Have you ever been overcome with thankfulness?
Keeping a job? Finding work? Surviving an accident or illness? Finding something or someone precious?
A particular moment for no reason suddenly overcome with gratitude for simply being?
Around the table. A walk down the street. Driving home from work? Even at death and in grief there is a sad overwhelming thankfulness for having shared a life.
What are the moments, times, events of thankfulness?
Have you ever been overcome with thankfulness?
What did you do next?
How about when we completely forget to be thankful? Unaware. Too busy. Distracted? Afraid?
What stops us from giving thanks? What ties us down?
Our Gospel lesson today is from Luke, it is a healing story, but it is really more like a parable. Luke is telling a healing story with a deep cutting lesson, just like a parable. This isn’t just another healing story.
The story is very simple. Ten men with leprosy from a distance call out to Jesus for mercy. They are told to go to the priest. On the way they are made clean. Only one returns to Jesus giving loud thanks and praise to God. Jesus tells him that his faith has made him well.
Here is the punch line. Are you ready? This is really funny. The one leper who returned giving thanks and praise? He was a Samaritan! Isn’t that a kicker!
We don’t really catch the cutting irony today. But when this was written in the first century it would have been a bitter pill to swallow. Jews and Samaritans disagreed on what it meant to be the people of Israel, and they disagreed violently.
So Jesus, who was a Jew, told this to his followers, who were all Jews, that the nine Jewish lepers missed the boat, but the one Samaritan got the point, only the Samaritan had the faith that could give enthusiastic praise and thanks to God.
For us it would be kind of like if the nine were Christians and the one was a radical Muslim.
Pick a figure of disdain and distrust, and then portray them as closer to God, with a deeper and more responsive faith than ourselves. That is the punch line.
We are meant to question ourselves and our faith.
How do we respond to God’s mercy? Are we like the nine or the one?
Will our lives show overwhelming thanks and praise to God?
How will our lives reflect praise and thanks to God?
That is what all stewardship is about. That is what all ministry is about.
All stewardship, all ministry is about returning and giving loud thanks and praise to God for the person, for the life, sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus.
How will I be a faithful steward of God’s mercy?
How will I live out my ministry in response to God’s mercy?
Will I be like the nine?
Or will I be like the one?
We are meant to carry those questions with us.
But more importantly we are also meant to carry with us the experience of God being present, of God bringing mercy to a broken and suffering creation.
At the heart of this miracle parable stands the person of Jesus.
He is the faithfulness of God making the world well, that we may stand up and go on our way.
May our lives be overwhelmed.
May our lives be loud voices of praise and thanks.