The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
October 10, 2010
Vol. 13 no. 40
It is by accident that this Thanksgiving Sunday’s Gospel reading is the most ‘thankful’ of all Gospel stories, the one out of ten lepers who returned to thank Jesus for healing him. Accidental because the Lectionary readings are not based upon secular holidays. But this is the Sunday the ten lepers approach Jesus and for us, coincidence is divine.
Sometimes we tend to reduce this incident to good manners and politeness, always saying thank you at the right time. Nothing wrong with politeness, but ‘thank you’ doesn’t necessarily redeem us in a time of crisis. The thankful leper offered a deeper response to his being cured of a wretched life than nice words. Something more was transformed inside him, and it is towards that depth we are summoned to listen.
Lepers were considered unclean and therefore no longer human, the sad equivalent of an animal not even worthy to eat. There was strong social pressure on lepers not to be social, to distance themselves from human contact lest we become like them. Jesus simply told them to go show themselves to the local priests. Not a single comment, they turned and went off in faith and in the process of going they were cleansed. Faith is dynamic - we do not possess or have faith, we catch hold of it and hang on.
One stopped in his tracks and turned around to go back to Jesus. A Samaritan, it is not unlikely it suddenly hit him that he would not be welcomed by a Jewish priest, even if he was clean. He couldn’t worship, but he could give praise to the one who brought him freedom. Flat on his face, a humbling, but not humiliating position, he was the second Good Samaritan. Like the first we never hear of him again. His giving thanks, however, has never stopped being recited.
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan