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Faith Makes Thanksgiving Happy

            What will it take at the end of the day, to get you to say, “This was a good Thanksgiving”?   I’m not sure yet how today is going to turn out for me.  This is the first time our family of five isn’t going to be together for Thanksgiving, and I don’t know how that’s going to feel at the end of the day.  Will a phone call be enough or will we all be feeling a little empty tonight?  The local sports reporters have been crowing all week that the Green Bay Packers haven’t had such a good record at this point in the season since 1962.  I’ll tell you what happened that year:  The Detroit Lions killed the Packers on Thanksgiving Day.  I was 12 years old, but I remember exactly how I felt at the end of that day.  So I’m not sure yet what kind of a mood I’m going to be in at the end of today.  I’m not sure what it will take to get me to say, “This was a good Thanksgiving.” 

            I want to talk to you this morning about ten men who woke up one morning and knew exactly how they’d feel at the end of the day, and it wouldn’t make any difference if it was a holiday or not.  The story of the ten lepers is a pretty well-known Bible story, but I doubt any of us can really get a handle on just how rotten these guys felt every single day.  There aren’t many diseases in our world that don’t have some kind of cure.  Back then, there was no cure for leprosy.   In our world, people reach out to people with serious diseases; Princess Diana hugged HIV victims.  Nobody back then ever hugged a leper.  Try to say in our politically correct society that somebody got sick because of a sin he committed, and somebody else will accuse you of a hate crime.  But that’s exactly what people said about lepers.  Being a leper was a rotten, lonely life; it was like you were alive and dead at the same time.

            Well, you all know how the story goes.  The day came when the ten lepers had an encounter with Jesus, and the day ended a whole lot better than it started.  It wasn’t Thanksgiving Day, but it was certainly a day for thanksgiving.  What made the difference?  What did it take to make this day a happy day for the lepers?  A family reunion?  I suppose there was one, but nothing’s mentioned here.  The local team won?  That’s silly.  The cure for what had been incurable?  Not even that.  Jesus knew what made the difference: “Your faith has made you well.” 

            I’m going to propose to you this morning that faith is what makes Thanksgiving happy.  Is your family separated?  Is someone missing this year who was at the table last year?  Is someone sick at your house, is someone dying, is the job in doubt, are the finances in shambles, is the relationship crumbling?  I don’t know what the potential for disappointment in your life is today; I don’t know what could happen that would make your Thanksgiving a downer or a disaster.  But I do know this--and I know this because I see it in today’s Gospel: No matter what happens today, Faith Makes Thanksgiving Happy.

Faith that believes it will receive

            I suppose the stories did it, I mean the stories that were floating around that the teacher from Nazareth could heal lepers.  Cynical lepers probably laughed about the stories, but these ten, for whatever reason, left their shacks in the desert--they couldn’t live in towns--and went looking for the teacher.  Apart from the stories, they didn’t really know much about Jesus.  It doesn’t seem they had listened to any of his sermons or heard what he was saying about himself.  I doubt they had a clue that he was on the way to Jerusalem to die.  The stories made them do it.  “They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, ‘Jesus, Master, have pity on us!’”

            The response came just like that: “Go show yourselves to the priests.”  That made sense to people in Bible times.  The laws God gave to the nation of Israel included a whole set of regulations that had to do with skin diseases.  Any person who had a skin rash had to be isolated from the rest of the community, and he couldn’t get back into the community until the priests declared him cured and accepted a small ceremonial sacrifice.  I guess that makes sense to us.  If a school kid comes down with a case of head lice, he doesn’t get back into school until someone checks him out.  It made sense for Jesus to send the lepers to the priests.

            Here’s what doesn’t make sense: The lepers went.  No word from Jesus except “Go.”  No touch, no prayer, no smile--and no evidence.  The blotches didn’t start to heal and the rash didn’t go away while dramatic music played in the background.  Jesus spoke, and nothing happened!  For anyone to see—for them to see--these men looked as leprous after Jesus spoke as they did before he spoke.  But they went running to the priests.  “And as they went they were cleansed.”  And the day that started out rotten to the core--the day of the living dead—all at once became the happiest day of their lives.  Obviously, it was Jesus who healed them.  But they could have walked away.  They could have said, “Aw, come on teacher.  No word, no smile, no miracle?  Give us something we can see.”  But they didn’t say that.  They had faith that believed they would receive.  Jesus was right; in a very real way their faith had made them well. 

            I wonder if I would have gone.  What about you?  We Americans like our blessings now, and we like them in plain sight.  We don’t really get into this “All things come to those who wait” business.  This is a common problem for Christians.  We aren’t clueless about God’s promises to us.  He said, “Surely I will be with you always to the very end of the age.  I will never leave you or forsake you”.  And there are hundreds of promises like that.  But there’s this little voice in the back of our brains that always wants to say, “Show me the money, God.”  I know that sounds crass, but that’s the attitude we take way too often.  And what happens?  We make ourselves miserable.  Jesus has given us more blessings than we could possibly use and is ready to load us down with even more blessings, and we make ourselves sick wondering if he means it and worrying that he might not.

            Some historian has figured out that in the Germany of Martin Luther’s day six out of ten children died in infancy and that the average life expectancy was about 40 years.  Not long before Luther was born, the Black Death wiped out one-third of Europe’s population.  In 1515, a law was passed that stipulated German farmers couldn’t be forced to work anymore than 15 hours a day.  Someone has said that life in Germany in Luther’s time was three things: “nasty, brutish, and short.”  How did Martin Luther deal with that?  This is what he wrote when he explained the First Article of the Creed: “I believe that God still preserves me by richly and daily providing clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land, cattle, and all I own, and all that I need to keep my body and life.” Where was the evidence, where was the proof?  In his day, Luther didn’t have much of either.  But he had a faith that believed he would receive because Jesus promised it. 

            What will it take at the end of the day to lead you to say, “This was a happy Thanksgiving?”  And what will it take tonight when the worries about tomorrow come back?  And what about tomorrow when the worries become real practical: the worries about the job or school or finances or a relationship?  Will you still be happy and content and confident about your future?  Will you put a smile on your face and take Jesus at his word even when the road is unmarked and the evidence seems thin?  May God give us a faith like Luther and the lepers, a faith that believes we will receive no matter what, simply because Jesus says so.    

Faith that receives and then believes

            Only one leper came back to give thanks.  You noticed that, right?  Jesus certainly noticed it.  The leper who came back is the main character in the story; he’s the one Jesus wants us to imitate.  OK, so let’s all say “Thank you, God” just like the leper did, and I can say Amen and we can get home in time for the kickoff.

            Nobody gets to stand up yet.  There’s more here.  This leper didn’t just say thank you.  Listen to the Gospel again: “One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice.  He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan.”  Someplace on that road that led to the priests, sometime after he realized that his incurable disease was cured, at some point this leper stopped in his tracks and realized that the man back there was more than a master teacher.  Did he know exactly who Jesus was, that he was the Son of God, that he had obeyed God’s laws perfectly, that he was about to give his life for the world, that he said he would rise from the grave after he died?  I don’t think the leper knew all that.  But he knew the man must have come from God because he had the kind of power only God had, and so he made God the object of his praise and threw himself on the ground like he would for God.  And a quiet voice that came from deep within him convinced this leper that if this God-man could take away his leprosy, he could also take away his sins.  And all at once leprosy wasn’t the issue anymore.  He wanted the other stuff; he wanted to be rid of his guilt and he wanted forgiveness for his sins and he wanted relief from the fear of eternal punishment and he wanted to be at peace with God .  He came back to Jesus not just to say “Thank you.”  He came back to say, “Save me.”  Jesus said, “Your faith has made you well.”  For sure, but well in more ways than one.  Physically well—no more leprosy--but more important—spiritually well—no more guilt or threat of death.   The same faith that led this leper to believe that he would receive also led him to receive and then to believe.  And what he found in Jesus gave him the kind of happiness that he’s still enjoying today.  

            Why didn’t the other nine lepers come back?  Were they so focused on their bodies that they couldn’t think about their souls?  Were they so eager to see their families that they didn’t have time to see Jesus?  Did they suppose being God’s chosen people gave them an inside track on his blessings?  I guess we’ll never know.  But this we must know:  God makes the sun shine and the rain fall on believers and unbelievers.  He takes care of billions of people who don’t care about him.  But when God takes care of us, when he sends us the sun and the rain, he always connects those blessings to the spiritual blessings he gives to us.  We have what have or we lack what lack because in everything God works for the good of those who love him.  The family, together or apart, wealth, much or little, health, good or bad, everything comes from God who wants his blessings to bring us closer to him.  “What then shall we say in response to this?  If God is for us, who can be against us?  He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things.”

            I have no idea what blessings you’re thanking God for today.  But pray God that he would give you a faith that receives those blessings and then sees those blessings in the light of God’s greatest blessings, that he has forgiven your sins in Christ, that he has joined you to himself by the blood his Son, and that he will take you to heaven to be with Jesus in Paradise.  Then you will have faith like the leper who came back—and then you will have the leper’s kind of happiness--Today and tomorrow, too.  Amen.                                              

Preached at Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI (www.gracedowntown.org) on November 22, 2007

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