A Lesson from a Leper on Thankfulness

The Reverend Rebecca Justice Schunior, Assistant Rector

Why did one of the lepers turn back?  What was it that made him stop in his tracks and return the way he came?  Return back to throw himself face down before the face of Jesus in gratitude.  Maybe it was because his mother raised him right.  Maybe he always wrote thank you cards and brought a gift for the hostess. Perhaps this newly healed leper did not want to go on toward the priest without dutifully saying thank you to the one who gave such a great gift – healing from horrible disease.  Perhaps the other nine were just ungrateful or in a hurry.

They might have been in a hurry.  Jesus sent these ten to the priest for a reason.  While most of us have had no contact with the disease of leprosy, this was not the case for those living in biblical times.  Leprosy was a name for probably a multitude of skin diseases that forever separated its victim from the rest of society.  The leper was unclean; others were clean.  The leper was outside, everyone else was inside.  Leviticus goes extensively into the social rules for lepers – what they were to do; how they were to behave: “The person who has the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out ‘unclean, unclean.’

Now, the priest was the one who decided if the leper was healed, the one who decided whether or not the leper could rejoin the community. No wonder nine of these lepers hurried on to the priest.  They may have been physically well, but they needed the approval of the priest for them to be included again, to see their families again, to feel the warmth of human contact again.  The priest was their only way back.  Who wouldn’t rush ahead?  So, why did this one turn back?  Jesus could not restore him to the community.  Perhaps he was just showing gratitude.

But I have a problem with thankfulness.  Yes I just said that on Thanksgiving.  I have a problem with this story if it simply about the leper’s duty to say thank you to God for blessing him with physical health. Not that the leper shouldn’t have said thank you to Jesus or that we shouldn’t be thankful for all that enriches our lives.  But, there’s something about counting our blessings that comes awfully close to being happy that we have something that others don’t and also that we think God is somehow involved in that activity – choosing who gets the goodies.    Thank you God that I am not like this leper.  Thank you God that I am not like this homeless man who just asked me for money.  Thank you for not making me like one of these outsiders.

Why doesn’t this one leper go on to the priest?  Why does he turn back, wasting valuable time?  He is so close to leading a normal life with friends, family, social status and he turns around and heads in the opposite direction. 

Turning around is always important in Scripture, just as it is in life.  It signals a realization, a conversion.  I think this leper, this one out of the ten, is simply following instructions.  Jesus has told them to go see the priest and this leper realizes that his priest is not the one who separates the clean from the unclean, the one who has kept him out for so long.  His priest is Jesus – the one who had mercy, the one who did not see clean or unclean but saw only human beings in need.  This leper realized that the priest who determines clean or unclean is irrelevant in this new world where such distinctions no longer matter.  It is this realization that brings him to the feet of Jesus.

And this, I think, is the true source of our gratitude.  It is not that we are thankful to God for all the things that separate us from the outsiders – the good food, the good job, the big house.  We are thankful because God has erased all of that which pulls up apart in order to draw us closer – to God and one another.  We are thankful for our relationship with God and what that means for our relationship with others.

Why are some people more blessed than others?  It seems like we cannot get through Thanksgiving without asking this question.  What we learn from the leper who turned back, from street people in our own city, from marginalized people everywhere is that we are thankful to God for loving each and every one of us and for allowing us to see each other as beloved.  It is this thankfulness that stops us in our tracks, turns us around, and brings us to our knees at the feet of our priest.