If you come to mass on Thanksgiving Day, you’ll hear this gospel every year, the one about the ten lepers who are healed of their illness, but only one returns to thank Jesus for what he was given. The message we usually take from this gospel, and it’s definitely one of the messages you could and should take from it, is that we are supposed to be grateful for what we have been given. It’s a message we could all do with hearing now and then. It’s a reminder that in our prayer and in our lives generally, we should say thanks a lot more than we often do. If you don’t know how to start praying on any given day, it’s not a bad place to begin.
But you know, I think there is a potential downside to this message if this is the only thing we notice here. And here’s why I think that. I know when I was growing up and my parents wanted me to stop complaining or asking for something, the message was that I should be grateful for what I had. Perhaps, just maybe, I even ended up saying that to my own children once or twice, maybe you have even said it or heard it yourself. And it’s true, my parents were right, I did have a lot of things that a lot of people don’t have, and I still do. But I think sometimes when we’re told to be grateful, what we hear is that really we should be satisfied with what we have, and not ask for more. And that is not what this gospel is about.
Because this is a gospel about people who were desperate for God’s help. They were not supposed to be satisfied with what they have. Here are ten lepers living literally in a land of isolation, blamed for an illness that wasn’t their fault and that no one could cure, and living without hope. Let’s look at what God does in response to this. which is above all that God heals people without regard to who they are. This gospel is set on the borderland between Jews and Samaritans, and Samaritans were regarded by Jews as not only religious heretics but basically unclean themselves, real enemies of what it meant to be a Jew. But leprosy has brought Jew and Samaritan together in one group of ten, they are now all in need of the same healing, and Jesus does not make any distinctions about who is eligible. It’s exactly the same situation in that first reading from the Second Book of Kings, where a non-Jew comes for healing to a Jewish prophet out of desperation, he has nowhere else to turn, he is willing to ask for help no matter what it takes. And apparently God wants healing for him, too, whether he deserves it or not.
So this reading isn’t about being grateful for what you have, whatever it is. These lepers weren’t supposed to be grateful for their leprosy and for what they had. They wanted out of where they were trapped. They needed it and they asked for it. And that can be a message for us, too.
Because all of us I think whether we realize it or not have some great desire for God to transform us. At times in our lives, and maybe it’s more of our lives than we like to admit, we have our own sense of unworthiness, or a sense of failure, a sense that everything has gone wrong, that we’re different from other people and not in a good way, that we have moral failings, we think, or we can’t manage our emotions or our relationships. We become used to where we are, and we forget what God can do. When that happens, we isolate ourselves without even realizing it, we miss the daily reality that God is trying to get us out of isolation, and wants to restore us to freedom.
The gift God is really trying to give us is — us, transformed by God if we will allow ourselves to be, if we will see what we need and ask for it, and if we realize that God wants us to be restored. All God wants is for people who think they are on the outside, to realize that God does not see us the way we see ourselves or the way the world sees us. God sees our imperfections, but also sees us healed of what ails us, God is trying to get us out of isolation, wants us in the middle of this world he has created, eager to thank God for having done so much for us.
So yes, it’s good to be grateful for all those little things and lucky breaks in daily life, that’s a good way to live. But today the focus is on being grateful for something big, something so big maybe we don’t even see it for what it is. God wants us reconciled and restored to life, and is willing to give us our lives back over and over, ready to do his work. Like everyone in the readings today we need to ask, to recognize that God can do this, to want what only God can give us, reconciliation and freedom. There are times in life where being satisfied with what you have and where you are is not where God wants us. Like the lepers did, when you turn to God, have the courage to ask for the change that God can give.