Luke
17:11-19
On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between
Samaria and Galilee. As he
entered a village, ten lepers approached
him. Keeping their distance, they
called out, saying, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!’ When he saw them, he said to them, ‘Go
and show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he
was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a
Samaritan. Then Jesus asked,
‘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?’ Then
he said to him, ‘Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.’
This sermon begins with the distribution of a
piece of chocolate to everyone in the congregation. They are invited to unwrap and eat it, if
there is no reason they cannot.
Next, I will play a video clip that shows cocoa
workers in Ivory Coast who after years and years of harvesting and drying cocoa
beans taste chocolate for the first time in their lives. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEN4hcZutO0#t=48
It’s
really easy for us (isn’t it?) even though we enjoy and are grateful for a good
piece of chocolate, to gobble it down and lick our fingers and go on our
way. How often do we really and truly
feel the full joy of something and in the midst of it say, “Thanks!”?
It
so often takes someone who has never known the blessings that we take for
granted or going without that makes us realize what we have. It takes that Samaritan, that outsider who
does not take things for granted, to feel and to express real gratitude is.
We get so used to asking and
receiving forgiveness from God that we forget how amazing grace is. We are so used to the notion of God’s love
that we lose track of how incredible it is that the Creator of time and space,
who exists in a way far beyond our comprehension, who holds in a single glimpse
all that has ever been or ever could be, who knows the limits of infinity,
could have time to listen to the crying of a child who has just lost a
goldfish. We are so wrapped up in
ourselves that we assume we deserve all the good that comes our way, and forget
that it is all a gift, every last bit of it.
And what a gift it is! Even the simplest things of life, when we see
God’s grace behind them, can call out a deep response. Twenty-five
years ago I was in a major hurricane in the Virgin Islands and, like everyone
else, went quite a while without a lot of things that today I barely think
about. I do remember, though, how two
months into the recovery I had a week to return to the States for a brief rest
and was on a plane, somewhere over the Atlantic, and went back to the bathroom
where, for the first time in weeks, I turned a handle and felt hot water run
out of the spigot and began laughing almost hysterically. I hope that God understood that that was my
best way of saying, “Thanks,” at that moment.
We
cannot and do not live with that intensity all the time. It would probably wreck us. All the same, when it happens, go ahead and
give thanks, and don’t let the moment pass.
That in itself, too, is a gift.
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