"Enter God's Gates with Thanksgiving"
Psalm 100, Luke 17:11-19
Rev. Everett L. Miller
This past Wednesday, when the wind was fierce and the air was cold I decided to venture out to the church sign to change the message. Since Thanksgiving is this Thursday I wanted to put up a message that has to do with giving thanks to God. So I put on my sweater and grabbed the two boxes of plastic letters and headed out the door. I set the boxes on top of the stone sign and bent down to unlock the sign cover. As I was turning the lock a great gust of wind came up and picked up both boxes and spread hundreds of little white plastic letters all over the sidewalk and throughout the churchyard. As I reached out for them to no avail I’m sure that some very unthankful words came to mind. Then I looked around to make sure no one had witnessed my embarrassing moment and I had to make a decision. Would I pick up all of the letters first, then put the message on the sign, or would I search through the grass for the letters I needed for the message, put it up, then pick up the other letters.
I got down on my hands and knees. For some reason or other I decided to look for the specific letters I needed first. I looked for E’s, G’s, N’s, T’s, and so on, finding some in the grass, some in a pile of leaves, one or two over by the bushes. As I did it I asked the question, “Why did I bring two boxes of plastic letters out here on a windy day?” And feeling somewhat unthankful for the time I was wasting hunting letters like an alphabet Easter egg hunt, I spelled out the message that I had planned to put up in the first place, Psalm 100:4. “Enter God’s Gates with Thanksgiving.”
I locked the sign door back but before I began to pick up the scattered letters I thought about how the choice to spell out the message of thanksgiving first made it possible for me to pick up the pieces in a thankful way. By stopping what I was doing to offer a message of thanksgiving my whole attitude changed. “ENTER GOD’S GATES WITH THANKSGIVING.” How could I spend twenty minutes searching for the letters to spell that out, then turn around and in the next moment not live it out? How beautiful are those words: "Enter God's Gates with Thanksgiving."
In today's gospel passage, Jesus has come across ten men who wanted to pick up the pieces of their lives and who probably felt they had no reason to offer thanksgiving. In fact according to Jewish law they could not even enter God’s gates (meaning the temple gates). They were suffering from skin diseases. In those days, if you had almost any skin disease you were considered a leper and unclean until it healed. What it meant to be unclean is that you had to live outside of the camp or town where everybody else lived. You couldn’t touch other people and they couldn’t touch you. Can you imagine the solitude? Can you imagine not being able to touch your husband or wife, your children or grandchildren?
I remember patients when I was a student hospital chaplain who everybody who came into their rooms had to wear a plastic gown, a thick mask, and rubber gloves. It really affected people when they couldn’t touch the skin of their loved one, when they couldn’t kiss each other, when we held hands to pray it wasn’t skin touching skin but rubber glove on rubber glove. Being in that situation made people feel like lepers. And lepers like these ten men who Jesus met that day were even supposed to call out to people if they approached them, “Unclean, Unclean!” so they would know to avoid them. So these unclean outcasts would form colonies and they would call out from far away for people who traveled by to show mercy on them by giving them alms or charity.
I locked the sign door back but before I began to pick up the scattered letters I thought about how the choice to spell out the message of thanksgiving first made it possible for me to pick up the pieces in a thankful way. By stopping what I was doing to offer a message of thanksgiving my whole attitude changed. “ENTER GOD’S GATES WITH THANKSGIVING.” How could I spend twenty minutes searching for the letters to spell that out, then turn around and in the next moment not live it out? How beautiful are those words: "Enter God's Gates with Thanksgiving."
In today's gospel passage, Jesus has come across ten men who wanted to pick up the pieces of their lives and who probably felt they had no reason to offer thanksgiving. In fact according to Jewish law they could not even enter God’s gates (meaning the temple gates). They were suffering from skin diseases. In those days, if you had almost any skin disease you were considered a leper and unclean until it healed. What it meant to be unclean is that you had to live outside of the camp or town where everybody else lived. You couldn’t touch other people and they couldn’t touch you. Can you imagine the solitude? Can you imagine not being able to touch your husband or wife, your children or grandchildren?
I remember patients when I was a student hospital chaplain who everybody who came into their rooms had to wear a plastic gown, a thick mask, and rubber gloves. It really affected people when they couldn’t touch the skin of their loved one, when they couldn’t kiss each other, when we held hands to pray it wasn’t skin touching skin but rubber glove on rubber glove. Being in that situation made people feel like lepers. And lepers like these ten men who Jesus met that day were even supposed to call out to people if they approached them, “Unclean, Unclean!” so they would know to avoid them. So these unclean outcasts would form colonies and they would call out from far away for people who traveled by to show mercy on them by giving them alms or charity.
But this is no ordinary man that is passing by today. They have heard of him and what he has done for others. So they yell out to him, “Jesus, master, have pity on us!” Anybody else may have given them a few coins, or maybe as in the parable of the Good Samaritan, they may have seen them, then moved to the other side of the road and kept walking. Surely we have all done that at one time or another when a homeless person is on the sidewalk. But Luke tells us that when Jesus saw them he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” He didn’t even say that they were healed, he simply told the ten men to do what the Law said they must do to be declared clean again. So they started heading off to present themselves to the priests. That was a huge act of faith in itself. Their skin still looks the same, yet they believe in Jesus’ power enough that they believe they will be made clean. These ten men with cracking, pimpled, discolored, infected skin, had been cast out from society, could not be close to their families or friends, could not enter the temple in their unclean condition. But today Jesus had come into their lives and he was going to bring them back into the community.
They are walking together, an act of both communal and individual faith, but surely they had questions in their minds. “Am I being a fool?” “What if I show up at the priest and I’m not clean? They’ll throw me out of town again.” “What if the others are made clean but I am not?” Then Luke tells us “as they went, they were cleansed.” They had reached out to Jesus. They had been obedient. They had taken steps of faith. And now they are clean and are included in the community once again. How happy must they have been? They probably took off running toward the temple, with eyes filled with tears and screaming for the first time in years, “Clean! Clean!”
But one of them “when saw he was healed” turned around and started walking the other way, back to where he had met Jesus. The others must have called out, “What are you doing? Do as the master said. Go to your priests and be declared clean.” But he just kept walking, praising God in a loud voice so anybody out there, so the trees and the rocks and the animals could all hear him blessing the name of the LORD. And when he made it back to Jesus “He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him.” Jesus had told him to go to the priests but he was so filled with joy and praise and the urge to thank Jesus that he had to stop what he was doing, even though it was what he had been told to do by Jesus himself, because his gratitude to God was boiling over. So he fell down at Jesus’ feet and thanked him.
Luke likes to tell stories about people placing themselves at Jesus’ feet, which is a sign of faith and humility and honor. The Gerasene man who had been tormented for years and was living naked in the tombs from whom Jesus cast out demons had clothed himself and sat at Jesus’ feet. Jairus, whose daughter was dying fell at Jesus’ feet and asked for help. When Martha was so busy in the kitchen that day in Bethany, her sister Mary was sitting at Jesus’ feet.
And there is the story of the "sinful" woman who placed herself at Jesus' feet while he was reclining at the table of Simon the Pharisee. She began to weep and the tears fell onto his feet, so she wiped them off with her hair then pour perfume on them. Simon can't believe that Jesus is letting this happen. Jesus responds by telling Simon, "Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he canceled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?" Simon agreed that it would be the one who had the greater debt. "He who has been forgiven little loves little," Jesus says. Then he turns to the woman, blessing her, "Your sins are forgiven...Your faith has saved you; go in peace."
“He who has been forgiven little loves little.” The leper in today’s passage has no need to be forgiven. He is not a leper because he has sinned, although surely people believed there to be a connection. He was not a “sinner” per se, but he might as well have been. And it gets even worse for him because the next thing we learn about the leper who had been made clean is that he is a Samaritan. Most Jews did not like Samaritans. Actually, they despised them. They saw the Samaritans as mixed-blood, perverters of religion, who were unclean for reasons that I don’t have time to get into now. Jews didn’t even travel through the area of Samaria. It’s a little bit like Israelites and Palestinians these days. But Jesus wasn’t willing to go along with his people and how they viewed the people of Samaria. He only cared how his Father in Heaven viewed them.
“He who has been forgiven little loves little.” The leper in today’s passage has no need to be forgiven. He is not a leper because he has sinned, although surely people believed there to be a connection. He was not a “sinner” per se, but he might as well have been. And it gets even worse for him because the next thing we learn about the leper who had been made clean is that he is a Samaritan. Most Jews did not like Samaritans. Actually, they despised them. They saw the Samaritans as mixed-blood, perverters of religion, who were unclean for reasons that I don’t have time to get into now. Jews didn’t even travel through the area of Samaria. It’s a little bit like Israelites and Palestinians these days. But Jesus wasn’t willing to go along with his people and how they viewed the people of Samaria. He only cared how his Father in Heaven viewed them.
Throughout the New Testament we read that “Jesus rebuked his disciples for their hostility to the Samaritans, healed this Samaritan leper, honored a Samaritan for his neighborliness, praised a Samaritan for his gratitude, asked a drink of a Samaritan woman, and preached to the Samaritans. He even challenged his disciples to witness in Samaria.” The Leper was a double outcast, but Jesus did not ask for credentials before he offered him mercy. It was the way of society to hate the Samaritans. But it was the way of Jesus to include them in the Kingdom of God, to treat them as brothers and sisters, and to offer them healing and salvation. And that was most certainly worth going back to give thanks for, so as the other nine lepers continued to walk the other way to do their duty, this man who was an outcast two times over lies at the feet of the Lord.
By the way, have you ever met someone who is duty-bound, but is not joyful or thankful? I can recall muttering under my breath as I raked leaves as a kid. I was performing the duty I had been given by my parents but I don’t remember ever being thankful that I was outside in the cool autumn air, doing my part for our family. I’ve had teachers in my years as a student that I wondered why in the world they ever became a teacher, because it seemed all they were willing to do was to perform their duties by showing up and giving assignments and tests. And I never really noticed how bad it was until I had a poetry professor in college who overflowed with joy and excitement every class and every time I stopped by his office. He loved what he was doing and he was thankful that he got to spend his days opening up the minds of young people to the beauty of language. I’ve met farmers who did it out of duty. “This is what my father did, and his father, and so on so I had to do it.” But then I’ve met farmers who gave thanks and praise to God that they’re days aren’t spent in a cubicle but under the endless blue sky working the land God created.
But an attitude of thanksgiving doesn’t only need to be there in what we do for a living but in everything in our lives. This Samaritan man shows us that the Christian life is more than simply doing what Jesus tells us to do, although that is incredibly important. After all, Jesus does say in John’s gospel, “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, that is the one who loves me.” But Jesus certainly didn’t mean that his disciples should just robotically do whatever he tells them. Life in Christ is not a list of rules; it is so much more than that. It is about being so transformed by Jesus’ offer of salvation and God’s grace that we look at life, the good and the bad, the duty and the sacrifice, the sorrowful and the fun, in a totally new way. Being thankful isn’t about being happy all the time, but it is about being grateful to God all the time.
With the healed man at his feet, Jesus looks down and asks, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.” Actually, something interesting about what Jesus is saying here is that in the Greek the word translated as “made you well” can also be translated as “saved you.” It is the exact same word that is used when Jesus tells the "sinful" woman, "Go, your faith has saved you." It is a word with multiple meanings and it is a different word from that which is used by Luke when he says the ten lepers were cleansed. In the English all we get is “made you well,” but that one Greek word can mean save (as in Christian salvation), save as in rescue, deliver, keep safe, preserve, cure, and finally make well.” Jesus is blessing this man in a different way than the other nine have been blessed. The great preacher Fred Craddock writes of this, “What we have, then, is a story of ten being healed and one being saved.” This man has been made anew and he has gone past that initial act of faith, and just dutiful obedience, to the realization of what James 1:17 says; “Every good and perfect gift is from above.” So he has returned to give thanks to the Lord.
Like almost everyone else in the Bible, we don’t know whatever came of that Samaritan man. But I’d like to think that he went on living his life with that moment at Jesus’ feet in the forefront of his mind and heart. I’d like to think that his choice to spell out the message of thanksgiving first made it possible for him to pick up the pieces of his life in a thankful way. I’d like to think that he lived a life of praise, gratitude, and joy and translated his personal experience with Jesus and his gratitude for God’s grace into years of bettering other people’s lives, while giving thanks to Jesus all the way. I’d like to think that every doorway he walked through and even every tree’s branches he ever passed under were like God’s gates to him and that he entered them with thanksgiving.
So this week, as we pause for a few hours from our busy lives filled with duty, let us keep the story of this healed Samaritan man in the forefront of our minds and hearts. Let us give thanks for this man who stopped just long enough, even while he was finally picking up the pieces of his life, to offer thanks to the Lord. And let us give thanks to our Lord who has offered us the same salvation, the same new life, the same opportunity to live in gratitude and thanksgiving. And may every door we pass through and even every tree’s branches we pass under be as God’s gates to us and may we enter them with thanksgiving.
Happy Thanksgiving. Amen.
By the way, have you ever met someone who is duty-bound, but is not joyful or thankful? I can recall muttering under my breath as I raked leaves as a kid. I was performing the duty I had been given by my parents but I don’t remember ever being thankful that I was outside in the cool autumn air, doing my part for our family. I’ve had teachers in my years as a student that I wondered why in the world they ever became a teacher, because it seemed all they were willing to do was to perform their duties by showing up and giving assignments and tests. And I never really noticed how bad it was until I had a poetry professor in college who overflowed with joy and excitement every class and every time I stopped by his office. He loved what he was doing and he was thankful that he got to spend his days opening up the minds of young people to the beauty of language. I’ve met farmers who did it out of duty. “This is what my father did, and his father, and so on so I had to do it.” But then I’ve met farmers who gave thanks and praise to God that they’re days aren’t spent in a cubicle but under the endless blue sky working the land God created.
But an attitude of thanksgiving doesn’t only need to be there in what we do for a living but in everything in our lives. This Samaritan man shows us that the Christian life is more than simply doing what Jesus tells us to do, although that is incredibly important. After all, Jesus does say in John’s gospel, “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, that is the one who loves me.” But Jesus certainly didn’t mean that his disciples should just robotically do whatever he tells them. Life in Christ is not a list of rules; it is so much more than that. It is about being so transformed by Jesus’ offer of salvation and God’s grace that we look at life, the good and the bad, the duty and the sacrifice, the sorrowful and the fun, in a totally new way. Being thankful isn’t about being happy all the time, but it is about being grateful to God all the time.
With the healed man at his feet, Jesus looks down and asks, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.” Actually, something interesting about what Jesus is saying here is that in the Greek the word translated as “made you well” can also be translated as “saved you.” It is the exact same word that is used when Jesus tells the "sinful" woman, "Go, your faith has saved you." It is a word with multiple meanings and it is a different word from that which is used by Luke when he says the ten lepers were cleansed. In the English all we get is “made you well,” but that one Greek word can mean save (as in Christian salvation), save as in rescue, deliver, keep safe, preserve, cure, and finally make well.” Jesus is blessing this man in a different way than the other nine have been blessed. The great preacher Fred Craddock writes of this, “What we have, then, is a story of ten being healed and one being saved.” This man has been made anew and he has gone past that initial act of faith, and just dutiful obedience, to the realization of what James 1:17 says; “Every good and perfect gift is from above.” So he has returned to give thanks to the Lord.
Like almost everyone else in the Bible, we don’t know whatever came of that Samaritan man. But I’d like to think that he went on living his life with that moment at Jesus’ feet in the forefront of his mind and heart. I’d like to think that his choice to spell out the message of thanksgiving first made it possible for him to pick up the pieces of his life in a thankful way. I’d like to think that he lived a life of praise, gratitude, and joy and translated his personal experience with Jesus and his gratitude for God’s grace into years of bettering other people’s lives, while giving thanks to Jesus all the way. I’d like to think that every doorway he walked through and even every tree’s branches he ever passed under were like God’s gates to him and that he entered them with thanksgiving.
So this week, as we pause for a few hours from our busy lives filled with duty, let us keep the story of this healed Samaritan man in the forefront of our minds and hearts. Let us give thanks for this man who stopped just long enough, even while he was finally picking up the pieces of his life, to offer thanks to the Lord. And let us give thanks to our Lord who has offered us the same salvation, the same new life, the same opportunity to live in gratitude and thanksgiving. And may every door we pass through and even every tree’s branches we pass under be as God’s gates to us and may we enter them with thanksgiving.
Happy Thanksgiving. Amen.
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