Thanks for Nothing!

Here is my sermon for Thanksgiving.
I hope it is helpful and a blessing to you.

John 17:11-19

Day of Thanksgiving      

November 20/21, 2012      

Redeemer, Olathe, KS & Good Shepherd, Fremont, NE

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Amen

“Thanks for Nothing!”  I’m sure you’ve heard that phrase before. 

And, very rarely, is it a good thing to hear. 

Not only is it sarcasm,

but it almost always is an unveiled display of displeasure concerning your contribution or input to a given situation.

But when we see ourselves as God does through Christ, we can thank our savior that because of Him God sees NOTHING wrong with us.

Let me repeat that:  God sees nothing wrong with us!

Therefore we can pray, “Dear God, thanks for nothing…thanks for holding nothing against us.”

Our Gospel lesson today tells the story of the 10 lepers.  And, as I have spent the last 6 ½ years in Olathe, I think I might now know where the story for the Wizard of Oz may have come from.

Jesus was traveling in the country between Jerusalem and Samaria when these 10 lepers approached him and asked for his mercy.

This could have been alms to help them buy food,

Or, possibly, a place to find shelter, or salve for their wounds

Or, perhaps, they might have heard about Jesus and his miracles and hoped that he would actually heal them of their disease.

They were just as hapless and helpless as Dorothy, the Lion, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man

Well, Jesus simply told them to present themselves to the priest (the wizard?)

There was a law banishing lepers from within the city walls as a way to prevent epidemics from spreading to the general populace

Therefore, there had to be someone who would determine who could and could not be considered part of  the community fellowship

And the priest was the only one in town who had that authority to declare a person healed—who could allow them to go back home. 

Because, as we all know, (click your heels three times) “there’s no place like home”.

And, so, it made sense to these men when Jesus sent them away with these words.

If they wanted to be accepted back inside the city walls, they had to see the priest

If they wanted their old life back they had to prove they were clean.

And maybe, just maybe, this Jesus had enough clout that the priest, when he heard they had been sent by Jesus, would let them go back home.

Well, along the way, something amazing happened; they were cleansed!  Healed!

However, the only one who returned to thank Jesus was the Samaritan leper.

At first glance it would seem that the other nine were not thankful for being healed

But I don’t think that this was the case.

Most people can be thankful about the good things in their lives, even those other nine lepers.

But being full of thanks wasn’t what made the Samaritan leper special to Jesus

What made him special was that he returned to give thanks to the one who made him whole again

He didn’t keep his thanks to himself.  He gave it back to the one who had filled him with such a blessing.

We can apply this concept to our lives as well.

These next few days the vast majority of households in this country will be celebrating a day of thankfulness

They might be saying to each other, “We don’t have everything, but we’ve got enough.”

 Or, “We’re sure glad we aren’t as bad off as “those” people.

But that feeling of thankfulness is not what is so special about any of those celebrations. 

What will make our day special to us and to God is not our being full of thanks (or turkey and stuffing, or anything else, for that matter)

But our giving of that thanks to God

That is, we are aware of, acknowledge and express appreciation to the one who is the Giver of Good Things

The Samaritan leper was the only one of the 10

 who gave thanks as a result of his being full of thanks

And this, I think, is what pleased Jesus so much.

It’s not that Jesus needed the recognition or the appreciation

It’s not even that they were required to offer it—for they were all still healed

But Jesus does want to hear that we know our freedom from sin and our healing comes from God

Just as a mother and father desire the love of their child, God desires our worship and thanks.

In their eyes, the lepers’ very lives were in the hands of the priest

Only he could declare them as clean or unclean.

But this Samaritan didn’t go to the priest

to prove and receive his bill of good health

and restore his newly “clean” place back in the community of the Jews.

Because, despite how healthy he might appear, he would always be “unclean” as a Samaritan.

As a Samaritan, the words of the Wizard, I mean, the priest, were worthless to him.

Being declared physically unclean by another man who detested him for who he was held no value to him

But giving thanks to the one who made him whole and gave him back his life, well, that “was a horse of a different color!”

Surely, the other nine were excited as they realized they were healed

I’m sure they ran all the way to the temple so that they could get the official word as soon as possible

They had families and livelihoods to tend to.

They had lost time to make up for

They had lots of living to catch up that they were sure they had missed out on while they were banished from their friends and family, left to rot outside the city walls.

But then what?

The Samaritan, on the other hand, was moved to action

Upon realizing he was well again, his first thought was not about himself,

He didn’t go around bragging about his newfound wellness.

He didn’t try to make up for lost time.

Once he was healed, he knew that Jesus was the reason

And so he returned to the one who gave him his life;

 Who performed the miracle by which he knew that no matter what others thought of him,

 he was clean, and well and whole by the miracle works of Jesus

He wanted to go back to Jesus and say, “Thanks for nothing!”  

Thanks for taking away all that made me unacceptable

Thanks for taking away all that kept me from earning my way in life

Thanks for taking away that which kept me from those I love.

Thanks for taking away that which gave me continuous reminders of my wretched, stinking, scar covered and scabby self.

Thanks for making sure there was nothing on me which makes me objectionable before the sight of others.

“Thanks for nothing!”

You and I are that Samaritan.

In the Old Testament God told the Israelites to shun those who did not follow his commandments,

especially his desire that they should remain a pure race of people.

Because his promise of a Savior would be fulfilled through that special nation.

But in the New Testament Jesus points out that since he had fulfilled that prophecy, there is no longer Hebrew or Gentile

Now, there are Children of light

and children of darkness

Before we became part of the Body of Christ, we were like the Old Testament Samaritans

We were unclean and unholy and infected with sin, instead of leprosy

Like the Samaritans who could not come to God in his temple, we too had no ability to know God

We were just as grotesque to God as those lepers appeared to the other townspeople.

We were just as separated from God and his Church as those lepers were from the people of Jerusalem.

And we too were outcasts, because

God hates sin and is not found where sin pervades

The apostle John writes in his first epistle, “Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil; for the devil has been sinning from the begging.  The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.”  And, by implication, the children of the devil.

And just like those four hapless souls who trekked down that yellow brick road, our salvation cannot not be found in anything we do.

It’s found in what we believe;

It’s found in the faith that has been placed within us from the Holy Spirit.

It’s too bad that sin doesn’t leave a physical mark on us like leprosy does.

If those who live in sin and separation from God showed on their bodies the result of sin,

they would be grotesque and ugly, indeed!

And then, perhaps, one could see more clearly the need for cleansing and healing.

And we could know for certain who was and was not saved.

But, thankfully, we are not separated from God, nor grotesquely maimed by sin.

Because Jesus took away our sin by his excruciating death on the cross,

 only the perfect Son of God could live through that separation

and make atonement for all sin.

Because, through our baptisms,

we are Christ’s Body here on earth,

we are seen by God as that sinless person born of God

and not the sinner born of the devil.

And instead of telling us to go to the priest,

 he tells us to go to the Father to be declared righteous.

We go to Him to ask for his forgiveness,

to ask for him to declare us as clean

and free of the sores and scars of sin

And as we are on that trip to go see the Father and ask for his forgiveness, a wonderful thing happens to us;

We notice that all those sins are gone.

We notice that they have all been washed away by that great act of redemption Christ carried out on the cross for us.

And you and I become pure, healthy, and presentable to God the Father as his Children of the light.

We can be thankful because there is NOTHING evil for the Father to see in us any longer.

Instead of going to the Father to beg for mercy as leprous sinners,

We show up at this throne as perfect in his sight; sinless and saintly.

As people who are perfected in the sight of God, what then is to be our response?

Quite frankly, as Christians, even we have a common tendency to overlook the obvious, just as the lepers did.

We sit in church and thank God for his forgiveness and for making us his children, 

but we forget at what great cost that kinship cost him; the loss of his very own Son.

We forget to thank him for his sacrifice in addition to the gifts he gives

As we think about giving thanks this weekend, just about everyone in our country will come up with a laundry list of things they are thankful for

But very few will actually give thanks for them or for the most important gift they have been given:

Forgiveness by grace through faith

Which was won by Jesus on the cross at Calvary

At this time of national Thanksgiving we are given the privilege of not only giving thanks to God for all the good things he has blessed us with, but also for the things we no longer have

We can give thanks that we have nothing to feel guilty about

In Christ we can give thanks that we have nothing blotting our record before God the Father for which he would require penance or satisfaction.

We can give thanks that on Easter morning a tomb with nothing in it sealed our fate as ransomed souls who one day will be with God in heaven.

We can give thanks that on the last day, when Christ comes with trumpets sounding and an army of angels at his side, our graves will be found to have nothing in them as well

Because we will have been raised from the dead

And placed at the seat of honor on God’s right hand side.

And in the midst of all that earthly nothingness, we will finally realize the complete fullness, the “everything” that God has in store for us in heaven.

And now you know what it means to faithfully say to God, “Thanks for nothing?” no, “Thanks for everything!”

In Jesus’ name, Amen.