On Being Thankful

So there is this time in the Gospel of Luke where Jesus is about half-way to Jerusalem. His journey is interrupted by ten Lepers who stood at a distance, the common practice in the day, and screamed to this man they had heard so much about, “Have pity on us!”

And Jesus does. He speaks with the voice of the one who said “Let there be light.” And so leprosy didn’t have a chance. He simply tells them to go show themselves to the priest (the expert back then on whether someone had been healed) and they would discover they could re-enter their old lives.

Now you probably already know just how much these men had lost at this point. The only community they had were other lepers, they had been cut off from their families, their vocations, their home. Everything, and so at this point they were at the end of their rope, and in an instance, Jesus gives it all back. But what happens next is really the point of this story. Ten men are restored. They are made whole again, but only one comes back. The foreigner, the non-Israelite.

He was the guy who didn’t grow up hearing about stories about Moses and Elijah. He had never seen flannelgraphs of seas that part or bulls burning with fire from Heaven. But he was the one who came back.

What’s interesting to me is the story that is right before it. It’s some of the most difficult things that Jesus says and I’d like to quote it here verbatim:

“Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? Won’t he rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”

Now if you thinking clearly, you might be wondering what just happened with Jesus. Where is all this love and grace stuff that Jesus is so well known for, and rightfully so? This almost seems out of character for Him doesn’t it? I mean, “We are only unworthy servants? We have only done our duty?”

I’ve learned through the years that when Jesus upsets me, there is probably something that I need to listen to closer. And I think that’s certainly true here. Because I don’t Jesus is getting rid of that whole Love and Grace thing with this paragraph. Instead I think this might be one of the most loving things he could say. And I think Luke puts these two stories together on purpose.

I am a BUICK, a brought up in church kid. And while there are plenty of positives that come along with that, one of the negatives is that you can forget how good God is. Last month, I heard a speaker talking about my generation, and he said that when the older generations describe us the word that almost unanimously comes to mind is “Entitled.” In the words of Randy Harris, “We were born on third base and think we’ve hit a triple.”

Maybe this is why Jesus says this hard saying to us.

Maybe that’s why only the foreigner comes back to thank Him.

Is there something about the familiarity with God that makes us less grateful for His actions in our lives? I think this is grace Jesus is offering because He knows the toxic kind of life that is void of gratitude. It’s good for us to remember who we are and who God is. We forget that with every rise and falling of our chest we are breathing in oxygen that is a gift. With every sunrise and sunset God gives us another day.

See this is a story about gratitude.

You know I wonder how often those nine lepers thought about this? Think about them for a minute, I imagine they followed the Jesus news of the day. They heard about him being killed and raising from the dead. They heard about this group of disciples that actually started going around the world doing the very things he was doing, and they had walked away from all of it.

They had been healed and brought back into the community, but it could have been so much more. They could have been more than healed, they could have taken part in the healing of the world. Starting with themselves. They might have lived a life from there that recognized the gift of touch, of family, of God’s good world. They might have lived a life of radical graditude filled with the joy of knowing how generous God is.

But so could I, and so could you.

May this be a season for you to step back and appreciate how good God is. May you come to recognize the shoulders you stand on in life. May we fight entitlement with gratitude. In the words of Jesus may you come to recognize that you are a servant, and this is your duty.

So from our family to yours Happy Thanksgiving.