Give Thanks

I was taught to always be grateful. I would receive something and then it was “what do you tell them? Did you send a thank you note?” Now I do the same with my daughters. They receive a gift and before they can even get excited I am directing them to “say thank you.” Is today’s story just a tale of God nudging us and saying “remember to say thanks?” Ten lepers are healed we are told, but only one comes back thanking Jesus. While Jesus acknowledges the one, he also asks “where are the other nine?” What gives? Really?

Let’s consider the one who turned back. This person is included in the leper category. Most scholars think it wasn’t likely leprosy in this case but some sort of skin condition. Either way, it would have rendered you unclean and completely isolated you from friends, family, community life, and the outside world. Even in this passage, they had to keep their distance and call out “unclean” as they drew near to give others a chance to clear out. When we meet them in today’s story, they are trying to yell and get Jesus’s attention from a distance, crying out for mercy. I think of those who are crying out on street corners and holding signs or the way someone says your name over and over until it dries you crazy. This group existed in a no man’s land, a space where no one wanted to reside or look. As a whole, this group was excluded, discounted, and otherwise ignored. But then there’s the one: already on the fringe with this skin disease but also a Samaritan. This identity places this person at odds with the Jewish community. Even if they wanted to try and seek healing in the temple, they were not welcome there. Add to that the label of foreigner. Rob Moyalis shares how the Greek word here actually means “different or other genes..Okay, we know that all humans share like 99.9% of the same genes, but the point is that Jesus cares for those who have a different "genesis" than we do).” This person in the story has all these negative marks against them. Right off the bat, they are unclean (a leper), unseen (a Samaritan), and uninvited (a foreigner).

And so this one and all the others are crying out for mercy. Jesus answers with an instruction that they go and show themselves to the priest. Without asking any more questions, they hurriedly begin making their way. As they went, they were made clean. Who knows how far they had made it. A few steps? A couple of miles? While they were on their way, they were made clean. All ten go, but one turns back and Jesus says “your faith has made you well.”

What does Jesus mean by this? Wasn’t the leper already well before he had turned back to Jesus? If his faith made him well, then what about the other nine? What made them well? Surely they also had faith. Matthew Myer Boulton says “This formulation — “made you well” — is a translation of the word “to save, heal, preserve, rescue, deliver.” But what is it, precisely, that Jesus celebrates about the Samaritan’s faith here? It’s not revering Jesus — for all ten call him, “Master.” It’s not obeying his instruction — for all ten do what he commands, setting out toward the priests to be officially reconciled to the community. And it’s not theological correctness — for Samaritans and Jews disagreed, often bitterly, over theological matters. But if it’s not reverence, obedience, or orthodoxy — what is it?” What’s the distinction in faith between the one who turned back and the faith of the ones who continued on?

The difference is in the doxology. The one turned around and praised God with a loud voice. Doxa is about giving God glory, honor, and praise. The word praise comes from the Latin word that means to price or value something. What we praise is what we value, treasure, prize, hold dear, and place above all else.

Think of the words when we sing the doxology each week: praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise him all creatures here below, praise him above ye heavenly host, praise Father, son, and Holy Ghost.” Or think of our prayer of thanksgiving during Holy Communion. We say “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. It is right to give our thanks and praise. Eternal God, holy and mighty, it is truly right and our greatest joy to give you thanks and praise, and to worship you in every place where your glory abides.”

This movement of turning and praising as a faith response frames discipleship in Luke’s gospel. Boulton shares “In the Christmas story, for example, the shepherds “returned [hypostrepho], glorifying [doxazo] and praising God for all they had heard and seen” (Luke 2:20). And at the Gospel’s end, after witnessing Jesus’ ascension, the disciples “worshipped him and returned [hypostrepho] to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the Temple blessing God” (Luke 24:52). Return and praise. The difference of the doxology.

It isn’t just that we are shown what the doxology of faith looks like, we are shown this example from someone we wouldn’t expect it from. What does it mean to learn about faith from an outsider, from someone we want to pretend is sick or criminal or unworthy, certainly no model of faith? Later in Luke 18:8, Jesus asks this question, “when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” All throughout Luke, faith is found in places and in people that the disciples would never have thought to look. Jesus keeps lifting up these examples for them such as the good Samaritan and now the grateful Samaritan. Jesus keeps lifting up the unlikely and the unpopular as models of faith.

Robb McCoy says “ten were healed, but one was transformed.” It’s like when you watch a kid open presents, one after the other, not pausing to receive each gift as it is and give thanks for it. Discipleship without doxology, following Jesus without recognition of the gift of faith, misses the blessing inherent in it all. Boulton says “thanking is believing.”

Your faith has made you well. Taylor Mertin says “Perhaps the “wellness” to which Jesus speaks has less to do with the man’s cleared skin condition, and more to do with the awareness of his wellness. He can live differently not just because he’s no longer a leper, but also because he knows he’s encountered the living power of the Lord in Jesus Christ. He is blessed to now be a blessing to others because God’s future arrived in his present.

In other words, the man didn’t have to do anything to get Jesus to do everything, but having received everything, anything he encounters in the days ahead will be grace upon grace.”

One recognized the power of God in their healing and turned around and risked it all to come face-to-face with Jesus, quite literally falling on his face before him. The one who had to keep his distance as a leper, Samaritan, and foreigner is now so close that he is staring at Jesus’s toenails. So close he is breathing in the dirt around his sandals. The one who had every mark against him is now marked as a child of God whose faith has made him well. Other translations say “your faith has healed you, restored you, and saved you.” Debie Thomas says “What I see in the Samaritan’s full-hearted praise and devotion is the intimate relationship between desperation and faith. Between yearning and gratitude. Between high stakes and deep love. Ten lepers are healed. But only the one who has nowhere else to go, nothing left to lose, and everything in the world to gain, returns to Jesus. Only the one who can take nothing for granted falls in love. Only the one who longs body and soul to find a home for his whole self, receives salvation.”

We all love those magic movie moments where the person realizes suddenly who they love and they can’t wait another minute. They turn around right then. They run back. They catch the plane. They do whatever it takes to go back and tell them how they really feel. Worship is like that moment for us as disciples (the doxa of discipleship), that moment of returning and praising. Returning and praising. Returning and praising. An unending doxology. The echo of grace.