Old Testament Scripture: Psalm 103:1-5, 19-22

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1 October 13, 2013 Luke 17:11-19 Janet Chisom Salem Presbyterian Church Old Testament Scripture: Psalm 103:1-5, Prayer for Illumination: Lord God, we give thanks for Your word and how it speaks to us across all time and space. As we prepare to hear Your word read and proclaimed, we pray that You will open our hearts and minds to truly listen to all You are saying to us this day; and through the power of Your Holy Spirit, help us to live our lives according to Your word. In Jesus name we ask. Amen. New Testament Scripture: Luke 17:11-19 Jesus Cleanses Ten Lepers On the way to Jerusalem 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 priests. 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 found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? Then he said to him, Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well. This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God! 1

2 Sermon: Lessons from a Leper Most of us are probably familiar with this story. It is one that is sometimes used around Thanksgiving to remind us that we should take time to express our thankfulness for all our blessings. When I saw it as the assigned text for this week, I was surprised... we re more than a month early! But two things make it the perfect passage for today. First, tomorrow, October 14, is Thanksgiving Day in Canada. We take the fourth Thursday of November, and the Canadians have designated the second Monday in October as a time to give thanks for the bountiful harvest as well as other blessings. Like us, they get a day off of work and often use the Thanksgiving holiday as a time to visit family and share a meal together. The second reason that this passage is perfect for this week is that we can always use a reminder to be thankful and to express our gratitude. I polled people via Facebook to find out who they last thanked and why. The answers ranged from family (a niece who treated her to a movie, an 11 year old who listened), to friends (a friend who brought a candle to brighten her day), to strangers (the old lady who couldn t afford to buy the expensive Boy Scout popcorn but bought two bags anyway, even though she probably couldn t or shouldn t eat any of it). One person thanked God for rescuing her friends from a scary traffic accident. My friend Debbie answered my Facebook query about thankfulness with these words: We just wrote a thank you letter to the donor family who gave my husband, David, a new heart and a second chance at life. It was the hardest letter we wrote. I appreciated reading all of the submissions, and it was probably a good exercise for all of us to spend a few moments reflecting on our blessings. It can be so easy to have a good experience but then forget to express gratitude. And I think that is part of what this parable today is about. All ten lepers were healed, but in their excitement, nine of them forgot to turn around and give thanks. We can learn from these used-to-be-lepers. I believe that these ex-lepers can be the window to teach us about faith, worship, and action. Put another way, I think that thankfulness teaches us about faith, worship, and action. 2

3 Leper lesson #1: Be thankful even in difficult circumstances. This kind of thankfulness is faith. Looking back to the lepers, we are looking at ten men who had the most dreaded disease of their day. It was dreaded because it was both physically disabling and also caused them to be excluded, rejected from the community. Leprosy attacks the body, leaving grotesque sores, rotting digits, and damaged limbs. Because nerve endings are affected, lepers can t feel their extremities and so don t know to pull away when something is painful or hot, leading to more damage of their bodies. Medical treatment wasn t as good 2000 years ago as it is today, so the disease just festered. Because the disease was contagious, the lepers were relegated to leper colonies. They roamed together, scavenging for food, begging for assistance, and always warning others that they were nearby. They were not allowed contact with family or friends. They wouldn t want to infect them. To warn others of their presence they had to shout ahead of them, Unclean! I m a leper! I m unclean! so that people would know to avoid them. The lepers with their sores and missing limbs looked different; it was painful to see them. The lepers with their rotting, decaying flesh smelled different; it was painful to smell them. The lepers with all their yelling sounded different; it was painful to hear them. But the emotional pain of a leper must have been even worse than the physical pain. With no chance at healing, ostracized from society, displaced from family, life would look bleak and lonely. The lepers certainly had difficult circumstances. We don t know a whole lot about those men except that they had leprosy, and at least one of them was a Samaritan. The others were probably Jews. Normally, Jews and Samaritans wouldn t mix, but crises tend to ease differences. They were all afflicted with leprosy and had a need to be healed. Their racial, national, and religious differences didn t matter anymore. So together, these ten men screamed out to Jesus, probably from 50 feet back (about the distance from the back to the front of our sanctuary), Lord, have mercy on us. We want to be well! The ten lepers had been ignored by so many people who didn t want to come near. Can you even imagine how many people got close enough to drop a few coins in a cup? Can you imagine how many people came close enough to whisper a prayer or a blessing? Probably not many! We don t know if the lepers actually expected Jesus to answer or not; but they called out to him anyway asking for healing. And, Jesus responded. Jesus told them to go show themselves to the priest. 3

4 The local priest had a larger job than just preaching on the Sabbath. The local priest doubled as the health inspector. If a person was miraculously healed of leprosy, it was up to the priest to inspect the body, to test for a complete removal of the disease, and to announce the person healed. In such cases, the person would have been cleansed, and at that point, it would be fine for the leper to see his wife again, to hold his daughter again, to look for work again. 1 The priest had the responsibility of declaring that a person could rejoin society. But, that rarely happened. Leviticus gives two chapters (chapter 13-14) of conditions and rules for purification for ex-lepers to rejoin society, but there are no documented cases of lepers being healed naturally. The only healings recorded come from Jesus. So now Jesus says to the lepers, Go and show yourselves to the priest. The lepers have already acted in faith by shouting to Jesus for healing. But next, they walked in faith toward the priest. The text says, 'As they went,' indicating that healing did not take place immediately, in Jesus' presence. The text implies that as they started their journey to the priest, their skin was still as gross as before. They were still an assault to the eyes, nose, and ears. But, "as they went," while they were walking, they were healed. In order for the miracle to happen, these men had to begin walking in faith before their circumstances changed. I think that preacher Andy Cook says it well: You cannot wait until the problems are over to start walking in faith. You cannot put conditions on holy God. You cannot say, "Lord, as soon as there's enough money, I will follow your instructions." You cannot pray, "Lord, if you'll just solve this issue in my family, I'll start going to church." You cannot put conditions on God! Instead, God places a demand for faith on us, before anything at all has changed. God might say, "Love me despite the disease. Obey me despite the lack of talent, or the lack of resources. Follow me now, despite the depression. Say no to the temptation, while it still is difficult. Praise me in the darkest of nights, and in the worst of circumstances." 2 And isn t that what faith is? If we praised God and believed in God only on the best of days, that s not really faith. As the book of Hebrews (chapter 11) reminds us, Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. The lepers were hoping for something better. They were hoping for restoration of their lives, both physically and emotionally. They had not experienced that in many years, but they had faith that it could happen. Although the nine ex-lepers who did not return to give thanks often get chastised for their ingratitude, they still exhibited faith. They dared to shout to Jesus for help. They dared to start walking before they saw any healing on their bodies. So in one way, the parable about being thankful is also about faith. Even when circumstances are difficult, especially then, walking in faith, taking those first steps in a new direction, is an act of faith and trust. 4

5 Leper Lesson #2: Another outcome of thankfulness is worship. Let s look at the one leper who returned to Jesus. The cured leper ran back to Jesus, prostrated himself on the ground at Jesus feet and praised God with a loud voice. This wasn t a whispered thank you. This was a loud, public declaration of his gratitude. He might have been loud out of habit. All the years he d had leprosy he d been forced to yell out warnings of his presence and scream for recognition and help. He had probably yelled for so many years that he didn t know how to be quiet, or even speak in a normal voice. But maybe the cured leper was so grateful that he couldn t help but shout his joy. In Luke 5, Jesus cured another leper but told him not to tell anyone. That would not have worked with this thankful man! He was going to tell everyone and shout his praises to God. In contrast to this ex-leper, think about how timid many of us are about expressing our praise or even speaking about God even when we are very grateful. I don't mean boisterous, empty God-talk, but living our gratitude and praise. This story is a reminder that we are to be loud and effusive in our thanksgiving. There are times for whispered messages of gratitude, and there are times for shared joyful expressions of gratitude. Think about our worship service. ** Each week we sing Glory Be to the Father after we hear the words assuring us of God s forgiveness. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. We take a minute to sing our worship and praise for the forgiveness that God has given to us. After we collect the offering, a token of our gratitude for our many blessings, we sing the doxology. Doxology literally means words of praise. Praise God from whom all blessings flow! Praise God all creatures here below. Praise God above ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. There are words of praise and thanksgiving all through that song. We worship and give thanks at church, but I m sure that there are other times when you are at home, work, or school, with friends, family, or alone that you give thanks for the blessings that surround you. Make sure you do that! There are probably times that we want something, but once it happens, once we get what we want, we forget to return to say thanks. Have you ever heard of someone who complains about their aging parents and the amount of time they spend running errands or caring for them? Do they not remember the numbers of years that their parents took care of them... changing diapers, feeding them, running them to soccer games, attending piano recitals, saving up money for college? Have you ever heard of someone who was helped by another person? They received excellent treatment from a doctor, attentive mentoring from a teacher, a listening ear from a friend. Maybe the gift doesn t even seem repayable, but they don t even try. Do you know anyone who has received blessings from God but they don t take time to acknowledge God s goodness? Could they 5

6 pause to say grace before meals? Could they pause from the busyness of their lives and say, Thank you? Let s make sure that we are not lumped in with any of those people I just talked about. Instead, let s make the doxology, the words of praise, our daily refrain. Whether it is loud or whispered, let us show our thankfulness in worship. And that leads Leper Lesson #3: Thankfulness can move us to action. The one leper took action. He turned away from the direction he was headed. He turned from the priest, he put off running back to his family and swooping them up in a hug, he turned back from his invitation to rejoin society in order to give thanks to Jesus. Jesus was clearly impressed with the one man... and disappointed with the others. Although Jesus didn t say that they needed to return to him, clearly, Jesus had an expectation that they would return. Only one in ten fulfilled that expectation. That makes me wonder: What kind of action is Jesus looking for from each of us? Is there some nudging within us to do something important? Is there a specific walk of faith that we have been flirting with? It may not be stated outright, but is there some action that we are supposed to take? Think on that. Pray on that. And then, like all the lepers who stepped out in faith to go to the priest, or the one ex-leper who returned to give thanks to Jesus, step out in faith. Take that step of action. For most of us, this story of the one who said thank you, is a familiar story. My hope and prayer today is that when you hear it the next time, or, when you are in a situation in which it is appropriate to stop and give thanks, that you will. And, that you will realize that thankfulness is more than just gratitude. Thankfulness is an expression of faith, of worship, and of action. Be thankful in all circumstances. As Psalm 103 says, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits. Thanks be to God! Amen. 1 Cook, Andy. A Lifestyle of Thanksgiving Luke 17. Preached at Shirley Hills Baptist Church, Warner Robins, Georgia on November 11, Cook, Andy. A Lifestyle of Thanksgiving Luke 17. Preached at Shirley Hills Baptist Church, Warner Robins, Georgia on November 11,