Pentecost 20 C

We have a gospel lesson today that I think a lot of you might recognize from Thanksgiving. It is the text that we often use at thanksgiving time. The reason it is a thanksgiving text is because it tells us that God does great things for us, it asks us what do we do in response to those good things and it makes sure that we know the answer should be that we offer praise, in all kinds of ways and in all kinds of places with our bodies and with our minds and with our hearts and souls and thoughts and prayers and actions.

So we start with a story about Jesus healing ten lepers of their disease. He heals them and sends them away so that they can be part of society again. And of the ten one comes back and he thanks Jesus, he kneels at Jesus' feet and he praises what Jesus has done for him.

Jesus responds lovingly to the man, telling him to go, his faith as healed him but he wonders where the other nine who were healed went. Why didn't they come to thank him. We never know, we don't hear in the story.

But imagine you were one of the ten lepers. you have a terrible disease, you are cast out of your home, your town maybe even your country to live outside of the community without contact with the people you love, not allowed to go to the temple or the market or even the local well. You are completely an outcast and the only way that you can survive is to beg on the streets out of town.

This is where the lepers in our story today are. As they see Jesus approach they call out in loud voices to him for mercy. Loud voices because they are not allowed to be close to him for fear the disease will spread and mercy because they need money to live and food to eat. Instead of responding to this plea for money though Jesus takes away their need to be beggers.

So, say you're one of the ten you have been made clean, given a second chance. A new lease on life. What would you do? What did the ten from our story today do?

A couple of them must have had families. When they came down with leprosy they were forced away, first for fear they would infect their loved ones and then by the rules of the society that said you must not be around healthy people if you are sick. I Bet these people ran home without missing a beat, straight to their families. Scooped up children and wives or husbands and wept with joy. I think many of us might react in this way to being healed.

Others must have had good jobs, they made money and were successful and they were filled with shame when their bodies betrayed them and they were deemed sick, unclean by those over whom they had once had power. They were made to ask for handouts from people who used to pay for their services. I bet these people went back to the office, straight back without missing a beat to try to rebuild the empires that they had controlled.

There may have even been a priest in their midst, someone who had spent his time in the temple offering sacrifices and following all of the commandments for how to praise God. He had been filled with shame and hurt when he had to leave the temple, had to be separated from the God he had served. So as soon as he was shown to be clean he slipped back into the temple, into his comfortable life, knowing that he was chosen by God, why God had even healed him. I bet he made a sacrifice to God in Thanksgiving.

So as these people all went their own way, back to how life had been I wonder if they said goodbye to one another, planned to keep in touch, perhaps they had bonded over their common exile. And I wonder if they noticed one missing from the group. Already well on his way back to Jesus. I wonder if they chased after their fellow from Samaria to ask what he was doing.

If they had they might have realized that there was something different about him. That he seemed to be changed. Not only was he healed, they all were, but he, he was determined. He ran back to Jesus and fell at his feet and said I know that you are the one who healed me. You are the one who gave us the strength and will and reason to go to the temple, to show ourselves to the priests. to reclaim our lives.

The scripture lets us know that this man, the one who ran back to Jesus is the one who got it. The only one one who got it. He understood that he had been healed. He knew that something great had happened. He was more than just happy to have his old life back, he realized that he had just been part of a group of people who had been given new life. And he was thankful. How amazing this life was going to be be because it was given with such grace and trust and so little expectation.

After thanking Jesus did this man who understood return to his family and his job? I'm sure he did, back to the life he had left, but not back to his old life. He returned a new person, a clean whole child of God, filled with thanksgiving.

I'll bet he never stopped telling the story for the rest of his life of how without even asking for it he had been healed and I'm sure that through him maybe without his even knowing it great things happened.

What would you do if you were given new life? If suddenly you were made completely whole? Would you run toward the source of healing proclaiming loud thanksgivings? Is that why you are here today?

I was talking to a member of the congregation this last week who is need of some great healing herself. I was there to pray with her and her family. But in the midst of explaining to me how and why she needed to be healed she was constantly turning to the people in her family who had been healed and cared for so many times and who are great sources of joy and healing to her now.

Even while sick she is filled with thanksgiving, she knows that she has already been given new life.

What do you do knowing that you have been given new life? Can you talk even in the midst of great doubt about the Lord who heals you?

Yesterday we were given a new life, we were formally commissioned by some official people with some official words to be a family together. To be a new configuration of the body of Christ. In a lot of ways yesterday was a little bit like a reaffirmation of baptism for us all. We were reminded that we are called, claimed and sealed children of God and that as a community we have been pulled together out of brokenness and to proclaim our faith and thanksgiving.

But yesterday didn't change anything. Yesterday just reminded us that we are already changed, we are already new. We already belong to God, we are already living new lives baptised and claimed by a risen saviour. Yesterday just posed the question again:

What are we going to do with this new life?

Will we go back to our comfortable habits? Or will we run toward its source proclaiming our thanks in a loud voice?

Will we quietly keep to the business we generally do here? Or will we tell the story over and over throughout our community?

Will we look like just the same people, people who might go to church on Sunday but nothing much seems to happen there? Or will we become a new creation in response to our new life?

I have great hope that we will remember, each day that we spend together, that in Baptism we were given new life and made a new family and we will make our thanksgivings known!

I don't know what the right kind of thanksgiving will look like for us. I don't know what we can do here that is equivalent to running and falling at Jesus' feet. Do you?

What are we going to do with this new life?

Whatever it is, whatever we do, let us always be proclaiming the good news with great thanksgiving!

Amen