A Normal Thanksgiving
Luke 17:1-11
(Sermon Idea from William Willimon or Robert Capon)
All the lepers wanted was a normal thanksgiving. They simply wanted to be healthy, so they could be with their families, eat too much lamb, drink a few glasses of wine, and fall asleep on the couch watching the Vikings hopefully take it to Detroit.
Isn’t that what we normally look for on Thanksgiving. We would give thanks if life was simply normal – not perfect, but good – health good, children and grandchildren good, work good, weather good.
None of us has it as bad as the Lepers had it. You’ve heard how bad this disease was since you were taught in Sunday School. This terrible disease afflicted the nerves and the skin. As it progressed your body sheds all its hair. Your nails would loosen and fall out, then your extremities being to decay – fingers, toes, ears, nose, eventually you would go blind. Perhaps worse than dying from leprosy was the death that happened the moment you were diagnosed. The moment a little patch of leprosy appeared on your skin you were considered dead – you had to leave your family, your work, your house, your village, your church, your life – and live apart, in the company of other lepers – the walking dead.
But just because you aren’t as bad as a leper, doesn’t mean thanksgiving comes easy. You’ve got your own pains – that back pain that never lets up. Your own deaths – a husband, wife, or child who died this past year. You’ve got sins that you wrestle with and Satan sears them into your conscience telling you God couldn’t love someone like you. You have a job or marriage or child who challenges you every day. And it would be great if all of that would just return to normal. We don’t want a lot – just normal – like Luther describes it in the Small catechism – “body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses … clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children.” You could give thanks for that, couldn’t you?
That’s what nine of the lepers received. I think they would confess that they got far more than normal, but in the end that’s all they got. They had heard of this Jesus fellow. The Good News of this Guy from Galilee travelled done the pipeline of the dead and dying. There was the news that Jesus of Nazareth had stuck mud in a blind guys eye and he saw. He touched a lame man and he walked. He spoke and the demons ran. He ate with street walkers and government crooks. If the stories were true this Jesus might be their only hope. He sounds like just the guy to heal a leper.
So when they heard he was coming down the road between Samaria and Galilee, they didn’t shout unclean to warn Him of their contagion. Instead they shouted, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” Then Jesus raised them from the dead. “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” There was only one reason for a leper to go to a priest – to see if his leprosy was gone. The priest had told every one of these guys, at some point in their lives, that their lives were over, “I’m sorry. It’s leprosy. You must leave, now.” The only way to return to normal was for a priest to say, “You’re clean. It’s gone.” That never happened, except that is what Jesus told them to believe, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.”
The lepers believed. They had heard the stories of healing – all tied to this one guy Jesus. Now He had told them to go so they went, believing. And as they went they were cleansed. We don’t know the rest of the story for the nine lepers. They likely made it to the priest – got their “all clean” and headed home to house and home, wife and children, and all they had. I’m sure they gave thanks. Everything was back to normal, until it wasn’t.
We do know the rest of the story for one leper — the one who returned. For him normal wasn’t enough. He needed Jesus. He “turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks.” Jesus then asks him, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” And then Jesus said to the leper, “Rise and go your way, your faith has made you well.” And that’s a weak translation “made you well.” The word is the Greek word for save- it can mean save from sickness, but faith in Jesus as God does more than save from sickness. It saves from sin, from death, from hell. Faith in Jesus doesn’t give normal gifts – it gives resurrection from the dead, by giving the forgiveness of sin. It saves you.
There’s nothing wrong with a normal thanksgiving – for many Americans it might be the one day when, for a change, they don’t use God’s name in vain, but actually acknowledge that He is the Creator and Giver of all things. But Jesus gives you a greater than normal thanksgiving. A thanksgiving you can render when things aren’t normal, when Thanksgiving Day finds you broken or grieving or burdened by sin. When you sit at your table unloved or lonely.
Jesus came into the world because normal is rare. Normal never lasts. He came into the world because there were men with leprosy, women who were sold for sex, government leaders who are morally bankrupt, men who loved themselves more than their wives, and cells in our body exploding into cancer. He came because your thoughts, words, and deeds are not human, not normal, but ungodly and sinful. He came into this world because our sin leaves us with anything but normal. When Jesus met those lepers He was travelling to Jerusalem. He was headed for the cross. There He bears our griefs and carries our sorrows … He is pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities, upon him is placed the chastisement that brings us peace, and with His wounds we are healed. (Is 53:4-5). Jesus didn’t die so we could have a normal life. He died so that we might be raised from the dead. He died so we could know His Father’s love when we’re not so lovely. He died so we could have hope at the grave of a loved one. He died so we could have peace in this evil world.
If you were among that leprous band in Luke 17, running home from the priest to enjoy your family for the first time in years, I’ve got to believe you would be the most thankful person on earth. Yet, how quickly they forgot? They didn’t even return to thank Jesus. They could have had so much more than a normal thanksgiving. God has given you more than those lepers who returned to normal. He has given you what He gave the one leper who returned to Jesus – salvation. That makes for a happy thanksgiving, even when things aren’t normal. In the name of Jesus. Amen.