Psalm 111, Luke 17:11-19
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ
There are many challenges for us in life; I’ve faced some real doozies. Early on, the hardest challenge for me was honesty; my wife’s aunt described another of Cathy’s family as “allergic to the truth”; well, as a kid I was allergic to the truth. At one point in my life, I think when I was in college studying Philosophy, I called lying, creative truth. With confidence and a little courage, I grew to appreciate the truth. Challenges abound; I suffered the challenges of seeing people I cared for die, personally and as a pastor; in many ways’ death was softened by my faith in a loving God who through Jesus promised new life; it seems the challenges of what to do next, after those I loved died, were what challenged me the most; how do I move on? Again, experience and time have taught me that life goes on, people are never replaced, but the roles that they played in my life and yours, get taken over, not in the same way and maybe not as well, but they get taken over.
That leads me to a challenge that will always remain with me; I struggle, though I’ve gotten better with it, at recognizing my needs for help and then a willingness to ask for help. It’s almost a manhood thing as though I would be less of a man if I asked for help. I don’t want this to be a man thing; I know plenty of women that also have a hard time asking for help. Again, I’m getting better, and the more you agree to help me, the easier it will be for me to ask for help. Sorry, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to hit you with some persuasive guilt. It’s true that positive responses to my requests for help make it easier for me to ask, but I don’t want guilt to motivate you to help here at St. Peter’s.
The challenges before us are many; another one that has become much more evident in my life, especially as I have learned to ask more and more for help, is to say thank you. Ten lepers approached Jesus asking for help, for healing. My guess is, they really didn’t expect to walk away healed. How many times had they already sought the help of doctors and healers of all kinds; how many times had they asked God, in prayer to heal them and (up until then) all of their requests had fallen on deaf ears, either because the healers were without the power to heal them or in the case of God, God was not willing to fulfill their request. It was too much to hope, that their lives would be restored to them, with good health. But if it should happen! If it should happen that they would be healed, there was so much for them to do; they would have to go to the priest and show themselves as healed, before they, even, could go and see their families; they would need to perform the required rituals and make the proper sacrifices before they could go to their families;’ and then they would need to figure out how they could put their lives back together. So much to do.
Well, the ten lepers were cured; nine of the ten, with a new lease on life, jumped right into to the process of putting their lives back together. One lone man returned to find Jesus, his healer, in a way defying what Jesus had told him to do, that is to show himself to the priests. That one lone man returned to thank Jesus for his healing and all that the healing will mean for his life. Jesus asked him, “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?” As it turned out the only man to say thank you was a Samaritan, a Jew, but of a sect of Judaism that good Jews, those who worshiped in the Temple, looked down upon and were seen as inferior at best. But, on that day he stood head and shoulders above the other nine, assumed to be Jews, as he bowed before Jesus in thanksgiving, praising God for his healing.
So many of us, good Christians seem to find it a challenge to simply say thank you, to those who help us, our family members, those who help our friends, those who help out the church, those who help out organizations established to help needy people and those who help out those, unknown to us, but people who suffer, We often just get too busy with the tasks of life to take the time to say thank you. At the heart of the ever-changing article that I write each month for the herald, entitled “It seems I’m always saying (thank you)” is my realization that I can’t say thank you enough and that all too often I forget to say it. So, I make a concerted effort to thank all the people who have helped me, helped my family, helped my friends, helped out here at the church and helped others, but I fall short of thanking everyone deserving. It is a challenge, so in that article, I try to thank those who, more often than not, do their good works behind the scenes, or just get overlooked by those who should be thanking them. Saying thank you sounds like such an easy thing so why do so many of us forget or avoid doing it. It is humbling; by saying thank you, we not only acknowledge our needing of help, we recognize this need in a public way; it is humbling. Someday, when I become a wise and mature man and fully comfortable with myself, accepting my strengths and weaknesses, I will thank everyone boldly; I pray that I will live to see that day!
And there is more, as the Psalmist demonstrates that thanksgiving leads to the praise of the Lord. Note that not only did the leper return to Jesus to thank him for healing him, he placed his face against the earth and praised God with a loud voice. All good things come from the Lord! Any thanksgiving is incomplete unless we praise the one, the Lord our God, who is the source of all help and good things. Now, your challenge, our challenge: can we as a congregation, find it in our hearts to thank each other, thanking those who set up for Communion, those who generously give to the church, those who set up the fellowship hour, who teach our children, who maintain the church property, who take care of the church finances, who organize our outreach programs, who plan our worship and who plan and do the hundred other things, you and others do, to minister within the congregation and out in the community. I’ll start: thank you for all you do. And not to be forgotten: thank you Lord, you have made all things good and are the source of all of our joy. Now turn to your neighbor. All of you have done things to benefit the church and each other. Tell your neighbor thank you.