Bible Text: St Luke 17:11–19 | Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christian Preus
No one likes an ingrate. You do something for someone, and they don’t say thanks or worse they resent you for your kindness. And it makes you not want to waste your kindness on people. But kindness is never wasted. Kindness is a fruit of the Spirit. It’s divine. Of those ten men Jesus healed of leprosy, nine were ingrates. And He still healed them. He knew nine wouldn’t come back. He knows everything. And He healed them anyway. This is the character of our God. He’s merciful to ingrates. Jesus speaks of His Father in the Sermon on the Mount and says, “He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” Jesus shows this kindness to us on the cross. There God suffered, God died, for ingrates. And I mean for total ingrates, not just for us Christians who fail to give Him enough thanks, but for those who totally reject His gift, spurn his suffering and his blood, for Judas, for Caiaphas, for the scoffing secularist, for those who take the gift, say a pretend thanks, and then devote their lives to the works of the flesh. He bears their sins and dies their death, even though they’ll never say thanks, never fall at His feet and give glory to God. But he does it anyway because that’s who He is. And that’s the first lesson of the ten lepers. Learn the overflowing kindness of your God.
But you don’t want to be an ingrate. Ingrates go to hell. Gratefulness is synonymous with faith. So three things.
First, in order not to be an ingrate, you have to actually be thankful for what God gives you. Have you ever received a gift you just didn’t want? So you still say thanks but it’s more like an “o, thanks,” and then you stuff it in the garage or the closet and eventually take it to the dump? My son once, a long time ago, in kindergarten (not here), had a friend give him a picture he had drawn. The teacher saw the cute little exchange (almost everything five-year-olds do is cute), and told my son to say thank you. And my son wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t say thanks. So then mom and dad get called in after school. There’s been a problem with your son. Johnny gave him a picture and he refused to say thank you. So I interrogated him, we taught you better than that, why didn’t you say thank you? The answer? Because I wasn’t thankful. I didn’t like the picture. I wasn’t thankful. There’s honesty at least. He wouldn’t lie and say thanks when he wasn’t thankful. And then I saw the picture. I don’t think I would’ve been thankful either.
The point is thankfulness is not in words. It’s in the heart. And you can’t force it. Are you actually thankful for what God has given you?
All ten lepers were thankful in this sense – they actually appreciated what they got. It wasn’t like a Christmas gift that you shove in the closet. They wanted to be cured of leprosy, obviously, it’s what they asked for, and they were. They were grateful for the gift.
But it is one thing to be grateful for a gift and quite another to be grateful for the giver. I was sick last week. Nasty cold. Makes you feel terrible. I am grateful for my health today. I appreciate it. I realize what a blessing it is, because I didn’t have it a few days ago. Who gave me my health? How did I get healthy? My immune system, mint tea, sleep, vitamin C. These are what you call instrumental causes. Medicine, doctors, sunshine, all are instruments God uses to make you healthy. But God gives it. If a man writes you a million-dollar check, do you thank the pen that wrote the check? Do you thank the paper the check is made of? No. They’re instruments. You thank the man who wrote you the check. He’s the agent. He gives it. It’s his generosity. And this is with everything you have, God is the agent. He showers it on you. Your health, your home, your family, your smarts, your talents, your job, your enjoyments, your everything.
The nine lepers didn’t know who gave them their health. That sounds strange, doesn’t it? How could they not know? They cried out to Jesus, didn’t they? And Jesus said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And then on the way, they were healed. Obviously Jesus cured them. But who is Jesus? Is he only God’s instrument? Is he like the doctor who performs the surgery, but really it’s God who gives you health? Is he like the pen that’s used to write the check, but really it’s the man, not the pen, who gave you the money? Who actually gave them their health, cured their leprosy? All ten lepers would have answered correctly: God did! But only one knew who He was and where to find Him. Only one fell down at Jesus’ feet.
The Greek there is explicit. Our translation doesn’t catch it. The Samaritan came back praising God and fell at His feet, is what the Greek says. He fell at God’s feet, the same feet that would be pierced for him on the cross.
Who gives you everything you have? Not some far off God. Not some unknown God. No, the One who gives you every blessing, who heals all your diseases, and gives you every bodily good in its time, He is the One who has become your Brother, who has assumed your flesh and blood, who has borne your griefs and carried your sorrows. The reason He gives you everything else is because He first gives you His life on the cross. With that comes everything. Without it comes nothing.
Leprosy is actually the sign of this. It was a bodily disease, but it was also a social and a theological disease. If you had leprosy in ancient Israel you were cast off. They cry out to Jesus from far off, it says, because they can’t come near Him. They can’t come near anyone. They have to yell, “unclean, unclean” to warn people away. And they can’t go to the Temple where God promised to meet His people. They are separated from men and from God. And that’s the picture of sin, it’s what sin does. The works of the flesh that St. Paul talks about in our Epistle lesson – not just the crass ones – drunkenness and sexual immorality – but the ones in the heart, hatreds and envies and grudges and divisions and strife, they set us apart from one another and from God. They break relationships with the people around us. And they offend our righteous God and call for His punishment. And Jesus, the eternal Son of the Father, true God and true man, He bears them all in His body on the cross and He takes away the divide between us and each other and us and God by pouring out forgiveness in His blood. And from that cross flows every blessing you have; every blessing that has ever been given to anyone, whether he’s thankful for it or not, comes because the Father gave His Son for us and for the whole world. This is the source of God’s kindness to everyone.
So the last point of gratefulness, of Christian gratefulness. The first is that you actually have to be grateful. The second is that your thanks is directed to the One who actually gave you the gift. The final is that you come back to Him for more. The greatest act of worship is not, obviously, what the nine lepers did. What did they do? They went to the priests, they gave an offering. And you come to church and you give your offerings. But that is not the highest worship, in fact it isn’t worship at all, unless you do what the Samaritan leper did. He doesn’t give any money, he doesn’t follow any religious rules, he comes to Jesus, he praises His Savior, He hears His words. That’s what gratefulness does.
Not because of some obligation imposed on you. Not because these are the rules – say thank you. If anything, the Samaritan leper breaks the rules. Jesus told him to go to the priests; he comes back to Jesus instead. Because it’s not about obeying rules of courtesy. Paul calls them fruits of the Spirit for a reason: fruits come naturally from a tree. They can’t be forced. You come to Jesus because you want to. Because you know every good thing in your life comes from Him. And you know the bad things in your life, the works of the flesh that still haunt you, from within and from without, they have no other cure than from the God-Man who healed those lepers. And you know, like that Samaritan, what it means to be filthy and then be clean, because of the Word Jesus speaks. You know what it means to be in despair and then to have it lifted because Jesus hears your cries for mercy. You know what it means to be separated from men and God, and then to have perfect union with God and your fellow Christians, with no blame, no judgment, only pure forgiveness and kindness in the body given for you and the blood poured out for you.
So come again and again back to Jesus, where He has promised to be, in His Supper and in His Word, and give your highest worship, by asking more from Him and receiving from His boundless kindness and saying again from a peaceful, joyful, faithful heart, thank you. In the name of Jesus. Amen.