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.
Jesus asked, ?Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Luke 17:11-19
Dr. Erin Beck is well known for his depression scale. It is the questionaire that is given to people suffering from depression.. He published some research on suicide in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Among other factors, he found that your risk of killing yourself rises with your income. A different study says, "subtract two years from your life if your income is over $40,000" That is US, so maybe $50,000 Canadian. With affluence, anxiety goes up, contentment goes down.
Next time you ask for a raise, your boss may say, "No, we can't afford to put your life at risk."
Be forewarned.

There is no glory in poverty, but chasing after money and stuff money buys obviously does not bring happiness either.
John MacArthur of Grace Community Church in California says,

A study of thirty plus denominations points out that although income after taxes and inflation, increased 31% in the last 17 years, giving has gone down 8.5% in the same . . . Dr. Erin Beck is well known for his depression scale. It is the questionaire that is given to people suffering from depression.. He published some research on suicide in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Among other factors, he found that your risk of killing yourself rises with your income. A different study says, "subtract two years from your life if your income is over $40,000" That is US, so maybe $50,000 Canadian. With affluence, anxiety goes up, contentment goes down.
Next time you ask for a raise, your boss may say, "No, we can't afford to put your life at risk."
Be forewarned.

There is no glory in poverty, but chasing after money and stuff money buys obviously does not bring happiness either.
John MacArthur of Grace Community Church in California says,
And I have recently read that Canadians give less per capita than our American neighbours.

Rev. MacArthur goes on to say:

Is there an antidote to soul destroying, creeping materialism?

A good way to start is in giving thanks.

The passage in Luke which we read this morning is about giving thanks.
In it Jesus encounters ten lepers.

You know a bit about leprosy from the Bible.
First and most important, there was no cure, and it was fatal.
Second, lepers were totally excluded from the community because it is a contagious disease.
Because of its symptoms, it was revolting, and lepers were required to live outside the community and ring a bell when approaching anyone and call out, "Unclean!, Unclean!"
Some sources say that in certain places, a leper who was upwind of you was required to keep a distance of about fifty feet.
Leprosy, besides being a death sentence, was a slow death sentence and brought poverty, social isolation and shame. The only way for a leper to survive unless he or she was wealthy, was through begging.

Then Jesus came on the scene.
There were ten lepers in a village that Jesus was passing through.
His fame had reached them and though they had to stand off at a distance, they called out loudly,
"Jesus, master, have mercy on us!"

He hears them and responds. Perhaps calling out in a loud voice to be heard over the crowd.
He said, "Go show yourselves to the priest."
That's all. No touching, no other instructions. No washing in a river or a pool. Just go.
And so they went.
Luke records that as they went, they were cleansed.

A side note: It is in being obedient to what God calls us to do that God does His work in our life.
There was no magic in the saliva on a blind man's eyes, or being touched, or any of the other ways Jesus healed.
The power of God is released when we do what God wants us to do, plain and simple.

The reason for showing themselves to the priest was that the priest, besides having religious functions, was also the public health officer. Leviticus 13 and 14 lays down specific instructions to the priest on how to determine if someone with an infectious disease was a public health hazard and how to deal with it. It was showing yourself to the priest and getting a clean bill of health that was the doorway back into the community.
Without that, you were still outcasts.

So off they went, and we can imagine their excitement!
They had been isolaled from family, community, job and even from feeling clean and decent.
Home to waiting arms! ( or so they hoped), then a bath and a shave (for the men). A hot meal maybe would be next and then, well what came after that would depend on their circumstances. .
But you can imagine their excitement at having been given their life back.
And yes, that is after the obligatory visit to the priest.
Would it be difficult to find one who could pronounce them clean?
Would they be put into isolation first?
But they were healed and on the way back to life.


Off they go! Jesus probably watches them as they rush off, presuming they were well enough to rush. Some maybe couldn't run but off they went anyway.
What a day!

Then after some time, we are not told how long a time period; but after the rest are out of sight, one of them, a Samaritan as it turns out, comes walking back to Jesus.
Not just walking back, but in a loud voice giving thanks to God. Maybe skipping and jumping too.
You could probably hear him before he came around the last corner and you smelled him.
He is so amazed at what has happened he cannot contain himself.
He has to do something about it, and there is only one thing to do.

He comes and falls on his face before Jesus and offers thanks for this magnificent gift.
I think Jesus says what he says, not to the man, but to the people who probably had gathered.

Jesus says, "Weren't there ten? Is there only one who is thankful, and only a foreigner at that?"
Jesus is not putting down the man because he is a Samaritan, he is just making the point that those who ought to have known better, didn't.
Imagine. One in ten. Not a very good ratio is it, especially when you consider what they received.

Maybe in some ways not so surprising.
They were anticipating what would come next and recovering their lives.
Studies on giving show that it is not the rich who are the most generous, but the poor.
Sure there are notable wealthy philanthropists, but day to day giving that charitable societies depend upon does not come especially from the well off. It comes from the middle and lower incomes.

Some of you know what its like to go without a meal.
I think a whole generation that grew up in the depression understands.
And it is usually people who know how it feels who are the most generous.

Also, the others are pre-occupied. They have priests to see, families to connect with, perhaps jobs and financial obligations to take up again. At the least they have a community that they can connect with again.
But this fellow will still be a Samaritan even after he is healed.
His fellow lepers, if they are pious Jews, will have nothing to do with him once they are restored.
He will remain a Samaritan and on the outside of the community, healed or not.

Remember Janis Joplin's famous song, Bobby McGee.
Remember that refrain:
He has less to gain in theory, but he knew what he had been given.
The one thing... the only thing that mattered had been restored....his life!
And he came back to give thanks to God.

But there is a new leprosy.
It is pernicious creeping materialism.
Leprosy afflicts the outer body. Materialism afflicts the soul.
And so what is the antidote for pernicious creeping materialism?
It is to remember that it's not ours. It all belongs to God.
And that is watered and fertilized by a climate of thanksgiving.

In our Bible study this week, we were looking at Ecclesiastes.
Ecclesiates is, among other things, a personal look at the meaning of life.
What the author says is that he has tried it all, fame, sex, money...the whole nine yards. (Does he say, "sex"?)
And his conclusion is that in terms of a way to find meaning and purpose, it's a total waste of time.
A vanity, he calls it. Here today, gone tomorrow.

Pernicious creeping materialism is the same.
A Christian writer named J.P. Jowelet says,
How much are you worth if you have no money? To God, to the Kingdom, to others?
To God you are worth it all.

You are worth all of the time God has spent for you.

• Preparing the world as a place to live.
• Filling it with all the good things you enjoy.
• Giving you a body and a life.
• Making sure that day by day, life does not fall apart into chaos.
• Finally, sending his Son to die for you when you sin.
• Not judging you when you don't show gratitude for what He has done..

And so the new leprosy of pernicious creeping materialism attacks not our skin,  but our souls.
Are you ready for the antidote?
It is thanksgiving that acknowledges God's ownership and our responsibility as stewards.

Let's take time just to acknowledge the debt we owe.
In the next weeks we will talk about some concrete responses we can make.
Let's pray.

Preached  October 9, 2005
Dr. Harold McNabb
West Shore Presbyterian Church
Victoria, British Columbia

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Notes
^1. Rev. John MacArthur, a sermon entitled, Money. Preached at Grace Community Church.
^2. Ibid
Resources Consulted
William Barclay, The Gospel of Luke, The Daily Study Bible, Westminster

Online Resources Consulted
Generous Giving.org  A website with stewardship preaching resources.