By Pastor Stephen Hess –
November is a month when many of us think about gratitude, and one of my favorite accounts of gratitude is found in the encounter that Jesus had with ten lepers in Luke 17.
The encounter takes place while Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem and made a stop along the way. Luke writes, “And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices, saying, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us’” (Lk. 17:12-13). It is not surprising that the lepers stood at a distance. According to Old Testament law, lepers were ceremonially unclean and lived alone as outcasts (Lev. 13:45-46). These ten lepers appear to have heard about Jesus and believed that he could help them in their plight.
Jesus responds by sending them on a journey: “When he saw them he said to them, ‘Go and show yourself to the priests’” (Lk. 17:14). In order for a leper to become “clean,” not only did the leper need to be healed of his disease but he needed to be inspected and pronounced clean by a priest. Jesus was sending them to the priests before they had even been healed of their disease. You can’t help but wonder if some of them were thinking it would be a wasted journey.
Nevertheless, all ten lepers obeyed the word of Jesus and as a result of their obedience, they were cleansed while in route to the priests. I can only imagine how delightfully surprising it must have been for them to watch their leprosy miraculously disappear with each step they took.
Yet the story doesn’t end with the miracle; it ends by focusing on how one leper responded to the miracle. Luke writes, “Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus answered, ‘Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?’” (Lk. 17:15-18).
Most people read this story as a simple lesson on gratitude. Although Jesus healed ten lepers, only one of them was grateful. Therefore, we are told that we should be like the one who was grateful rather than the nine who were ungrateful. Although this interpretation is quite common, I think it misses the point. It probably isn’t accurate to say that the other nine lepers were ungrateful. Leprosy came not only with physical affliction but social ostracism. Given the horrible nature of this disease, I’m sure they were all quite grateful to be freed from it!
So if it wasn’t gratitude that distinguished the one leper from the rest, what was it? The answer is what the one leper did with his gratitude: He gave thanks and praise to God. It’s one thing to feel gratitude, but it’s quite another to show gratitude. The leper that returned to Jesus was unique because he recognized that his healing had come from God and the only appropriate response was to praise the one who had healed him.
There’s a lesson here for all of us: Spiritually speaking, we are all just like that leper. If you are a Christian, you were once afflicted by sin and without any hope for cleansing except through his sovereign mercy. Through faith in Christ you have been cleansed, so how will you now show your gratitude?
Each week when we gather for worship we are, in a sense, doing what the one leper did—we are returning to Christ to give him thanks and praise for what he has done for us. This attitude of thanks and praise should not be limited to one day of the week but should permeate our entire lives, for a life of thanks and praise to God is the only appropriate response to the eternal gift we have been given.