Written by 
The lectionary that I have used and that many pastors use is written in three-year cycles. The intent is to cover a wide variety of Scripture and essentially cover all the bases of our faith over that period. I know some folks would just as soon some of the more problematic texts simply be left out.
That’s an idea Thomas Jefferson would probably have been in full agreement with. He produced his own edited Bible, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. He created his own version by cutting and pasting the parts of the New Testament he thought conveyed the essence of the teachings of Jesus. He wrote to John Adams, “In extracting the pure principles which he taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to themselves… I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter which is evidently his, and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill. The result is an octavo of forty-six pages, of pure and unsophisticated doctrines.”
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott did the same sort of thing. Being annoyed that preachers were using scripture to criticize the women’s right’s movement, Stanton organized a committee of scholars to create a women’s commentary on scripture. One year after the convention in Seneca Falls, Mott wrote, Discourse on Woman, which discussed Adam and Eve, the activities of various women who appear in the Bible, and argued that the Bible supported woman’s right to speak aloud her spiritual beliefs. Stanton’s Woman’s Bible was widely criticized in editorials and from the pulpit when it was published in 1895. Stanton wrote, “the clergy denounced it as the work of Satan.” Most of the criticism came from people who had not actually read the work.
For pastors, the use of the Common Lectionary is a guide and not at all mandatory. Some pastors always use it, and some never do. I got in the habit of following the Lectionary as a lay pastor because even if the pastor whose pulpit I was filling on a particular Sunday was NOT following the lectionary, at least I had a common reference point for planning my worship service that should at least not be out of step with the regular pastor.
What happens when you have been serving in the pulpit for 18 years as I have now, is that you revisit the same passages on a regular basis: although it’s true that even after the 6th time through the three year cycle not every passage is repeated every three years.
But passages like this week’s lesson from Luke do tend to appear regularly. And the thing is, every time you preach on the same text you read it in a new light and see it in a new way. It can speak to you differently every time.
I saw something in this week’s text I don’t think had ever occurred to me before. This is the story of the 10 lepers Jesus healed and only one came back to him to express his thanks.
You can readily see sermon material about healing or miracles. You could notice the brief mention of, “and he was a Samaritan” and get a completely different sermon out of that one phrase.
But what got my attention this time around was this: remember how Jesus was always telling people he healed to keep quiet about it? He heals the blind man in Matthew and says, “See that no one knows about this.” He heals the deaf and mute man and Matthew tells us, “Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone.”
In this case, Jesus does a turn around. The lepers ask for his mercy and he says, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And on the way they are healed.
This is a different situation. In the other cases, the people being healed are healed in the presence of Jesus. But in this case, the lepers are made clean on their way to “show themselves to the priest.” There were no witnesses to the healing besides the 10 men themselves.
Now one of these 10 men came back and fell at the feet of Jesus to thank him for healing them. The other 9 just went on their way.
But it is interesting to note that Jesus tells us that the way to pray to God is in private. In Matthew 6, Jesus is quoted as saying, “And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” We don’t know whether or not they thanked God for their healing in private.
In any case, clearly Jesus is not requiring a public thanks for God’s healing. 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?”
So what are we to make of this? Jesus says to pray in private and yet he also wonders why these men didn’t, “return and give praise to God.” Sounds like he is saying we should pray in private but then asking to make this public offering of praise to God.
What occurs to me is that he is asking of these men and of us, is to give thanks to one another when God acts through us. We can praise God in private for all we have been given, but we can’t give thanks to one another without letting them know we are thankful. God does not need us to make a public show of our thanks, but people do. We need some kind of response to communicate our feelings. We can’t assume someone knows they are appreciated. We have to tell them. They can’t assume we love them. We have to tell them. We can’t assume they know we are thankful for what they have done for us. We have to tell them.
Have you noticed that when God is at work in our lives, it is generally through people? People who love us and care for us and give themselves to us and who make themselves vulnerable for us. We need to offer thanks for those generous gifts. After all, those things come from God, and when we receive those gifts from our family and friends, we are receiving gifts from God. It is certainly right and proper to give thanks to God for all we have been given, but it is just as important to give thanks to each other. When we acknowledge God’s presence in the works of others, we come a long way toward building God’s Kingdom.
Like the 9 lepers, we often fail to come back and give thanks for the gifts of God we have received through human relationships.
I saw a video recently of a man who had been a drug addict, gang member and worse; but whose mother had always been there for him in spite of everything he had done. She didn’t like what he was becoming, but always believed he had the potential to be a good man. As a teenager, he just thought his mom was a major pain, something every parent of teenagers knows about.
Later on, he became a professional wrestler and while he was performing in Japan, he received word his mother had died unexpectedly. Too late, he realized all he had lost and how he’d failed to thank her for all she had done to try to lead him along the right path. But it did succeed in shocking him into turning his life around. Today he is going to middle schools to remind kids to stay away from drugs, choose their friends wisely and to tell their parents they love them and to thank them for all they have done for them. All the things he had failed to do.
We tend to think of those things when it is too late. So if you have someone who loves you and is there for you, give thanks to God, but just as importantly, give thanks to them. When you give anyone your heartfelt thanks, I’m sure God smiles, because you are also thanking the one who created us.
There is no better time than today to give thanks to the people we love and who love us: the people who have given so much to us that we will never be able to repay. The people who have forgiven us and given us second chances. The people who have refused to let us get away with being anything less than the people God created us to be. The people who have refused to take no for an answer, or maybe have refused to take yes for an answer. The people who have allowed God to speak to us through their words and their actions: the people who have changed our lives for the better.
Go to a private place in silence and thank God for those parents and teachers and friends and neighbors who have been there for you – for all the people who have been blessings in your life. But don’t forget to tell them as well: Thank you for all you have done. And I say that to all of you today: Thank you for all you have done.
AMEN
Leave a Reply