Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our father and our Lord Jesus Christ, powerful blessings to you from the Holy Spirit, Amen. On the basis of the Gospel lesson this evening, “Give thanks with a grateful heart.”
Brothers and sisters it is good to be here with you this Thanksgiving Eve. It is good to be back here with you after spending an incredible summer here. I give thanks to God for you, the people of St. John’s Williamsburg, and bring you greetings from one of your seminaries Concordia St. Louis.
This Gospel text, though only 7 verses, really packs a punch in what Luke is conveying to us. Appropriately this is the traditional text for this special evening service we call “Thanksgiving Eve Prayer.” In this story we see ten lepers, the untouchables of society, being cleansed by Jesus. It’s a remarkable story for sure, but the interesting this is that only one comes back. This means that 90% of the people just healed by Jesus do not come back to give thanks to him for what he has done to them and for them. St. Luke seems to be teaching us a lesson on proper manners. It seems that giving thanks, as it is today, was also then taken for granted. St. Luke seems to be telling us to give thanks with a grateful heart. What is it that you all are thankful for? (assume rhetorical question will be answered). I’m thankful for my family, my friends, my education, and for each day God gives me. We have a tradition at our table for Thanksgiving that before we dig into the meal we go around saying one thing we are thankful for. I’ll have to tell you that we have Thanksgiving at a very big house on Long Island every year. So one year we were going around the table and when it came to one of my cousins to say what he was thankful for he declared, “Uncle Harvey’s paycheck.” Give thanks with a grateful heart.
It always amazes me how quickly Thanksgiving comes around. It seems like just yesterday I was helping out with Vacation Bible School here in August, and now I am here for Thanksgiving Eve. It seems that once Halloween ends the run up to Christmas begins. I have seen some homes remove Halloween decorations and put up Christmas ones immediately after. Do you all get the feeling that I do that Thanksgiving has become a forgotten holiday? Oh sure, we know it’s there because it usually involves eating food, maybe with family, maybe with friends, in some form or another we are aware of its existence. Thanksgiving is also the unofficial official start to the Christmas season. The day after Thanksgiving is commonly known as “Black Friday” when people go out and shop till they drop for the next months holidays best deals. There’s a parade that happens across the bridge here that you all may be aware of, but how does that parade end? It ends with Santa Claus, a symbol of Christmas, riding down Broadway in his sleigh. Yeah we know this “Turkey Day” exists but I’m talking about the actual Holiday of Thanksgiving, do we celebrate it?
Our culture and our own selves have become so engulfed by this commercialization of not only Christmas but our entire lives that we acknowledge the presence of Thanksgiving, but I have a feeling we leave out the Thanks and the Giving part. So much so that isn’t it the case that we have given a nickname for this holiday that completely eliminates the name “Thanksgiving?” Yes, in fact, I just used it myself, “Turkey Day!” Give thanks with a grateful heart? More like “give thanks with a full tummy!” The problem is, my brothers and sisters, that we do not give thanks with a grateful heart. All too often we go through life making excuses for why we cannot give thanks with a grateful heart. But all too often we give thanks for the things that fill our stomachs. Whether it be food or whether it be the fact we fill our minds and bodies with so much useless stuff that it absolutely renders us unable to give thanks with a grateful heart.
Leprosy was the untouchable disease. There are pages and pages of laws concerning how to deal with leprosy in an Old Testament book called Leviticus. Lepers were unclean and cut off from society because of their disease. They could not engage in worship, they could not live at home, they had to live in isolation or in colonies with other lepers. It was a incurable, nasty, hideous, devastating disease. Another thing here is that Jesus was passing by near the border of Samaria. Samaria was a place inhabited by people called Samaritans. Samaritans were absolutely detestable people to the Jews. They were incredibly unclean even without disease. The disease in and of itself was that they existed! So wonder of wonders that amongst the ten lepers here one of them is, you guessed it, a Samaritan.
In our own lives we have the untouchables of society, don’t we? There are many people outside these very walls who society has deemed “untouchable.” They are the poor, they are the homeless, they are the teenage boys and young men who take solace in gangs, they are the teenage girls who become pregnant and are deserted by the boys who took part in this. The untouchables are the mentally disabled, the untouchables are those whose skin color are darker than others, the untouchables are those who speak a different language, the untouchables are the babies aborted by the millions each year because of the sins of their parents. Our society is full of untouchables. At first glance it seems Jesus here kind of waves them off. They, the untouchables, cry out to Jesus from afar and he tells them to go on their way and show themselves to the priests. What is this? Where is the Jesus who touches and heals? Where is the Jesus who is face to face when he heals? Why the seemingly impersonal send off to be someone elses problem? It is worth noting that according to those laws in Leviticus that in order to be declared clean and to re-enter society one must show themselves to the priests. So if these ten lepers wanted to be declared well, to be declared clean, they had to go show themselves to the priests to prove they were clean. If they did not do this, they could not be told they were well, and they could not re-enter society.
While going along the way the lepers were cleansed. The text does not say whether or not there was a debate to go back and thank Jesus first then go to the priests, it just says one of them turned back. Give thanks with a grateful heart. This left this one former leper in a minority of one. And just to add to the mess, this one leper who was returning back to thank Jesus was the one Leper who was also a Samaritan! How ridiculous is this? Why would this guy disobey Jesus and not go to the priest to be told he was made well and could re-enter society? Does he also not remember that just because he was cleansed of his leprosy that he is still a Samaritan and cannot be in contact with Jews, for Jesus was a Jew. What was this guy thinking? He had to go show himself to the priest if he wanted any chance at being declared well and re-entering society.
Brothers and sisters, was there ever a time when you were supposed to be going along about your day to be involved in society, to enter it so to speak, when you stopped right in your tracks with great news, with great healing? Was there ever a time when you may have been on your way to run an errand when you received the phone call that someone you loved had been healed? Was there ever a time when you realized you had become healed? Did you ever fall on your face to thank God? This man, in that moment, could not have cared less about seeing the priest in the temple or re-entering society. At that moment, this dirty untouchable Samaritan had to do one thing and that was “praise God in a loud voice.” So he went back to Jesus, threw himself before him and gave thanks with a grateful heart. In the book of Hebrews the writer tells us that Jesus is our High Priest. He is the one who declares us clean on account of his sacrifice. This Samaritan did not disobey Jesus, this Samaritan showed himself to a priest, the priest, the high priest, Jesus Christ, and gave thanks with a grateful heart.
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