Whole people

I read a story, recounted by pastor and theologian Bruce Larson, about an immigrant shopkeeper whose son came to see him one day complaining, “Dad, I don’t understand how you run this store. You keep your accounts payable in a cigar box. Your accounts receivable are on a spindle. All your cash is in the register. You never know what your profits are.” “Son, let me tell you something,” answered his father. “When I arrived in this land all I owned was the pants I was wearing. Now your sister is an art teacher. Your brother is a doctor. You are a CPA. Your mother and I own a house and a car and this little store. Add that all up and subtract the pants and there is your profit.”  Accounting principles aside, this is a man who lives with a sense of gratitude.

In Luke 17, the story of the ten lepers, one man returns to thank Jesus for healing him. In the account, Jesus instructed all ten to go show themselves to the priest. Remember from Leviticus that the Law required that a priest confirm that the leper was clean before they could re-enter the community.  No one went to the priest unless they believed themselves to be clean so as Jesus sends them to see the priest, he is asking them to respond in faith.  He doesn’t touch them. He doesn’t say, “Be healed.” He tells them to act as though they were already healed. As they responded in faith and did what he told them to do, they were healed.  However, only one of them came back praising God with gratitude.

Jesus says to the man, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?  Then he said to the man, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.” Ten were healed, but only one was made well.  The difference? Gratitude.  The point?  The nine were worse off physically healed with ungrateful hearts than they had been as lepers… Leprosy is worse than ingratitude. Jesus is saying to us, “Without gratitude in your life, you are not whole people.”