Year C

Luke 17:11-19

The Rev. Denise Vaughn

A Life of Gratitude

What are you grateful for? I would bet that if I asked each one of you that question I would hear most likely, family, work, home, plenty of food on my table, peace, and my health. These are things to be grateful for, certainly things I am grateful for also. Some might even say they are grateful for their faith. Did you know that the words “faith” and “gratitude” are two words for the same thing: to practice gratitude is to practice faith? For both are not necessarily something we have, but something we do. Faith means to live a life of gratitude by expressing or showing our complete trust in God and we do that by following Jesus. In short, to “have faith” is to live it, and to live it, is to give thanks.

Every Sunday, we pray and confess that it is truly right and our greatest joy to give thanks and praise to God. We are called to be grateful to God with our whole life for God’s goodness. This is the grateful sort of faith that made a Samaritan, a leper, truly and deeply well. His faith made him well. His faith is his salvation. For healing and salvation cannot be separated one from the other and as it is often the case in Luke’s gospel, the least likely person becomes the greatest example of faith. So here again, we find Luke presenting the Good News with another story this one today of the ten lepers. As Luke relates the stories in his gospel, a gospel of storytelling, they have included all kinds of people to show Jesus responding with God’s love to teach the values of God, while challenging the distorted ways of the world.

On the way to Jerusalem, near Samaria, Jesus and his disciples encounter ten men with leprosy. These men suffered from what we now call Hanson’s disease. Today, this disease is treatable but for thousands of years, this disease went untreated and caused permanent damage to skin, nerves, limbs and eyes, it compromised the immune system and quickened death. The social alienation and isolation of those suffering from this disease is hard to exaggerate. They were so feared that even to cross the shadow of one thought to have leprosy was to risk infection. They were forced to make their own community, not unlike the leper colonies that still exist in some parts of the world.

They see Jesus on the road and most likely recognize him, perhaps by his reputation as a holy man. Keeping there distance they shout out “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” “When he sees them, he didn’t ask any questions, he gives them a few instructions and as they went, they were healed. The healing itself is almost a sideline event; for he heals without fanfare. The focus is on the response of those who were healed. Only one-a foreigner, and a despised one at that, comes back to bow down at Jesus’ feet, to worship and give thanks. He praised God with a loud voice and Jesus said, “Get up and go,” “your faith has made you well” or better said, “Your faith has saved you.” Only one saw that what Jesus had done did not just mean that his own life would improve; rather, it meant something more. In this encounter, Jesus points to a profound understanding of God and of faith.

He offered this grateful leper a wellness that runs beyond the physical. His gratitude had made him whole and saved him. Leading us to see that gratitude indeed has something to do with genuine faith. The Samaritan leper was not only medically cured from a severe disease but was also given a redirection of his life and faith. A healing occurs, but something even greater occurs: he is restored to wellness through his relationship with God, as expressed in thanksgiving and praise. When he fell at Jesus’ feet and gave thanks, he demonstrated a faith that is complete. Yet, it is not his faith that has brought about his healing. We often think of faith as being about cause and effect. You pray for something and it either happens or it doesn’t. Once again we hear Jesus telling us not to be concerned with the quantity of faith-whether we have enough, that is, to make our prayers “work” as if faith is a matter of cause and effect. It is not the faith of the leper that heals him, instead, his faith expressed in his worship of God has enabled him to find peace and well-being. The nature of faith is to practice gratitude in all circumstances and it is our thanking that saves and heals us.

Did you know that there is quite a lot of evidence today that shows that grateful people, those who practice gratefulness, are found to be healthier, happier people? There is a medical group who launched a web site titled “Your faith made you well/made you whole/saved you” where they cite years of research and religious teachings urging gratitude, and found evidence which supported that gratefulness is a stress reducer, it produces more hopefulness and there are links between gratitude and the health of our immune systems. People who practice their faith recover quicker from surgery. Luke, the physician wants us to see that healing and salvation are connected.

Therefore, how can we not practice gratitude when we come to know that God the giver of all good gifts offers us wholeness, healing, and salvation?  To practice gratitude can change our lives and it can change the character of a congregation. When Christians practice gratitude from faith filled lives, they come to worship God not just to “get something out of it,” or because they feel they have to, but to give thanks and praise to God the giver of wholeness and wellness. Our giving is transformed to glad gratitude, and joyful givers. The mission of the church becomes work of grateful hearts and hands and God promises to be at work in our lives and in the world. The only proper response to any act of God’s love is to give thanks and praise to God.

Yet, there will always be those who are helped by Jesus who do not come back to give thanks and I believe Luke tells this story to not only show us what faith is not as he gives us a glimpse of the disappointment Jesus must have felt when nine did not return. But, we also see the joy he experienced when one recognized the truth and gave thanks. For Luke, for Paul, who endured much suffering and gave thanks in all circumstances. He “endured everything for the sake of the elect, so that they may also obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus.” And for the writer of the psalm today, faith is praising, thanking, blessing, and glorifying God. So as we go on our way, let us rejoice and give thanks to God for his love and salvation; for in giving thanks in all things, we find that God is indeed in all things. “Get up and go on your way; your faith has saved you.”