Title: Hope had a name, Jesus
Intro: Where are we when the miracle happens? Do we recognise the hand of God in our healing? Do we turn back?
Scripture: Luke 17: 11-19
Reflection
Dear Friends,
There is something about the number ten that stays with you. Ten fingers we count on as children. Ten commandments given on the mountain. Ten lepers who cried out to Jesus on a dusty road between Samaria and Galilee.
But it is the one who came back that haunts me still.
I have been thinking about this story from Luke 17 for weeks now, and I cannot shake it. Maybe because I see myself in those nine who did not return. Maybe because I see my family, my friends, my entire community in their hurried footsteps, rushing toward the next blessing without pausing to acknowledge the last one.
Let me take you to that road where Jesus walked. Picture it—the hot sun, the dust rising with each step, the distant sounds of village life. And then, from far off, voices crying out. Not angry voices, but desperate ones. Ten men, standing at the required distance because their disease had made them untouchable, unwanted, unclean.
“Jesus! Master! Have mercy on us!” they shouted.
They had learned to keep their distance. The law in Leviticus 13 was clear about that. Leprosy did not just attack the body; it attacked your entire existence. It stripped away your name and gave you a label instead. It took your family and left you with strangers who shared your suffering. It removed you from the temple, from the marketplace, from everything that made life worth living.
These ten men had lost everything except hope. And on this particular day, hope had a name—Jesus.
I wonder what they expected when they called out to him. A touch, perhaps? A prayer? Some elaborate ritual? But Jesus did something so ordinary it almost seems anticlimactic. He simply said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.”
Now, here is what moves me about this moment. Jesus did not heal them first and then send them to the priests for verification. He sent them while they were still sick. They had to walk in faith before they saw the miracle. They had to take steps toward healing while their skin still bore the marks of disease.
And they went. All ten of them. Scripture tells us in Luke 17:14 that “as they went, they were cleansed.” Somewhere between Jesus and the temple, between obedience and destination, the miracle happened. The scales fell away. The sores vanished. Flesh became smooth and whole again.
Can you imagine that moment? The sudden realisation that your fingers could feel again? That the numbness was gone? That you could run your hand across your face and feel healthy skin?
I think about the shouts of joy that must have erupted. The tears. The laughter. The embracing of each other. Ten men discovering they had been given their lives back.
But then something else happens in this story, something that breaks my heart every time I read it.
Nine of them kept going. Nine continued toward the priests, toward reinstatement, toward reclaiming their old lives. Only one, just one, turned around.
Luke 17:15-16 tells us: “One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him and he was a Samaritan.”
There is so much packed into these verses. This man saw he was healed. He did not just feel it; he truly saw it. He understood what had happened and Who had made it happen. And his response was immediate and complete. He came back. He praised God loudly, unashamedly. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet in a posture of absolute humility and overwhelming gratitude.
And then Luke adds that detail that would have shocked his Jewish readers: this grateful man was a Samaritan. An outsider. Someone from the wrong side of the religious divide. The one you would least expect to get it right.
Jesus asks three questions that pierce through the centuries: “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?”
These are not just rhetorical questions. They are questions Jesus asks of each one of us, every single day.
Where are we when the miracle happens? Do we recognise the hand of God in our healing? Do we turn back?
I have been a priest long enough to see this pattern repeat itself endlessly. People cry out to God in their desperation. Hospital waiting rooms become prayer rooms. Financial crises become altars of surrender. Broken relationships send us to our knees.
And God answers. Not always in the way we expect or in the timing we demand, but He answers. The cancer goes into remission. The job comes through. The marriage heals. The child comes home.
And then, silence. The prayer meetings stop. The Bible gathers dust. Church becomes optional again. We rush back to our regular programming, forgetting who wrote the script for our survival.
We are the nine. God help us, so often we are the nine.
But this story is not told to shame us. It is told to transform us. It is told to make us more like the one who returned.
That Samaritan understood something profound. He understood that healing without gratitude is incomplete. He understood that the miracle was not just about his skin becoming whole, it was about his relationship with the One who made him whole. As Psalm 103:2-3 reminds us: “Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases.”
When Jesus said to him in Luke 17:19, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well,” He used a different word than before. This was not just about physical healing anymore. This was about salvation, wholeness, completeness. The nine were cleansed. The one was saved.
Gratitude had opened a door the others had missed.
I am learning, slowly, imperfectly, that gratitude is not just good manners. It is not just something we teach our children at the dinner table. Gratitude is spiritual vision. It is seeing God in the details of our deliverance. It is recognising that every good and perfect gift comes from above, as James 1:17 tells us.
In my own family, we have started a simple practice. Before we ask God for anything new, we thank Him for something old. We remember. We recount. We return, in our hearts, to the feet of Jesus and say, “Thank You. We see what You did. We know it was You.”
It is changing us. It is making us more aware. More humble. More joy-filled. Because gratitude does not just acknowledge the past, it shapes the future. As 1 Thessalonians 5:18 instructs: “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
My dear friends, we have all been the ten lepers at some point. We have all cried out for mercy. And if we are honest, we have all been healed in ways we did not immediately recognise or appropriately acknowledge.
Today, I want to invite you to be the one who turns back. Do not wait until you have finished your journey to the temple, until you have secured your certificate of health, until everything is perfect. Turn back now. Fall at the feet of Jesus now. Let your gratitude be loud and unashamed.
Maybe your healing was physical. Maybe it was emotional or relational or financial. Maybe it was the quiet miracle of making it through another day when you did not think you could. Whatever it was, Jesus asks: where are you?
Come back. Return to the source of your healing. Let thanksgiving rise from your heart like incense before the throne of God.
Because when we return with grateful hearts, we do not just acknowledge what Jesus has done, we position ourselves to receive what He wants to do next. We become people who live in the ongoing miracle of His presence rather than just the memory of past interventions.
Gratitude finds us before we find it. It is already waiting at the feet of Jesus.
We just have to choose to go there.????????????????
May the heart of Jesus live in the hearts of all. Amen…
