“What are you most grateful for?” I was asked this question last week by a holistic nutritionist whom I was consulting with my son Sam. She asked us this question, I’m sure, because gratitude contributes to a person’s health and well-being. Although I want to add that curmudgeons can live long too, I have seen it. But she asked us this question and I had to think for a moment. Then I said the most uninventive thing, “I am grateful for life, for all of it. It’s good to be alive.” And Sam, in his typical Sam-manner said, “I am grateful for labor unions.” Well, Sam, where did that come from? He later told me he had just learned about Labor Unions in US History Class, so I guess it was fresh on his mind and it seemed good enough to satisfy the nutritionist’s curiosity. He doesn’t like to reveal too much of himself to strangers, so labor unions will have to do…
The gist of it is: we sometimes struggle with the attitude of gratitude. Who among us couldn’t use a bit more gratitude in their attitude? Sometimes we fail to appreciate the obvious blessings, the people who do things for us every week, the friends who are there for us when we truly need them, the volunteers who show up on a rainy day. Instead we flee into the abstract, like Sam and I, and we come up with “life itself and labor unions.” Yes, sometimes I am one of the nine in today’s gospel who forget to return and express appreciation.
“Were not ten made clean?” Jesus asked. “But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” There is a shadow cast over this story in Luke 17. Ten people are healed. Only one comes back to thank Jesus for the miraculous turn-around. On Wall Street, a ten percent return wouldn’t be so bad. On Thank Street, a ten percent return is pitiful. People expect close to a hundred percent return of thanks for special favors and services rendered. And this healing was more than a special favor. I don’t need to go into detail here about the nature of leprosy, a contagious, debilitating disease which produced alienation and ghettoization. To say that the nine who were healed and didn’t return to thank Jesus were ungrateful is an understatement. They were rude. They were unreasonable. They were wrong!
So, I’m tempted to read Jesus’ remarks as judgment. “How dare they forget what I did for you?” Raise your hands if you have never felt like that in your life, if you have never done something special for another person and the appropriate thank-you didn’t come, neither in the form of a card or a word of thanks. I am tempted to think that Jesus was angry like we have been angry at times. “How dare he not come back to me – I just saved his life?” Reacting that way would only be human.
But it is also possible to interpret Jesus’ response without the judgmental overtones, which would also be a human response, only a higher form of being human. We could read a different emotion into his string of questions. “The other nine, where are they?” Wonderment is a possibility here, sincere surprise and even compassion for people who are so disoriented spiritually that they don’t know what to do with that amazing gift of healing. The question may come out of concern for their well-being. “Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” And as to the assumed moral superiority of the one person who did return over the nine ungrateful souls: he was, as Luke points out, a foreigner, a Samaritan. It’s quite possible that he was the only one who had no place else to go. The others were busy reuniting with their families after being healed, which is understandable. But he had no place to go. So he might as well go back to Jesus. Isn’t it often a little bit easier to be thankful when you are more desperate?
We could read the story and conclude: don’t expect too much from people! Cut down your expectations, cut them all the way down to ten percent. This story could be read as a sobering reflection on human nature. One out of ten – is that who we are? I don’t think that’s what this story is trying to imply. The question “Where are the other nine?” means there is plenty of opportunity for people to grow. It means, God expects more of us, in a hopeful way. We can do better! We can raise our level of humanity! Christ in us raises our level of humanity.
Speaking of humanity… What are we doing with leprosy today? We have our own exilic communities. The old man sitting in a chair in a corner of a Nursing Home, estranged from his children, all but abandoned by his family, drooling, aching and isolated, is not just a cliché. There are many older men and women like that in our community. It begs the question: are there no children? Are they not returning? Have they not received many gifts in the course of their life from their parents? Will they come to say thank-you to their father, now when he needs it more than ever before? Sometimes Nursing Homes, or sections of them, are the modern version of the outcast communities of old: places where people wait to die. Where are the children of those in exile in a Nursing facility? Do they not know what it is like? Maybe they experience a different kind of exile, driven by schedules, deadlines, constant hustle and guilt. Maybe they too need healing and discovering a higher form of humanity.
“Was none of them found to return to give praise to God except this foreigner?” This implies that God believes in our capacity to return. “Your faith has made you whole,” Jesus said to the one returnee at the end. There is healing power in returning to God every day and every Sunday in your church community. There is healing power in giving thanks. There is healing power in serving those who are in need. There is healing power in giving. Finding that power, the divine presence, and not worrying what the other nine people might do or not do, how much they do or not do, how much they give or don’t give, what they might think… finding Christ who touches and eliminates the sores of our lives, that’s what counts, what leads to wholeness, what makes church a sacred place. Come to the table of the Lord! And if you can, come with the attitude of gratitude, aware of the blessings you have received, willing to give back. Amen.