Deuteronomy 8:1-10
Luke 17:11-19

I love greeting cards. One of my very favorite things to do is to go to a stationary store and look at all the different cards. I'm lucky that I have a very good store near where I live. I often find myself wandering into it just to look at the cards - even when I have no need to buy any. I enjoy the creativity and craft that is displayed in these small works of art.

I tend to buy one card at a time so that I can match it to the occasion. But sometimes it is nice to just have a box of general cards on hand to send out when something comes up. The most common boxes of cards that people keep on hand is the "Thank You" card. The area dedicated to boxes of "Thank You" notes in my local shop is far bigger than the area dedicated to almost every other kind of card. (That is until the holiday season comes and then the boxes of holiday cards take over almost the entire store.)

The hand-written "thank you" note has long been a hallmark of a civilized society. It shows that the thought behind the gift and the time it took to obtain it are appreciated - appreciated so much that the one receiving the gift puts thought and time into expressing his or her gratitude to the giver of the gift. The gift isn't just added to some pile or shoved into some closet (although that may eventually happen). The value of the gift is imprinted on the heart and mind of the receiver by the very act of writing the note of thanks.

Unfortunately, our society seems to be losing the art of writing in general. It is not just the "thank you" note that is losing popularity; it is all forms of hand-written communication. I used to communicate regularly with my grandmother through written letters. One time I used my computer to to print out my letter and she asked me never to do that again. She enjoyed seeing my writing. It made the note so much more personal. Beyond what the words were trying to convey, my grandmother could sense me in the letters and punctuation that I wrote with my hand. She wanted to have that connection as well as the connection through the thoughts expressed.

Now that my grandmother is no longer living, I do not have anyone with whom I correspond regularly in writing. Oh, my family all sends email updates on the computer each weekend to keep each other up-to-date on the latest happenings in our lives. But email messages are much different than hand-written letters. Email messages are sent off quickly when one has a spare moment to sit down in front of the computer before heading off to the next event or chore. They are more of a pause in a daily routine and less of an intentional stopping of activity to concentrate on communicating with another.

It is the intentionality of stopping to express gratitude that our Scripture lessons call us to today.

In the Gospel according to Luke, we hear the story about ten lepers whom Jesus encounters as he is traveling. Because of their illness, they have been forced to live outside of the walls of the village. This was the only way to make sure that their disease did not spread throughout the entire population. But it made people who were already suffering physically suffer additionally through separation from the community.

The ten lepers of todays story are at the gate of the village begging of all who pass through to help them with food or money so that they may survive. But when they see Jesus, they recognize him as the one who has been healing people throughout the region. So they ask for mercy - healing - from him.

Now Jesus does something strange in response to their request. He doesn't immediately heal them. Instead, he gives them a command: "Go and show yourselves to the priests." He says this knowing that these lepers, who are considered unclean, would never be allowed to see the priests. But he says this also knowing that one who has been considered unclean must prove to the priests that he or she is no longer unclean - that he or she has been healed. This is the only way that he or she will be allowed to return to the life of the community.

This is the custom of the day, so we can be sure that the lepers know this as well as Jesus does. But even though they know that they cannot be allowed to see the priests while they are unclean, they turn and head off to see them anyway. They trust that Jesus will heal them and that the priests will find them clean. This act of faith on their part brings about their healing. The lepers make their inner faith, in who Jesus is and what Jesus can do, public through action, and in so doing allow Jesus to heal them.

It was their doing that brought about their healing. Or was it? One of the ten stops as soon as he realizes that he is healed and he turns back. He knows that this is not his own doing, but rather God working through Jesus. And so he returns to Jesus praising God with a loud voice along the way. And when he reaches Jesus, he kneels down before him and thanks him.

This one stops as he makes his way to the priests and intentionally returns to Jesus to give thanks. He knows that his healing comes from God and he wants to give thanks for that. Jesus expresses surprise that only one of the ten did this. How could they witness the healing of their disease and not recognize God's mighty hand in the act? How could they just continue on their way without stopping to acknowledge God's goodness to them?

Unfortunately, it is all too easy, as these nine show us, to go about our daily tasks without stopping to recognize God's goodness or to praise God for all that God has done in our lives.

The nine who did not return remained healed of their leprosy. Jesus didn't undo the healing because of their ingratitude. They had after all acted on their faith in Jesus' ability to heal. He had commanded them to go and they had obeyed him, believing that something would happen along the way.

But this one who returned received an extra healing - an inward healing: the type of healing that comes from being in right relationship with God. This one had acknowledge the good thing that God had done for him and he stopped, turned back, shouted praises to God, and thanked Jesus for making it happen.

And, as if the story wasn't pointed enough already, Luke adds the detail that this one who came back was a Samaritan - one whom the Jews believed God did not call God's own: an outsider. This is one for whom the love and praise of God wasn't thought to be a natural part of daily living. Jewish people, on the other hand, were taught to give thanks to God every day for what God had done in and through their people. But the nine others, whom we are left to assume are all Jewish, didn't stop to give thanks to God as this outsider, this Samaritan, did. They continued on their way following the command of Jesus but not rejoicing in the goodness of God shown in their healing.

It is easy for us to be like these nine. We can get wrapped up in our daily living, following what we believe is God's will for our lives, but not stopping to thank God for God's goodness and healing. We have to be intentional like the Samaritan - we have to break our stride, turn around, and interrupt what we are doing so that we can sing God's praises and let our gratitude for God show in our lives.

This is what Moses calls the Hebrew people to do as we heard in out reading from Deuteronomy. They were on the cusp of living in the promised land where they would have access to food, water, housing, and all that was necessary for good lives. Moses knew that it would be easy for them to be caught up in the daily tasks needed to gain that good life. If this happened, Moses knew that they would focus all of their attention on their own efforts and then they would be in danger of forgetting that God had given this all to them.

Our Scripture lesson today is the first half of a larger section. Our reading contains the call to the Hebrew people to remember God and all that God has done for them. Because it is precisely this act of remembering which will keep the people obedient to God. The second half, which we did not read today, is a warning against forgetting, which inevitably will lead to a false sense of self-sufficiency and disobedience to God.

Remembering the Exodus story was a cornerstone of the faith of the Hebrew people. It is by far the singular event that shows God's goodness in the lives of the people God chose to be God's own. It was in no way an easy time as the writer reminds the people: forty years spent wandering in the wilderness where water, food, and shelter were uncertain at best and lacking all together in many cases.

But what was most important about this time was that in spite of the difficulties, God provided for every need that the people had. God did provide for them, but only after the people's hearts were humbled. Much like the lepers of the story in Luke, who had to prove they were open to Jesus' healing by going on the way to the priests before they were actually healed, the Hebrew people had to acknowledge their helplessness before God. They had to be open to receiving food, water, and protection from God before God would give these gifts to them.

God knew that if the people were not humble and open to receiving gifts, then they would believe that their own efforts had brought about their salvation in the wilderness and that God had nothing (or very little, anyways) to do with it.

The commandment being given to the people is to remember. When the difficulty of finding food, water, and shelter are gone remember the God who has provided for you in the past. When it is no longer a struggle to meet the basic needs of each day, remember the God who met those needs for you in the past. Do no abandon God when it is not so obvious that you need God in your life. Do not turn away from God when you seem to be able to live okay without God's constant intervention.

It is tempting to think that we can do everything for ourselves. Our society celebrates those who can. The American way is symbolized most often in the image of the self-made man who pulls himself up by his own boot straps. This image has been the bedrock of our "can-do" American attitude. And while this myth has helped many in our nation to achieve great things, it has also done us harm by perpetuating the idea that we don't really need each other to get along. Each of us faces the danger of being lulled into thinking that we can make it without help from anyone else, including God.

The pilgrims who came to this land in the 17th century recognized this danger and so they created a time when they could stop and be intentional about expressing gratitude for what they had. They knew that what they had was not merely the product of their own individual hard work. They knew that they needed the advice of the indigenous people already living in the land to make their hard work produce what was needed in order to survive. They knew that the food, shelter, and material goods that allowed them to live another year were all really gifts of the benevolent God.

As we come to our annual celebration of this tradition - Thanksgiving Day - let us be like the one leper who returned to Jesus: let us stop what we are doing to sing God's praises and thank God for providing for us. Then we will be able to follow the Moses' instruction to the Hebrew people of: "You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land that he has given you."

What a great way to sum up what Thanksgiving is about. Enjoy the food and the conversations of the week and of the entire holiday season. But always make time to stop and sing praises to God for all that God has done for you.

Amen.

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