Give Thanks

Eric Lemonholm

November 21, 2011

Thanksgiving A

Luke 17:11-19

 

Erma Bombeck once said,

What we’re really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?  

 Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Halftimes take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.^[ii]

 

Thanksgiving is not just about eating and football – although those aren’t bad parts of the day!

This is a time to be thankful.

Thankful for what we have.

Thankful for what God has given us.

Thankful for life.  Thankful for family and friends.

Thankful for a warm place to live, and food to eat.

Thankful for work when we are working.

With a recession rearing its head over our nation and the world, that which we have taken for granted, we will cherish.

 

A leper is someone who suffers from leprosy, an infectious disease that damages nerves, skin, limbs, and eyes.

It was common in the ancient world.

If you got leprosy, you were not welcome in cities and towns.

Your family and friends would usually avoid you, for fear of catching leprosy from you.

Lepers tended to stick together on the margins, on the outskirts of town.

 

Jesus is on the borderland between Galilee, his homeland, and Samaria, the land of the Samaritans.

Remember, there was division and friction between Jews and Samaritans.  They tended to avoid one another.

 

Ten lepers come to Jesus.

They don’t get too close, but cry out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”

And he does.  Jesus commands them to go to the priests for a check-up.  On their way, all ten are healed of their leprosy.

But only one praised God with a loud voice, returned to Jesus, and thanked him.

That one healed leper was a Samaritan.

 

Jesus asks, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?  Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”  

Then [Jesus] said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

When the Samaritan leper thanked Jesus, he was praising and thanking God.

 

The Christian way of life is a life of thanksgiving, following the example of the Samaritan Leper.

The attitude of gratitude, or thankfulness, is our response to what God has done and is doing for us in our lives.

God gives us everything we are and everything we have—our lives, our being, our world, our families, our friends, our communities, our daily bread, our vocations (the work we do).

Any talents we have—they’re gifts from God. Any joy, laughter or love we experience—they’re gifts, just like Jesus’ healing of the lepers.

As James (1:17) wrote, “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”

The Bible is full of thanksgiving for the gifts of grace God has given us. Think about it: even our words gratitude and grace are related—gratitude is our response to God’s free—gratis!—gifts to us.

 

All ten of the lepers were healed.

Only one thanked Jesus.

God’s grace, mercy, and provision are given freely to all.

How often do we take God’s gifts for granted?

 

Patrick D. Miller wrote,

ONE of the most familiar and important of all the theological questions is the one that comes first in the [Presbyterian] Westminster Shorter Catechism. And Presbyterians are not the only ones who know the answer by heart.

What is our chief end, our fundamental purpose as human beings? the first question asks.

To glorify and to enjoy God forever, comes the answer.

Our life is fundamentally lived in praise of God and in thanksgiving. Doxology [thanksgiving] is our reason for being-and joy is the final outcome of God’s way with us.^[iii]

 

We conclude with some advice from Henry Ward Beecher:

Remember God’s bounty in the year. String the pearls of [God’s] favor. Hide the dark parts, except so far as they are breaking out in light! Give this one day to thanks, to joy, to gratitude!^[iv] 

Amen.