Haven’t You Forgotten Something?

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
November 19, 2006
The 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Haven’t You Forgotten Something?
Luke 17:11-19
Deuteronomy 8:11-16

They stood there, on the side of the road,
careful to keep their distance.
The ten were feared by the villagers and all who passed by them.
Their frightening, mottled appearance
was enough to cause even the strongest to turn away,
to do anything to avoid them.

All ten were afflicted with leprosy,
a hideous disease that rotted bodies slowly, torturously, painfully.
It was considered to be highly contagious,
and so anyone who was even thought to have leprosy
was banished from their homes and villages,
forced to go live among other lepers,
in wretched places, filthy, foul, and frightening.

The ten knew they had no choice in how they lived.
It was all spelled out right there in the Torah,
in the third book of the Bible, in the Levitical code:
“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!’
He shall live alone,
his dwelling shall be outside the camp.(Lev. 13:45)

Leprosy meant certain death,
death that was slow, agonizingly slow, in coming.
Lepers could do nothing more than wait for death,
but each day they were allowed
to go out from their quarantined places
to beg a few coins,
a few scraps of food from passersby.

The lepers who approached Jesus
on that road between Samaria and Galilee came near,
but not too close, keeping the distance the law required.
In anguished hope they cried out to him from the side of the road,
“Jesus, master, have mercy on us!”
That was all they said: “have mercy on us.”
They asked for neither food nor money;
just mercy, mercy in their suffering.
Jesus’ response was simple, even curious:
“Go and show yourselves to the priests.”

And Luke tells us that “as they went, they were made clean.”
They were cured!
All signs of the disease disappeared.
Health and wholeness was restored.
Those 10 who had been living ghosts,
who had lost everything,
health, homes, …hope,
suddenly found themselves clean,
no disease, no pain, no rotting flesh.
They could return to their families,
return to their homes and their villages,
Ten men, living under a sentence of certain death,
were given life again!

Now if this had happened to you,
wouldn’t you have stopped for moment,
even in your excitement,
even in your eagerness to see your familiy,
wouldn’t you have stopped long enough to say, “Thank you”?
Thank you to the one who had healed you,
to the one who heard your cry, “have mercy”,
to the one who had showed you mercy,
showed you love.

But 9 of the 10 men didn’t say “thank you”.
Didn’t bother to come back to Jesus, to find him,
to say two simple words: “Thank you”.
Only one did.
Only one came back, Luke tells us,
offering words of praise and thanksgiving to God
for having had his life restored to him.
And he wasn’t even a Jew;
he was a Samaritan, a foreigner!
Yet, he was filled with thankfulness
to the one who had healed him.

Jesus was baffled by the absence of the others:
“Were not ten made clean?
But the other nine, where are they?
Was none of them found to return
and give praise to God except this foreigner?”
He wanted to say to the 9, “Haven’t you forgotten something?
Haven’t you overlooked someone?”

Jesus asked not because he wanted to be thanked,
not because he wanted to be praised,
No, Jesus wanted these men to thank God,
his father in heaven,
their father in heaven,
our father in heaven.
Jesus wanted those men to remember,
as the doxology reminds us,
from whom all blessings flow.

More than a thousand years earlier,
Moses anticipated our tendency to forget
from whom all our blessings flow.
He had led the children of Israel
through the wilderness to the east side of the River Jordan,
where they all looked west upon the promised land,
the land of milk and honey,
the land that God was going to give to them.
Moses knew he was not going to lead the people
into the promised land;
He knew he was going to die; God had told him.
And so in Deuteronomy he gave the children of Israel
his final instructions, ……… his final pieces of wisdom.

And in the text we heard,
he reminded the people not to overlook God:
“When you have eaten your fill
and have built fine houses and live in them,
and when your herds and flocks have multiplied,
and your silver and gold is multiplied,
and all that you have is multiplied ...
do not exalt yourselves,
… Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God...”
(Deut. 8:11ff)
“Take care that you don’t forget the one
from whom all blessings flow.”

All that we have comes from God.
It is that simple.
So it begs the question:
why is Thanksgiving just one day on the calendar?
It should be how we live our lives!
Our lives should be lived as prayers of thanksgiving,
not just on one day a year,
but every day: spring, summer, fall, and winter,

Did you ever stop to think that
the very first prayer you heard,
that you were aware of,
was probably a prayer of thanksgiving?
It was that simple prayer we call “grace”
the one we offer before a meal.

Perhaps your first memory of grace was hearing your grandfather
lead the family in grace at the table on a holiday,
Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Easter.
Or, perhaps you remember how
your father or mother insisted on grace before dinner,
much to your annoyance, of course,
as you sat there convinced that you were going to die of hunger
if you had to wait even another 10 seconds
before you were allowed to attack your plate.

When we say grace, we are thanking God.
In saying grace, in a such a simple way
we make sure we do not overlook God,
do not forget God.

A prayer of thanksgiving is easy:
it does not need to be long or elaborate;
it doesn’t need to be a lyrical poem in highly stylized English.
It simply needs to come from the heart.

How often have you heard a child pray,
“God is great, God is good,
Let us thank him for our food. Amen”
The sentiment could not be more heartfelt!
It is a perfect prayer of thanksgiving.
The reformer Martin Luther provided us with another short,
but elegant prayer:
“Come Lord Jesus and be our guest,
And may our meal by you be blest.”

A traditional prayer that is offered at many tables is,
“Bless this food and make us thankful for it.”
It is one our family used on holidays.
Let me ask you a question, about this one, though.
Think about the phrase that we are lifting up to God,
“make us thankful for it.”
Isn’t that what Jesus was trying to get at,
and Moses, too?
We should not need God to make us thankful,
we should simply be thankful,
thankful for all we have,
thankful for every day,
thankful for food, for families,
for homes, for clothing, for vocations,
for health, for blessings small and large.

The theme of our Stewardship campaign has focused
on our being thankful, on saying thank you to God.
In making our pledges to our Stewardship Campaign,
we are saying thank you:
thank you to God for this church,
this Body of Christ that has been here for 139 years,
this Body of Christ where so many faithful saints
have been serving so faithfully for so many years,
including the saints we will honor later today,

In making your pledge you are saying
thank you that God has called you here
to a place where you are welcomed,
where you are cared for,
where your faith is nurtured,
where you can grow as a disciple of Jesus Christ.

Have you thought about the different ministries of this church
that you are thankful for?
We have a wonderful Christian Education program
that provides literally everyone in this congregation
with the opportunity to grow in faith and discipleship:
our children, our young people, and every adult.
I love stopping by classes on Sunday morning
to watch as we learn together,
student learning from teacher,
and teacher learning from student.

Have you thought about how thankful you are
for the extraordinary music ministry
we have here under Deborah’s leadership?
Five different vocal choirs,
Two handbell choirs,
a handchime choir,
recitals, soloists,
music that enriches our worship service each Sunday,
music that helps us to praise God, pray to God,
and yes, music that helps us thank God.

Have you thought about how thankful you are for the mission work
we carry on through our church?
Through our Mission ministry team we follow our Lord’s teaching
to look after the poor, the sick,
the homeless, those who are without hope, those who are lonely.
The list of mission ministries we support is long,
but for all we do, there is always so much more we could be doing.
Did you see the article in the Washington Post the other day?
Here in our own country, the richest country in the world,
35 million Americans struggle to put enough food on the table:
35 million!
What would Jesus say about that, that we allow such suffering?
Doesn’t Jesus teach us that even one hungry person
is one too many?

If you have not returned your pledge card,
please do so within the next week.
Say thank you to God for this church, this Body of Christ,
this ministry and fill out your card
so that we can be sure that next year,
our 140th year of ministry in the name of Jesus Christ
will be our strongest year ever,
our most faithful year, ever,
our most grateful year ever.

“Praise God from whom all blessings flow
Praise God all creatures here below.”

Praise God, and offer thanks,
offer thanks for blessings small and large.
Live your very life as a prayer of thanksgiving,
lest someday you hear a voice
speaking to you from the wind asking,
“Haven’t you forgotten something?”

AMEN