed that they wanted to find their families and show them what had happened; they wanted to rush into town and have a decent meal or a bath; perhaps they even continued on to the Priest, as instructed. We will never know. What we do know is that they resumed the priorities of their lives without thanking the one who had given their lives back to them, all except for one.

My prayer this Thanksgiving is that we might be the uncommonly thankful.

Counting My Blessings, Naming them one by one,