A few years ago I had a conversation with a man that I knew at church. He had lost his business when fire gutted his store, and because he had no insurance, starting over was difficult. Moreover, he also was recently divorced and had lost custody of his children except that he was permitted to see them on weekends. As we were getting ready to get into our cars from the chilly Autumn wind in the parking lot that evening, I simply wished him “ a Happy Thanksgiving “ and asked him what he was doing on Thanksgiving Day. The answer I got was not “you too” which is the traditional and cultural answer to such greeting. He stopped abruptly and simply replied “Pastor, what do I have to be thankful for?” That response felt like a dagger in my chest and so I got out of the car and walked towards him, and we had a long discussion. His world might have changed from what it was a year earlier. He did suffer losses and as is often the case with individuals who have experienced tragedy and hardship, they tend to compare their situations to where they were in the past and the holidays become difficult. It is the reason such people experience depression and we have come to coin the term “holiday blues” to describe such afflictions. Our brother chose to remember what the year was and perhaps concluded that rather than progressing, he was going down. His attitude was that his world was going down. Rather thank God on the positives in his life, he was seeing the losses and so concluded that he had no reason to be thankful. This morning, as we gather to celebrate and thank the God of our salvation for fruitful skies and the blessings from his many graces, I invite you to turn to someone and tell your neighbor, “Gratitude comes from Attitude.” I want to take as our text the story of the Ten Lepers as St. Luke recorded it on Luke 17 :11 – 19.
The story is a simple one. Jesus is at an unnamed village on his way to Jerusalem. Luke gives the location of the village as situated between the regions of Samaria and Galilee. At the entrance to the village ten men with leprosy shouted from a distance “Jesus, Master have mercy on us!” (v. 13) Jesus was at this time a popular figure and the lepers by now must have heard about his miraculous healings. They were not asking for money for they knew enough that anyone on the way to Jerusalem cannot have contact with them or they would be considered unclean and may not enter the temple in Jerusalem. They were expecting healing for our Lord asked them to go and show themselves to the priests (v. 14). Only the priest could certify that the lepers no longer had the disease and such certification brought enormous benefit because it meant that one could re-enter society and had dealings with others. It meant one could buy or sell, own property and have relationships. Their very humanity would be restored if they become clean and this was what they were asking for.
Now let me remind you about the disease that Luke referred to as leprosy. It is not the leprosy that we know today. Leviticus 13 provides symptoms and instructions on what to do. Seven different kinds of infections were often called leprosy and it had enormous economic, social and psychological implication. Once there was a skin infection, the individual was to show the self to the priest and if the priest was not sure, isolation was required for seven days and if there was no change, the priest could pronounce the individual unclean. Therefore bald spot on the head, boils, scab, any infection that exposes raw flesh or anything that spreads and turns the skin and hair white was considered leprosy and the priest was given the power to pronounce anyone with such infection, generally called leprosy, as unclean. Once an individual had been pronounced unclean, they were to live outside the city (Leviticus 13; 14; Numbers 12:10-15). They could not touch anybody and were required to leave family and friends and live an isolated life often with other lepers. Wherever such individual leaves the isolated home, the law required that he or she screams to passerbys that he/she is unclean so that no one accidentally comes in contact with the afflicted individuals. These were the ten people Jesus met on that road to Jerusalem. They were considered punished by God for something they did and therefore were dismissed from society. They were not regarded as humans they were seen as filth and they lived without hope and believed that God punished them. They were sinners and no one took pity on them.
Yet there was one person that afternoon who saw them and heard them. They were required to shout “Unclean! Unclean!” to avoid accidental contact, but they also shouted something else: “ Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”. No big ceremony was performed. Our Lord simply said :”Go and show yourselves to the priests”.
The focus of the story by Luke is not on the healing but on the gratitude of the victims. St Luke reported that they obeyed and turned around to go and show themselves to the priests but they noticed something: they were healed. But one turned around on seeing this miracle, on noticing this great gift of healing and ran straight to Jesus. Now he could touch another individual. Luke reported that he fell on the feet of Christ, thanking the Lord. He also added something important: in v. 16. The man was a Samaritan. He was a member of a group not regarded as being legitimate. They were hated and discriminated against and were not even allowed into the temple to worship. Jesus noticed that only the Samaritan returned to say “thank You”. The rest were too excited to remember to thank God. They couldn’t wait to do the things they have missed for so long. They had their lives to pick up where they left, but the attitude of the Samaritan was different. He knew the enormous gift that comes only from the Lord. He had a different attitude and that was gratitude and for that he received more blessings from the Lord. “Rise and go your way, your faith has made you well”. Jesus told him (v. 19).
How then should we develop the attitude of gratitude? Let us look at how the Bible encourages this.
1. Remember where you have been and where you are going. The German statesman, Richard Von Weizsaecker, once wrote that those who work hard to forget their past are the ones who are likely to stay in exile the longest for it is remembrance that is the secret of redemption. As you inch towards the end of another year, be reminded that what we remember is a choice and that such remembrances affect your attitude. Whether you are sad, angry or thankful depends on your attitude. You may disagree that the year has not been filled with fruitful fields and healthful skies if you overlook the little blessings that have come your way all year long. You may not see what you have to be thankful for if you do not remember the smile of the stranger on the street or the cry of the baby that reminded you of life and youth. You may wonder what you have to be thankful for if you choose to remember the difficult days and not the pleasant ones. Gratitude is an attitude and the blessings of providence are all around us if we choose to remember them. When we count our blessings and when we choose to remember them, then we can truly see God’s grace in action.
2. Believe that all is well and all can be well. No condition is permanent the saying goes. The nature of God as the God of Mercy does not provide us with what is bad. Jesus asked “"Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone?” (Maat. 7 : 9) In the same way, we who follow the Christ must know that God will answer us in his time. It might not be your time but in his time. St Thomas Aquinas reminded us that whatever is received is according to the nature of the receiver. The lack of the spirit of gratitude is the reason that we fail to act with thankfulness for the things that we have. We dwell on our needs and fail to be thankful for what we already have. As a result, it is easy to forget those things that we already have. It is true that there are people who have bigger houses and better cars than you do. Some may make more money and have better health. You may feel you have nothing to be thankful for, but the spirit of gratitude lies not in what we can see, but in what our attitude is towards what we already have. Gratitude and thankfulness comes from our belief that all is well and all can be well. It is a reflection of how we see the world and how we approach the world.
3. What you remember is a choice. Choose the things that bring thankfulness not those that elicit anger, regret and sadness. If all that you do is look at the things you do not have, it is very difficult to remember what you do have. If what you do is feeling sorry for yourself for missing out on life’s pleasures, it is difficult indeed to see those strengths that you do have. Yes, there are wars in our world, there is hunger and there is pain. There is poverty and there are reports of death. Yet we become thankful not because of, but in spite of all of these. A songwriter once wrote: Count your blessing and name them one by one and it will surprise you what the Lord has done. That man in that church parking lot, did not count his blessings. He was alive; someone had found him after he overdosed and called the paramedics who rushed him to the hospital. He was slowly getting back. He had a place to live. He was alive and hope had begun for him. That was not what he saw, what he saw instead was what he lost. It goes to show that what we remember in this life is a choice. The leper before Christ that afternoon on that lonely road to Jerusalem did not cry over the years and the things and relationships he lost. He saw God’s blessings and therefore became thankful. This thanksgiving, instead of remembering what you do not have, look at what you do have and thank those who have made it possible for you to be who you are. Someone once wrote that he was crying for a shoe until he found someone without a leg. The Prophet Habakkuk heard about the terror and violence that the Chaldean army was inflicting on the nations they conquered yet he was not afraid and uttered one of the most beautiful verses in our modern Bible: “Though the fig tree should not blossom, and there be no fig on the vine, though the yield of olives should fail….though there be no cattle in the stall, yet I will praise the Lord, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation” (Hab 3 ; - 17 – 18). The above lines were written by someone who had reasons to be afraid. Alexander the Great was a person to be feared indeed; stories of his pillage and destruction in the then known world, were that of horror. The prophet had heard enough of these stories to be fearful but as the writer reflected on the benevolence of God, the lines above came powerfully to him because of what God had done in the past. What are you waiting for before you can say “thank you Lord”?
4. Have hope knowing that the Grace that has led us this far will continue to lead us. The lack of hope can cause a lot of havoc and prevent us from bouncing back after a setback. Without hope it is hard to develop an attitude of gratitude. If you see the world through the lens of doom, developing a sense of gratitude can be difficult for who is thankful for doom. The man who returned to say “Thank You Lord” had hopes for the future.
5. Finally, do not take things for granted have a reflective spirit. The other nine lepers had heard that Jesus healed the sick and raised the dead and so they never thought of their own healing as anything out of the ordinary for Christ. The Samaritan had a different view. He remembers the life of isolation and living as the dead while still alive. He saw what Christ did and thought about the possibilities for the future and so through this reflection he returned to say Thank You. We develop an attitude of gratitude not because our lives are perfect but we do that because we know whom we are following. WE develop an attitude not because but in spite of all what we have been through.
I want to leave you this morning with the story of our hymn “Now Thank We all our God”. It was a written by the Rev. Martin Rinkhart who endured years of Isolation and pain in a city called Eilenburg in Saxony during what is called the thirty years war. In that walled city and with the Swedish army surrounding the city, there was no escape. Famine and diseases killed a lot of people. At a certain point, the pastors in the city were burying as many as fifty bodies each day. Then some of the pastors themselves succumbed to illness and death. When the War was over, only the Rev. Rinkhart had survived the war. His fellow pastors all had died. In the service of Thanksgiving to celebrate the end of that war, the Rev. Rinkhart wrote this hymn for that service. He had lost so many and had buried so many too, but he developed an attitude of Gratitude to God for all what God has done not because all was well, but in spite of what he had endured and seen.
The Rev Rinkhart wrote:
Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things has done, in Whom this world rejoices;
Who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.
O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,
With ever joyful hearts and blessèd peace to cheer us;
And keep us in His grace, and guide us when perplexed;
And free us from all ills, in this world and the next!
All praise and thanks to God the Father now be given;
The Son and Him Who reigns with Them in highest Heaven;
The one eternal God, whom earth and Heaven adore;
For thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore.
From our mother’s arms God has blessed us with countless gifts of love and still till now God is with us. May you pause to thank those who have been a great influence in your life. May you remember always that what we remember is a choice and that gratitude is an attitude. From your Church family may your Thanksgiving be a blessed one. Amen
