Learning Gratitude
Sermon text for July 22, 2007:
Luke 17:11-19
The man lay hidden in the rocks just below the trail. His body was obscured from view by the scrub oaks that grew on the hillsides. He couldn’t remember how he’d gotten there, but slowly his senses began to return to him. The first thing he noticed was the buzzing in his ears, as if a dozen or so bees had taken up residence in his skull. The next thing was a bone chilling pain in his side that hit him when he tried to sit up. The pain was so incredible that he felt woozy and nauseous. And then he noticed his left leg. It was lying limply at an unnatural angle and the bone was sticking through his skin.
Fear gripped him when he realized how much trouble he was in. It was cold primal fear for his life. He hadn’t told anyone where he was going so the possibility of help coming anytime soon was remote. And the thought came to him with sickening reality – “I might die out here!”
He was never a very religious man, but he did believe in some ill-defined higher power. If he was ever forced to describe his relationship with this higher power he’d said something like, “I don’t bother God and God doesn’t bother me.” But from his position among the rocks the words of a prayer began to form. “God can you hear me? God I hurt so badly and no one knows where I am. God I don’t want to die. Please help me.”
The prayer was the last thing he remembered before waking in a helicopter while being flown to a trauma center on “Flight for Life”. Somehow fellow hikers had heard him moaning and discovered him several feet below the trail among the rocks. They waited with him until paramedics arrived.
Later when he described his ordeal to his friend he summed up the experience this way. “I sure am lucky those other people came by. I guess it just wasn’t my time to die.”
The woman was so depressed that life held very little meaning for her. Sometimes desperate thoughts crept into her mind and stayed there festering for days. “I am no good to anyone anymore. My family would be better off without me. O God what was it that I did that was so terribly wrong so that I am being punished this way?”
She didn’t get this way overnight, it was a gradual process, one step at a time. Slowly she withdrew from life. It started innocently enough with missing some of her children’s activities – a soccer game here, a band concert there. Then she started rebuffing her husband’s affections. She could no longer stand herself and could not believe anyone else could love her.
Finally one day she quit her job and from that moment she spent most of the time in bed in a dark room with the draperies shut. She no longer attended church, and she didn’t keep up with friends. It simply took too much energy to deal with people. Sometimes she cried for hours for no reason at all. Slowly her loved ones started to avoid her because the emptiness in her life sucked the energy out of them.
One day in desperation her husband forced her to see a Christian psychologist who prescribed a course of counseling, antidepressants, and prayer. As the fog began to lift she asked her church friends for prayer support and soon members rallied with prayer and other kinds of help.
Over a period of time the woman’s health returned and she began feeling like her old self again. She couldn’t believe how good she felt in comparison to the way she felt before. One day a church friend said to her, “I’ll bet you thank God everyday for healing you,” And the woman replied, “Well yes, I guess, but it’s really nothing more than I deserve.”
One day Jesus met ten lepers. They existed on the edges of society and often felt lonely, desperate, depressed and cursed. Dealing with the physical effects of the disease was hard enough, but the emotional effects were even worse. Because of their leprosy they could not have any intimate contact with their families. They couldn’t hold down a job, and they had to warn others that they were coming. Some wore bells around their necks so that the sound would warn others while some simply cried out, “Leper! Leper coming!” Their constant prayer must have been, “God save me. O God what will become of me? How can I live like this?”
One day as Jesus was traveling he was confronted by these ten lepers. They stood at the prescribed distance and asked Jesus for mercy. Just talking with a whole person was risky, but the lepers recognized something in Jesus which gave them the courage to risk rejection. Healing was probably too much to hope for – just a little mercy, what ever Jesus could do, would be sufficient. “Jesus Master, have mercy on us,” they prayed.
Jesus told the lepers to show themselves to the priests, which was part of a ritual that was required before they could re-enter society. On the way, they felt the leprosy leave their bodies and they were healed. They were healed, their bodies and relationships restored. But only one of them returned to Jesus to give thanks to God.
We will never know why the others didn’t return. Perhaps despite their prayerful request they thought of themselves as lucky instead of blessed. Or maybe they felt entitled to health because others were healthy.
Only one offered an appropriate response for the gift he received. Somehow he understood that he had received a gift from God. His healing was not luck or fate. It was not an entitlement – but a blessed gift that healed body, mind, and soul. This one returned to Jesus to express praise and thanksgiving.
It might have helped that the one who returned was a Samaritan and not a Jew. As an outsider he may have understood how unexpected and unmerited his healing was, while the Jews might have considered healing as part of the covenant.
But we are insiders. We are a part of the people of God who recognize that we are all wounded in some way and therefore on a journey toward wholeness. The Greek word that we translate “saved” also means “whole” so in our salvation we are moving toward wholeness. And we believe that one day we will be presented to God without blemish, or wounds that oppress body or soul.
The only question is how we will respond to our healing. Will we understand wholeness as blessing or entitlement? Is it what we deserve or pure grace? Maybe we ought to begin practicing for that day, by saying thank you to God with all that we are and all that we have.
Copyright © 2007 by Dwight R. Blackstock
Luke 17:11-19
The man lay hidden in the rocks just below the trail. His body was obscured from view by the scrub oaks that grew on the hillsides. He couldn’t remember how he’d gotten there, but slowly his senses began to return to him. The first thing he noticed was the buzzing in his ears, as if a dozen or so bees had taken up residence in his skull. The next thing was a bone chilling pain in his side that hit him when he tried to sit up. The pain was so incredible that he felt woozy and nauseous. And then he noticed his left leg. It was lying limply at an unnatural angle and the bone was sticking through his skin.
Fear gripped him when he realized how much trouble he was in. It was cold primal fear for his life. He hadn’t told anyone where he was going so the possibility of help coming anytime soon was remote. And the thought came to him with sickening reality – “I might die out here!”
He was never a very religious man, but he did believe in some ill-defined higher power. If he was ever forced to describe his relationship with this higher power he’d said something like, “I don’t bother God and God doesn’t bother me.” But from his position among the rocks the words of a prayer began to form. “God can you hear me? God I hurt so badly and no one knows where I am. God I don’t want to die. Please help me.”
The prayer was the last thing he remembered before waking in a helicopter while being flown to a trauma center on “Flight for Life”. Somehow fellow hikers had heard him moaning and discovered him several feet below the trail among the rocks. They waited with him until paramedics arrived.
Later when he described his ordeal to his friend he summed up the experience this way. “I sure am lucky those other people came by. I guess it just wasn’t my time to die.”
The woman was so depressed that life held very little meaning for her. Sometimes desperate thoughts crept into her mind and stayed there festering for days. “I am no good to anyone anymore. My family would be better off without me. O God what was it that I did that was so terribly wrong so that I am being punished this way?”
She didn’t get this way overnight, it was a gradual process, one step at a time. Slowly she withdrew from life. It started innocently enough with missing some of her children’s activities – a soccer game here, a band concert there. Then she started rebuffing her husband’s affections. She could no longer stand herself and could not believe anyone else could love her.
Finally one day she quit her job and from that moment she spent most of the time in bed in a dark room with the draperies shut. She no longer attended church, and she didn’t keep up with friends. It simply took too much energy to deal with people. Sometimes she cried for hours for no reason at all. Slowly her loved ones started to avoid her because the emptiness in her life sucked the energy out of them.
One day in desperation her husband forced her to see a Christian psychologist who prescribed a course of counseling, antidepressants, and prayer. As the fog began to lift she asked her church friends for prayer support and soon members rallied with prayer and other kinds of help.
Over a period of time the woman’s health returned and she began feeling like her old self again. She couldn’t believe how good she felt in comparison to the way she felt before. One day a church friend said to her, “I’ll bet you thank God everyday for healing you,” And the woman replied, “Well yes, I guess, but it’s really nothing more than I deserve.”
One day Jesus met ten lepers. They existed on the edges of society and often felt lonely, desperate, depressed and cursed. Dealing with the physical effects of the disease was hard enough, but the emotional effects were even worse. Because of their leprosy they could not have any intimate contact with their families. They couldn’t hold down a job, and they had to warn others that they were coming. Some wore bells around their necks so that the sound would warn others while some simply cried out, “Leper! Leper coming!” Their constant prayer must have been, “God save me. O God what will become of me? How can I live like this?”
One day as Jesus was traveling he was confronted by these ten lepers. They stood at the prescribed distance and asked Jesus for mercy. Just talking with a whole person was risky, but the lepers recognized something in Jesus which gave them the courage to risk rejection. Healing was probably too much to hope for – just a little mercy, what ever Jesus could do, would be sufficient. “Jesus Master, have mercy on us,” they prayed.
Jesus told the lepers to show themselves to the priests, which was part of a ritual that was required before they could re-enter society. On the way, they felt the leprosy leave their bodies and they were healed. They were healed, their bodies and relationships restored. But only one of them returned to Jesus to give thanks to God.
We will never know why the others didn’t return. Perhaps despite their prayerful request they thought of themselves as lucky instead of blessed. Or maybe they felt entitled to health because others were healthy.
Only one offered an appropriate response for the gift he received. Somehow he understood that he had received a gift from God. His healing was not luck or fate. It was not an entitlement – but a blessed gift that healed body, mind, and soul. This one returned to Jesus to express praise and thanksgiving.
It might have helped that the one who returned was a Samaritan and not a Jew. As an outsider he may have understood how unexpected and unmerited his healing was, while the Jews might have considered healing as part of the covenant.
But we are insiders. We are a part of the people of God who recognize that we are all wounded in some way and therefore on a journey toward wholeness. The Greek word that we translate “saved” also means “whole” so in our salvation we are moving toward wholeness. And we believe that one day we will be presented to God without blemish, or wounds that oppress body or soul.
The only question is how we will respond to our healing. Will we understand wholeness as blessing or entitlement? Is it what we deserve or pure grace? Maybe we ought to begin practicing for that day, by saying thank you to God with all that we are and all that we have.
Copyright © 2007 by Dwight R. Blackstock
posted by Dwight Blackstock | 6:29 AM
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