The Ten Lepers & Thanksgiving
The sermon today was about the ten lepers that Jesus healed in X. Only one in ten came back to thank Jesus, and the leper was a Samaritan.
Why did the 9 other forget about Jesus’ healing? It seems impossible to me that I would forget someone who would accomplish something so significant to my life. Unless I didn’t care about my life that much. Yet, the lepers wanted to be healed (but how much?).
What did Jesus want to say here? That we are ungrateful is one of these things. The ungratefulness is related to the selfishness that comes after being “Sated”. As if someone received a service and stopped caring right after, already set on new things. God as a mere butler. Failing to care. Failure to understand the value of the action of God in our lives. Beyond the healing – most people would perhaps… grow bored. Indifferent. “I have no time,” said one leper. “Perhaps if I see him around.” There’s some kernel of interesting psychological matter here. I imagine one of the lepers at Pilate’s trial. Jesus stands there – the one who healed you of all your biggest problems – what goes in your mind at that moment? I picture the healed man uncomfortably crossing their arms, trying to look away. Being cold and afraid. Looking away – at other things. Perhaps doubting what happened back there? Reconstructing a sequence of events or rationalizing things in the way of old? Did these lepers internalize some kind of internal script that they were worthless and unloved? Did Jesus also heal the years of rejection and other psychological trauma that came with being treated apart as an impure leper? At any rate, were they grateful enough they would have came back to thank Jesus.
Or perhaps, did the lepers get lost or distracted by all the new pleasures that awaited them as normal men? They simply had no time. Jesus also says that the only one that came back was a stranger, a Samaritan and not a Jew. One way to look at it, is treating the Leper story as the story of Israel itself. Another way to look at it is psychoanalytical. Given that there’s no information on the Lepers themselves, however… One thing I know for sure is from personal experience. We grow cold and bitter from the pain. We grow indifference and distrust from years of doubt. It seems possible to me that these men could be doubtful about Jesus’ intentions even after being healed. Perhaps they also doubted of His goodness and the nature of His action. We can be so focused on our experience of pain that when healing comes, it comes almost as an insult to us. We may not feel the reward anymore – perhaps because we lost hope already. We do not enthuse about the good, but rather we diminish the worth of good and specifically the worth of our own good. We are relentless in that matter, so God must too. There is self-destruction, indifference, and confusion. If God healed us, it is trivial to Him, and of no matter – I am still worthless, or I don’t care. I don’t know what to think. When something really matters to us – we feel grateful to be helped about it. No doubt. Recall from experience or imagine a student unable to solve a difficult problem and the impending examination hour coming. The gratefulness of that student will be great if another student or teacher helps them understand that problem just in time! The relief of that student exists because he cares about doing well on the exam. It is nerve wracking to imagine failing the test – what would happen then?
Similarily, if we loved our life better, would we not care if someone restored it to us? Imagine one of the ten lepers had a beautiful girlfriend or someone they wanted to woo since childhood. Would they not feel immense hope and gratitude for Jesus now that they would be enabled to carry on this important goal once again? They must have had something of worth or value in their lives. But then imagine that they didn’t. Imagine that the Samaritan who came back to thank Jesus actually had no clear goal, yet felt thankful. Merely being aware of the betterness of their state and the love that must come with the provider of that state is enough. So two things: awareness of the betterness of our state, and the love. I recall those situations when I see a familiar face or friend in the bus, but the friend hasn’t noticed me back yet. If I do not know the person that well, I might actually just ignore them and hide. If that person is close enough though, and I feel confident or sure that they liked me back, then on the opposite it would seem impossible for me to hide or ignore them. I just have to talk to them – I have to let them know that I saw them. Otherwise they might feel bad if they noticed I ignored them, or better yet, we might just miss an opportunity to reconnect. But in that case, the point is, I feel I have to – there is a sense of obligation and necessity to talk to the close friend. It would be weird or disrespectful of us to ignore. I believe there is something similar at hand here. Did Jesus mean here that some people can receive good things from God and yet not feel any obligation to reconnect with God? The 9 lepers were distant, unloving, attached to self-doubts, God-doubts, and want to hide, like we are with people we are not very trustful about. Surely they are busy, we think, our lives aren’t that connected. They don’t really fit in my life.
We would do well to pay attention to the moments when we ignore people, and how we sometimes also ignore God in the quiet or in the loud moments. When Jesus does good things for us, do we really feel grateful and say thanks to Him from the bottom of our hearts, or do we drown in our other problems and uncertainties of the mortal life? We need to pay close attention and actively recall what God has done for us, again and again. Bring it up and declare what God has done to us in the past, and what He will do again, so as to benefit ourselves and others from the testimony. This is the work that God is calling everybody who has received good things from God to do.
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