Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7, Psalm 66:1-11, 2 Timothy 2:8-15, Luke 17:11-19
Leprosy was a long, slow death. It made these ten untouchable—cast out of their homes, dead to their families, dead to God’s people. They could not worship—they were dehumanized. Even to the enmity between Jews and Samaritans they were dead, suspended beyond the boundaries of life.
Jesus restored them back to the world. They were healed, but by not standing there—first they had to go to their village priests. They had to obey his command, and in their obedience they were made clean. No doubt they scattered, each to his own village to get the ritual certification of being clean again. All ten of them were made well through their faith.
The nine did nothing wrong. They were doing what Jesus told them to. The Messiah had done his job for them, he had restored them to Israel, they could go back to their normal human lives, they could “build their houses and live in them, they could plant their gardens and eat the produce, they could take their wives and have their sons and daughters” again. They had “returned to normalcy.”
The nine were not wrong, so what the one did was a surplus. Why he turned around was more than gratitude. He was praising God as he came back. He came right up to Jesus instead of keeping his distance as before. He acted already restored without first being certified. Jesus had no authority to certify him clean, but the authority to make him clean the tenth one recognized. He read the presence of God into Jesus—that back there with that man Jesus is where God came into his life. He saw by faith that in Jesus God had come to him. So he went back there to Jesus to thank him and praise God.
I can imagine the nine not turning around for fear of interrupting their healing. The tenth one actually disobeyed what Jesus said, or at least he interrupted his obedience. For praise and thanksgiving. As if praise and thanksgiving are the point of obedience. As if he’s already been restored to his full humanity before his return to his old life in the village. As if returning to normalcy is not even the point, but returning in praise and thanksgiving is the point.
There’s another surplus. Jesus gave him something extra. The last thing that the Lord Jesus says to him is “Get up and go on your way.” A better translation is “Rise up and get going.” The word that Jesus uses here is the same as the word for resurrection. That’s no coincidence in Luke. And that’s the surplus—the power of the resurrection, beyond the power of cleansing and restoration.
If the nine got normalcy, the tenth got something new, something not normal, that new humanity that is a favorite theme of Luke, that new humanity that the Lord Jesus was bringing into the old world by the power of his resurrection. The tenth one was saved into the people of the resurrection, the new humanity.
What does it mean to be a human being? Build houses and plant gardens and take spouses and have children. The normal things, things all good, and what God wants for us, but to be a part of the new humanity is to know when to turn from all of that and return to God in praise and thanksgiving. To be a part of this new humanity is why you are saved.
When your faith has saved you, that does mean cleansing, it does mean restoration to the world, but it also means orientation to God. It’s by your turning to God in praise and thanksgiving that you get the even greater fullness of the world. You are saved not to escape from the world, but to get you going in the world while God is renewing it.
All ten had faith. All ten believed the command of Jesus and acted on it. But faith is more than just believing that God’s word is true. Faith is also vision. Faith sees more than observation can. Faith can hear the word of God in the voice of a human being. Faith can see the hand of God in ordinary things. And faith can see God’s renewal in the midst of all the breakdown and decay.
You here today are living like the lepers in between, in between the boundaries of life and death. You are on the way to death, although you are not cut off, nor you are dehumanized, though many people are. You live in tension. You live in disconnect. Maybe even in exile, like the Jews in Babylon, to whom Jeremiah wrote his letter.
Rabbi Bachman once pointed out to me that for the 5780 years of Jewish history, they’ve lived in exile for more years than in the Promised Land. So to, the Christians in the Roman Empire were treated as strangers and aliens even in their native lands. So you have to have hope for the future, but can you give thanks in the present tension, and praise God in the disconnect? Your praise and thanksgiving take faith, your faith to see what can’t be seen.
Praise and thanksgiving should be natural. If we take our cue from song birds and wildflowers with their extravagance of sound and color and the unnecessary complexity of stars and planets, then praise of God should be natural. But human beings are creatures with this extra moral sense, and your moral sense tells you that something is wrong with the normalcy of the world, and that existence means pain and suffering, and that leads you to question whether God is worthy of your thanks or even if there is a God to praise. Or we don’t question God, and we blame our creaturely misery on human sin, then how shall we praise God when we don’t feel at home in the world, how shall we give thanks when we’re in exile within the only world we know? So the first sober truth about praise and thanksgiving is that our experience of the world can argue convincingly against it.
The second sober truth about praise and thanksgiving is that it takes faith just to do it. It takes faith to praise God against the arguments of experience and to thank God against the evidence of futility. It takes faith to live within the new humanity, not disconnected from the old but alive within the old, to recognize the goodness of God even in your failures and your failing body, to report the faithfulness of God even as you approach your death. It takes faith for praise and thanksgiving.
The third sober truth about praise and thanksgiving is that these are not optional, but a kind of obedience. We don’t just offer them as a result of our good times. Rather they are necessary, especially so for the bad times. To practice thanksgiving is to practice your faith. That’s a take home for today. If you want to live by your faith, then practice thanksgiving. Thanksgiving to God is the way to express your faith and the way to rehearse your faith and the way to maintain your faith.
Your praise and thanksgiving serve to save you. Your praise saves your soul, your thanksgiving saves your mind and your peace of mind, your thanksgiving saves your self-respect, your praise saves your voice and your music, your thanksgiving saves your spirit to rise up and get moving again. Your praise and thanksgiving are what save you for the new humanity and also keep you in it.
The fourth truth about praise and thanksgiving is not a sober one, but a joyful one. This truth is that praise and thanksgiving give off love. They are an exercise in faithfulness, which is the ground of love. Thanksgiving generates generosity, the sign of love, and praise yields affirmation and encouragement, the works of love. Gratitude yields grace, the attitude of love. You practice your praise and thanksgiving, finally, in order to live within the love of God.
Copyright © 2019 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.
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