Gospel: Luke 17:11-19
Every time I read this passage from Luke, one word without fail leaps to the front. That word is gratitude.
Ten lepers were healed; only one returned to say “thank you.” I have no doubt that deep inside, all 10 were incredibly grateful for the gift they’d received. After suffering with a physical ailment that made them the scourge of society and caused their separation from the community, having unexpectedly been healed … made clean … made whole … was I’m sure a cause of great joy. But they didn’t express that gratitude.
All that is except for the one who returned to Jesus, the one who came back to say “thank you.” What’s remarkable about that one is that he’s identified as a Samaritan. This is the second time in eight chapters in Luke that a Samaritan does something unexpected. In an earlier parable offered by Jesus in chapter 10, it’s a Samaritan who stops to offer aid to a man beaten and left on the side of the road. Now it’s a Samaritan who does the unexpected thing in returning to a Jewish rabbi – a member of a social community that scorned those from Samaria – to express gratitude.
It’s worth noting that to the audience of Jesus’ time it would have been shocking in both instances to have the hero (for lack of a better word) be someone from the outside. Here, the Samaritan is a leper. He would have been doubly ostracized because of his community and his appearance and would have had twice as many reasons to avoid Jesus, or at the very least leave without a word.
But he doesn’t. This man, this person who had every reason at the outset to say no to the approaching Jesus, came back to him to say yes to the one who was the opening to his healing. In a time when it was assumed Samaritans were on the wrong side of nearly everything, here he was right.
“It is right, and a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere to give thanks.”[1] Listen to that again, with some added emphasis on three words: “It is right, and a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere to give thanks.”
Regardless of the circumstances or the time we are called to express gratitude. Notice in the words from the Eucharistic prayer that I just shared that we’re not giving thanks because things are good and joyful; the act of giving thanks is in and of itself good and joyful.
In our Gospel reading, the Samaritan returns to express gratitude for a good outcome. But how in the world can any of us even consider expressing gratitude – even consider saying “thank you” – for something that’s not so good? How can we who may be facing illness, death, loneliness, a job crisis, a marriage going through a difficult stretch, a family facing division, or any of countless other circumstances life throws at us express thanks?
Henri Nouwen addressed this in his little book, Turn My Mourning into Dancing. He acknowledges that expressing gratitude takes effort; “Living gratefully requires practice.”[2] He puts it into the context of pruning, the importance of which those of you who work in your yards and gardens know very well. Pruning is important to the health of a garden; cutting back the old makes room for the new. As Nouwen writes, that’s the important thing about gratitude – in the good times, yes, but especially in the bad. He says,
Grateful people learn to celebrate even amid life’s hard and harrowing memories because they know that pruning is no mere punishment, but preparation. When our gratitude for the past is only partial, our hope for the future can likewise never be full. But our submitting to God’s pruning work will not ultimately leave us sad, but hopeful for what can happen in and through us. Harvesttime will bring its own blessings.[3]
As difficult as it is (and I don’t doubt it is), it doesn’t matter whether we receive something good or something bad. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the first time or the fiftieth time something has been given to us. Express gratitude. I think that’s the hope of God, and gratitude even in its most difficult moments is “the basic Christian response to God.”[4] We’ll never be perfect in how we offer that response; our gratitude in the good times and even more in the bad will never come close to what we might strive to achieve. But we should always keep striving. We should always keep struggling. We should always keep trying.
Express gratitude for all that God has done. Express gratitude for life and creation, for family and friends, for best efforts and satisfying accomplishments. And yes, even when every instinct is screaming out to be angry or upset or to retreat from the world – especially in those moments – express gratitude “for those disappointments and failures that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on [God] alone.”[5] No matter how we might feel about the cards we’re dealt at any moment in life, we should be the healed leper who returns to Jesus. We should always and everywhere give thanks.
[1] From Eucharistic Prayer A. Book of Common Prayer, p. 361.
[2] Henri Nouwen. Turn My Mourning into Dancing, p. 19.
[3] Ibid.
[4] John M. Buchanan, “Luke 17:11-19 – Homiletical Perspective.” Feasting on the Word: Year C, Vol. 4, p. 169.
[5] “A General Thanksgiving.” Book of Common Prayer, p. 836.