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Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
The obvious thought in our mind is that of course, of course you want to be healed. If you’re someone who’s struggling with leprosy, that would be the last thing to ask someone: do you want to be healed? But you’ve been healed, and you didn’t ask for it, maybe. God entered in your life at your baptism and you didn’t ask him to come in. When God’s word worked on your heart and brought faith to you, you didn’t ask him to bring faith to you. He did it. He raised you from the dead.
And now having healed you spiritually, you and I have to admit, it’s a dangerous and risky business being a believer. Consider it for a second. When you consider your life, the things that you look back upon, you can see the very things that God has done that you and I would classify as being good things, blessings. And you and I can also look at our life and see things that would make us go, wow, that was a hard thing that God pushed me through.
As we reflect upon the harder things that God has pushed you and I through, we have to ask ourselves, had I known about that beforehand, would I have said, sure, Lord, I’ll be glad to go do that? I don’t think so. You see, being a believer is risky business because he’s the one who is in control. When things are going smoothly, we love to think in terms of our control, but when things are really pushing us, stretching us, pulling us, and we get through it on the other side and we think, wow, how did and why… You and I realize our life is not our own.
When God gave us our spiritual life and brought us new life, we were set upon a journey. And that journey in which we’ve been set upon is filled with many things. Typically, our fixation is on the things of this world. That’s why the wonderful application of Luther’s sermon, meaning, to the fourth petition, God gives daily bread to everyone, without our prayers, even to all evil people. But we pray that God would lead us to receive and realize this daily bread coming from God.
Think about his morning and evening prayer: I thank thee, my heavenly Father. And then at the end, for into thy hands I commend myself, my body and soul and all things. Amen. Constantly reminding us that we are not our own and we are not in control. When things are going smoothly and blessings seem to abound, that’s according to our definition of blessings being a good thing from an earthly perspective. We tend to think it’s because of our own abilities.
And yet when God thrusts us into something that buckles our knees and drops us, we realize how completely impotent we are. So then why do we give thanks to our God? Do we give thanks to our God because he only gives us things? Or do we give thanks to our God because he also takes things away from us? Do we give thanks to God because all of a sudden we come to the realization that what I want is in line with what God wants?
Or do we thank God because we also realize that what I want is not in line with what God wants? Yes. So then why do we praise God? Do we praise God only because what God brings to us pleases us? Or do we praise God for the things that bring us sorrow and sadness, pain and agony? Do we praise our God because we feel good about ourselves? Or do we praise God because we see the blackness of our heart and are ashamed of ourselves?
It’s interesting how we are very definitive as to when to praise and when to thank. And if we’re only defining it according to how pagans define thankfulness and praise, then we’re looking only on a very narrow, myopic view.
There were ten leprous men. Ten leprous men gathered. And it’s very interesting that when Jesus comes, they don’t cry out, “Heal me.” That’s a very interesting point to note in this text. They don’t cry out, “Heal me. Cleanse me.” Now earlier in Luke, the fifth chapter, when a leper comes, that is what comes out of his mouth: “Cleanse me.” And immediately, he’s cleansed. In this text, we’ve got ten, and they all cry out in unison, rather than “Cleanse me” or “Heal me,” “Have mercy upon me.”
That’s a good thing. Whether cleansing comes or not, they’re asking for their souls to be given mercy and spiritual cleansing to be given. When Jesus tells them, “Go, show yourselves to the priest,” they’re not immediately cleansed. They have to step out and believe, and they do. God gives them that faith. And then they must act on that faith by going toward the priest, away from the one from whom they ask mercy.
And on their way, gradually, is their cleansing given and revealed to them. Now, it wasn’t as if the only one who realized that he was cleansed was a Samaritan. The other nine had to have realized it as well. The other nine did not return, just the Samaritan. Now, if the Samaritan was truly just a pagan, he would return because he had gotten what he wanted from this man. Like all pagans do, they thank the one who’s given them something.
But this Samaritan not only did that, but acknowledged who Jesus was. He was not just a great healer; he was God in the flesh. The irony, the Samaritan had no idea what was in front of him. Consider his plight. Here he has lived his life up to this point as a leper. He had gotten used to the habit of being a leper. He had gotten used to the habit of having to live this austere life, isolated from the rest of society. Now that he is healed, look what God is doing to him.
Thrusting him into a world that he is not familiar with. Living a life that he was not used to living. Look. So lest we think, oh wow, look, he’s been healed. How wonderful, his life is great now. His life has been turned completely upside down by God’s entrance into his life. Just like yours. As you look back on your life, you can see when God entered your life and caused you to be a believer and continue to be your Lord. You know as he has had control over your life and not you, he has put you in situations that gave glory to you, and he has put you into situations that completely crushed you.
You and I have no idea the life that God has chosen for us and that he works in us. There are so many things that we, given our choice, would have never chosen to do or would have ever allowed ourselves to do. And yet you know in your mind’s eye the things that God has chosen for you and that God has allowed you, both good and bad.
Now we don’t know why only the one returned. We’ll never know. And not the other nine. But he praised and thanked God for the physical healing and, more importantly, the spiritual healing. “Thy sins have been taken away,” because he said, “Thy faith has saved you. Thy faith has made you well.”
When God gets a hold of you, he does what he wants to do with you. Consider the Old Testament reading of Ruth. Ruth has a pagan heritage. Ruth had been introduced to the true God by her husband and her mother-in-law and father-in-law, but Ruth’s life was completely etched in paganism as what she was used to. And she chose not, by God’s grace and by God’s power, to return to the very familiar life of the Moabites, but instead, by God’s pushing and prodding, chose to go with her mother-in-law to a land and to a people where she would be the different one.
Again, when God gets a hold of us, he puts us into situations that we would not have chosen, that we would not have desired necessarily. He did that to Ruth’s life. He did that to the Samaritan’s life. And more importantly, he has done that to your life.
Praising and thanking God doesn’t just flow from one who has seen positive things according to human standard of positive. Praising and thanking is that God is in control. God has my best interests at heart. Part and in explanation of all the things that he’s done in our lives by his hand, he’s the one in control. And we say thank you and praise you in the midst of our darkest day as much as in the midst of our brightest day. At the top of the mountain and at the depth of the dark valley. Because God is the one who owns us and who has not left us.
And as the epistle reading said, though we are faithless, he will never. He will be faithful to us. So when you think back to your life, the things that have happened, the things that you would not have liked to have happened, given the choice, and yet God has brought you through, has he not?
Do we still grumble about it? Do we still struggle with it? But does God enable us to praise him in spite of it? Does God enable us to thank him in spite of it? It’s a risky business being God’s child, but it is life-changing. And for that, we do give thanks and praise.
Because the life before he entered ours was damned, and the life that he has given unto us now is heaven-bound. But he is the one who leads, and we are along for the ride in many ways. God be praised that he has our best interests at heart, like he had the Samaritan’s, and Ruth’s, and yours, and mine. But he is still God, and we thank and praise him for that.
In the name of Jesus, amen.