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Why Thanksgiving Matters
When we ' re thankful , we gain so much more . Stan Guthrie
WiregrassSeniorsMagazine . com
One day Jesus encountered thanklessness while traversing what Puritan commentator Matthew Henry calls " the frontier-country , the marches that lay between Samaria and Galilee ." The story is found in Luke 17 .
Now on his way to Jerusalem , Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee . As he was going into a village , ten men who had leprosy met him . They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice , " Jesus , Master , have pity on us !"
Jesus is called aside by the plaintive shouts of men afflicted with a serious skin condition that presentday translators render as leprosy . Surely , they must have thought , if Jesus could cure the blind , heal the lame , and raise the dead , he had the power to help them too . They were already outcasts and had nothing to lose , so they raised their voices in desperate hope .
When he saw them , he said , " Go , show yourselves to the priests ."
The Master simply tells them to go to the priests , who were the first-century referees as to whether a healing had taken place . Any cure , according to the Book of Leviticus , would need the equivalent of a " Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval " from the priests so that the formerly unclean could be ritually restored to the community .
Will they go ? How can they , because Jesus has done nothing outwardly to assure them of a cure ? " This ," Henry notes , " was a trial of their obedience ." How would they respond to the Lord ' s ambiguous command ? Something in the reputation of Jesus , or perhaps in the way he looked them in the eye , encouraged them to believe that they had met not divine indifference , but God ' s mercy , on the road .
And as they went , they were cleansed .
Note the progression : " as they went , they were cleansed ." The obedience precedes the healing .
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 .
Until this point , the 10 lepers had acted in concert : they had lived together , they had cried out together , they had gone off together , and they had been cleansed together . Now , however , one peels off like a jet leaving formation and heads for Jesus . Whatever has happened , the man knows he has been blessed , and the blessing requires a response . First he sees , then he turns , then he praises .
And then , with the Samaritan still humbly at Jesus ' feet , come three pointed , rapid-fire questions , which cast a shadow over the celebration .
Jesus asked , " Were not all ten cleansed ? Where are the other nine ? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner ?"
I must confess : these questions have always bothered me . At first blush they seem to reflect a childish need for praise and recognition on the part of Jesus . Why did he need to be thanked ?
Though he already had rewarded their obedience , he wanted something more . He sought their gratitude . " Gratefulness ," Richard Emmons notes , " is a knowing awareness that we are the recipients of goodness ." Didn ' t these nine men know what God had done for them ?
The nine who did not give thanks were not only rude , they were ignorant , misaligned with the truth of the universe . We are the recipients , not the creators , of goodness . In acknowledging this simple truth , we ennoble ourselves . " God ," John Piper says , " is the one Being in all the universe for whom seeking his own praise is the ultimately loving act ."