Cleanliness or Godliness? Keith McFarren October 12, 2025 Luke 17:11-19 After listening to our scripture reading this morning, I can’t help but think of Jesus being a little bit like my mom and dad used to be or perhaps like your mom and dad used to be. When I was a kid and someone gave me something or did something nice for me, my mom or dad would kind of lean in towards me and with a kind of stern look on their face say, “What do you say?” It wasn’t a question I had to think about. It wasn’t meant to be a suggestion. It was instead, a standard, given order. By the tone of their voice, I knew exactly what I was supposed to say whether I wanted to or not…whether I meant it or not. After they said, “What do you say?” I knew that my response was supposed to be “Thank you!” Whether I wanted to or not, whether I meant it or not, it was a given…my reply was to be “thank you.” Here’s what happened. Jesus met ten lepers…nine of them were Jews and one was a Samaritan and they were on the border between Galilee and Samaria. The lepers were social outcasts and they were required to stay away from everyone for fear of spreading their disease. When they saw Jesus they cried out for help and Jesus, being the caring, compassionate man that he was, immediately sent them to the local priest who would give them a certificate of cleansing. This cleansing certificate would allow them to return to their normal lives out in the public. Because they were obedient to what Jesus told them to do, their healing took place as they were going to the priest’s house, so when they got there they would already be clean. The nine Jews got their certificate of cleansing and went on with their lives. Meanwhile, the Samaritan, went back to express his gratitude to Jesus for what he had done. For the Samaritan to return and not the nine Jews surprised Jesus to say the least. After all he had done for them, and with only the Samaritan returning, Jesus had a right to be surprised. In fact, Jesus had a right to track down the other nine lepers, and look them in the eye and like our mothers and fathers used to do, say to them, “What do you say?” “I don’t think I heard you say thank you for what I just did for you.” But he didn’t. In fact, the nine guys never did express their gratitude for what Jesus did and there is no mention of them or the incident that took place anywhere else in the New Testament. The failure of the nine Jewish lepers was the reason that Luke stressed this event because it underscores or reinforces the reason why Christianity bypassed Israel and was carried so directly and quickly to the Gentiles. The Jews had the first chance to receive God’s grace and then go out and change the world…but instead they turned away and never looked back. Like the Samaritan in the Story of the Good Samaritan, this man put to shame the nine Jews who had been healed but who didn’t take the time to say “thank you.” Maybe once they saw the priest and got their certificate of cleansing, they were afraid to go back and identify themselves with Jesus, who by now was a man with a price on his head. Maybe after realizing they had been healed they were so eager to get back home and be with their families, whom they hadn’t been able to be around since contracting leprosy, that they forgot to go back and look for Jesus. None of this means that the nine men were any less cured, but it does mean that they were less grateful than the Samaritan. After the Samaritan goes back to Jesus and teaches us the lesson of humility, he also teaches us a lesson in gratitude. Only the foreigner, only the outsider has the humility and the gratitude to come back to Jesus and give God the glory he deserves. But it is not only the nine lepers who are shown up by his humility and his gratitude…it’s you and me and everyone who fails to thank God for all that he has done for us. “…give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” as Paul puts it (Ephesians 5:20). Part of our faith journey is to accept and continually build upon the knowledge that God is the giver of all things: every mouthful of food that we take, every breath of air that we inhale, every note of music that we sing and that we hear, every smile on the face of a loved one or a friend or a stranger that we see…all that, and a million things more…they are all gifts given to us by the generosity of God. There is an old spiritual discipline of listing one’s blessings; humbly naming them before God and then giving thanks. Counting our blessings is a difficult thing to do because we have to set our pride aside and be willing to admit that what we have and what we have accomplished was not done on our own. In all reality, counting our blessings is a healthy thing to do because living in a world where we too often assume that we have an absolute right to our health and our happiness and every comfort, counting our blessings turns our focus from ourselves and back to God, the one who has truly given us all that we have and all that we are. There is no indication anywhere that Jesus got his feelings hurt by the lack of their response. There is no sign that he withdrew the healing process and got even with those guys by reinfecting them with leprosy because they didn’t thank him. He didn’t get mad and retaliate because this isn’t about Jesus and about whether or not he should have been thanked, as much as it is about the ones who were healed by Jesus. And while yes, it’s about the physical healing of the other nine as it is also about the complete wholeness or spiritual wellbeing of the other nine. Their ingratitude toward Jesus was a worse leprosy than the leprosy of their skin. They were clean on the outside but their lack of gratitude shows that they had never accepted total cleansing on the inside. Spiritual healing needs to take place on the inside as well as on the outside. We need clean skin on the outside …but at the same time we need to be cleansed on the inside so that we might be grateful for all the blessings we’ve received and for all that God has done for us. Being clean on the inside and being clean on the outside is the only way for us to live clean, Godly lives. People will tell you they go to church and that they pray on a regular basis and that they even give to the church on Sunday. And yet at the same time they are rejecting the ways of the church and they are rejecting the ways of God because they are only seeking the external gifts that God has to give them and they are failing to live the Godly life that goes along with all of this because they haven’t been cleansed on the inside. They want the gifts of God but they don’t want the person of Jesus in their life. This is where the inconsistency of walking the walk and talking the talk comes in. The difference in all of this was in the vision. The nine Jewish lepers saw only say Jesus as a healer, nothing more than an instantaneous source of help for their immediate problem. The Samaritan saw Jesus as the answer to all of his problems, his heart, his body, his mind and his soul. The nine saw Jesus as nothing more than a once in a lifetime healer, someone that would help them remove the barrier that allowed them to return to their old lives. The Samaritan saw Jesus as an ongoing healer, one who would heal and cleanse him inside and out and help him start a new life. “Get up and be on your way,” Jesus told the Samaritan. For the early Christian the words “get up” were words that would have been recognized as having to do with “resurrection.” Much like the prodigal son, the Samaritan “was once dead, but now he finds himself alive again.” When the leper became aware of his healing, he didn’t just take off and go out and celebrate his good fortune; he returned to praise God and to fall on his face before Jesus. While gratitude may be the purest measure of one’s character and spiritual condition, the absence of the ability to be grateful shows our self-centeredness and the attitude that I deserve more than I ever get, so why should I be grateful. The grateful person puts forth a humility of spirit and a sensitivity to love that is expressed by others. The grateful person is aware of acts of kindness put forth by others and at the same time experiences God’s grace with a sense of profound gratitude. Life itself is a gift. Our health is a precious gift. The friendship of others and the love of family and friends are all an overwhelming gift of God’s grace…a gift that should be treasured and guarded with sincere gratitude. For those who have become aware of God’s grace and are led to live the Godly life, our lives become filled with a sense of gratitude. Every encounter we have with God and every encounter we have with his grace becomes an opportunity for us to see and to respond with grateful praise…all done in the spirit of the grateful leper. |