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Part one of three parts on Luke 17:1-19: Be Thankful
Luke 17:11-19
God made us and everything in our world. He made us humans to function efficiently and gave us everything we need to live. How do you breathe? God made you to breathe and gave you free air to breathe and in return most of us walk around acting as if there is no God. While we should be thanking God for every breath, we are struggling to make our lives work while all the time forgetting to give God the praise he deserves and expects.
In Luke 17 you can read about just one of the miracles Jesus performed in his short time on earth. This event took place as he was walking toward Jerusalem and near the border between Samaria and Galilee. A group of 10 lepers had heard about Jesus and even though they were ostracized, they decided to boldly call out to Jesus for help.
Jews believed that a person with leprosy was being punished by God for bad deeds. The person with leprosy was not simply stricken with a terrible problem that was a mystery, the person had clearly gone against the laws of the established religion and deserved to live in isolation with other lepers. No fine upstanding person of the day would be seen with a leper. For food, lepers had to depend upon family or former friends to leave scraps for them outside the village.
The lepers knew that they lived in hell on earth. They were to keep to themselves and they had no right to seek out this teacher they had heard about. Since their lives were so horrible they decided things could not get worse for them so when they saw Jesus approaching, they called out to him for help. They called to him, "Master, have mercy on us."
We are all lepers. To be healed by the great God who made us, like the lepers in the story, we have to know we need healing and we have to ask for help. We have to recognize that we are living in hell on earth if we are shuffling along on our own pitiful power.
The Bible, cover to cover, is the story of how our great God saves us from ourselves and this story is just one more example of redemption. Jesus sees these lepers and the sad state of their lives and he recognizes that they knew they needed a miracle. They cannot change their lives on their own. Jesus hears them and gives them what they ask for in a surprising way. He says, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." In complete faith, they turn away from him to follow his orders. While they are in this act of obedience, they are healed of their hideous disease!
They were not healed on the spot and then told to go to their priests. They obeyed Jesus and because of their trust in his instruction they were made whole.
Out of the 10 who were healed, only one took the time to go back to Jesus to say thank you. And, to make the point even more poignant we learn that it was the foreigner, the guy who was not only a leper but the guy from the wrong side of the tracks. Had he not been part of the leper group, the others in the group would never have associated with him. The thankful leper was the one who came from nothing while the other nine had some social standing before they contracted the disease. They were Jews and the thankful leper was a Samaritan and considered a low-life by the Jews.
When the Samaritan came back to Jesus, he kneeled at the feet of Jesus and called Jesus, Lord. This man realized that he was healed by God, not by some crack-pot, homeless preacher.
Jesus said to the Samaritan, "Get up and go your way. Your faith has healed you and saved you." By saying thank you, the Samaritan received the greatest blessing from his Lord and Savior, the Christ, the son of God. Where were the other nine? We might imagine that they ran to tell the most important people in their lives; the people they had lived apart from since becoming infected. They were so excited to get to these loved ones that they forgot to thank the one who had healed him. Most of us are like these nine.
As many motivational speakers have said over the years, live with an attitude of gratitude. Start now by thanking God, your creator, for the very breath you are taking.
