Ordinary XXVIII: Ten Lepers
“Where are the other nine,” Jesus asked. Did I not heal ten lepers? Where are the other nine? Did only one come back to say “thank you?”
In the story for today, a group of ten lepers were in a small leper colony in a small village outside of Jerusalem. Three days before, Jesus had healed a leper and the news had spread and these lepers too were hoping that Jesus would come by and perhaps one of them would be healed. Jesus did come by, and the lepers began shouting to him: “Have mercy upon us. Have mercy upon us. We need your help. We need you.”
And Jesus did something unheard of: he crossed the invisible twelve foot boundary and came before each leper and touched each leper. Everyone was surprised, stunned, shocked; for Jesus was now contaminated. He then told them to go into Jerusalem to the priests and get a certificate of health that they had been cured. .... On the way, the lepers noticed their white blotches began to leave them and they knew they were being healed. They were elated. Ecstatic. Free.
Off they ran as fast as they could go. To see a husband, a wife, that they hadn’t seen for weeks. To see a son or daughter, a father or mother, a grandfather a grandmother they hadn’t seen for months. Off they ran to see their field, their fishing boat, their store, their garden, their oxen that they hadn’t seen for who knows, how long. As fast as they could go, they were so happy to be well after all this time.
But...one remembered, only one, returned, fell at Jesus’ feet, worshipped him, and thanked him. And Jesus asked, “Where are the other nine? Were not ten healed? Where are the other nine? And only you, a Samaritan, a foreigner, are you the only one to have returned to say thank you. Go in peace. Your faith has made you well.”
Where are the other nine? Is true that healing the human heart of ingratitude is a greater miracle than healing the skin of leprosy? Is that true? Where were the other nine? Why didn’t they come back?
How do you heal ingratitude? Let’s first look at the nine lepers and then the one leper?
The nine? They were very religious as long as they needed God. That is, the lepers were shouting, “heal us, Lord; heal us, Lord; we need you; we need you.” But after they were healed, they felt they no longer needed God anymore. I see that all the time in my work: people crying out in pain of a divorce, cancer, heart attack, bankruptcy, “I need you Lord. my life is all messed up. I need your help, God.” But shortly thereafter, when the crisis has passed, life gets back to normal and they are not calling out to God anymore. People cry out to God in crisis, when their need is desperate.
… “the result and irony of the miracle was to drive these lepers away from God.” When they needed God, they were close to God; but when they didn’t need God, they were off ‘busy being well’. The strange irony of the healing was to drive them away from God.
The nine lepers were so busy being well. I can understand that. They had been separated from their family and friends and work due to the quarantine, and now they were free to return to those relationships. And they became so busy being well..... gotta rush to see mom and dad, brother and sister, aunt and uncle and the garden and the farm and the shop and the fishing boat, all those people and places we haven’t seen for so long.
Whew, they were so busy being well, that they no longer had time to feel thanks or express thanks to Jesus. We all personally understand this one clearly: being too busy to have a life of inner gratitude towards God. We hit the floor in the morning running and fall asleep exhausted at night with not even a decent prayer except maybe for a quickie before one meal per day. Words of gratitude? Feelings of gratitude? Busy, Lord. Very busy being well.
And the ultimate tragedy is that the nine lepers got the healing, but not the healer; they experienced a miracle but not the miracle worker; they received the gift but didn’t know and love the giver.
We can become so busy playing with our little trains of life that we forget the God who has come to visit us, be with us, love us, see us, and watch us. That’s the real tragedy of the nine: they missed the true blessing. That is, they got the miracle but didn’t discover the miracle worker who so enormously blessed them.
But let’s focus on the one, the one who came back to say “Thank you.” The Samaritan, the foreigner, the outsider.
The story for today makes an important point that the one who came back with a heart of gratitude was not a Jew; he was not part of their religious establishment; he was an outsider to the faith. We find several stories in the Gospels where it is the foreigner, the outsider, the Samaritan as being the one who has great faith or great thanksgiving.
So also, within the household of faith, we can become used to God blessing and caring for us; we can begin to take God for granted ; we begin to expect his blessings as our God-given rights. Whereas someone who hasn’t been part of the Faith, they may be deeply grateful to God for the smallest of gifts, for the littlest of his blessings. When you become very familiar with someone, you often start to take that someone for granted, and that is what we often do with God.
We take God’s blessings for granted. So it is no surprise to me that it was a foreigner, a Samaritan, an outsider of the religious establishment was the only one who paused.... remembered.....and came back to Jesus to say thank you. The other nine expected God’s blessings.
A story: of a man by the name of Pastor Rinkhart. He was pastor of one congregation for thirty years. He was pastor of a church in Prussia from 1619 to 1649, during the Thirty Years War in Europe. From the year the war began until the year the war ended, he was the pastor in the same walled city. His was a walled town, so all the refugees from the thirty year’s war flocked into his city to find safety inside the city walls as the battles raged around them. His town was overrun with poverty, the plague, and all the perils of war. It was awful. It was hell on earth. It wasn’t like being a pastor in Broadmeadows for thirty years at all.
By the end of the thirty years war, he was the only pastor left in town alive; all the other pastors had died, so he alone was to bury the plagued villagers and refugees from war. Somewhere in the middle of all of that suffering, he wrote a hymn, which is perhaps the second greatest hymn of the Reformation. ll. “Now, thank we all our God; with hearts and hands and voices; who wondrous things hath done; in whom this world rejoices. Who from our mother’s arms, has blessed us on our way, with countless gifts of love and still is ours today.” Incredible. What an incredible sense of thanksgiving in the human heart. How beautiful are hearts filled with genuine thanksgiving.
You see, the greatest miracle is not to be healed of leprosy or cancer or coronaries; the greatest miracle in when my human heart is healed of ingratitude, so my human heart is then filled with daily thanksgiving .....to God and others..... for God’s countless gifts of love. Please, God; heal my heart of ingratitude.