Colossians 3:4-11
Luke 17:12-19
This Sunday is also known as the Sunday of the 10 Lepers.
In the Gospel passage today we see Jesus encountering 10 lepers who have come to see him. They see him and they say, “Have mercy on us.” Now, unlike other healing passages in the Gospel the healing does not take place right away. He tells them to go and show themselves to the priest. Lepers were unclean and therefore set apart from the community so the illness would not spread to others. If they were healed of this illness, they were to go to the priest who would certify that they were in fact clean and could return to the community in which they lived, or another one. As they went on their way they were healed, or as the Scriptures say, “they were cleansed.”
One of the guys realized that he was now clean, and turned around and started to praise God. He returned to Jesus and fell on the ground. Jesus says, “were not 10 cleansed? Where are the other nine?” To make matters worse this man was a Samaritan, the scourge of the day. So only the unclean to begin with returned giving praise to God. He tells the mean to go that his faith has made him whole. But what of the others? Did they get their illness back? We do not know, but I would hazard to guess that they did not.
God gives us gifts each day, and some times we thank him for them and sometimes we do not. Does he take them away from us? Of course not. However we need to thank God for all that he has given us and will give us each and every day. Let us be the one that comes back and says thank you and not one the nine who could not even bother to give thanks to God.
