A Sermon Delivered on October 12, 2025 by the Rev. Dr. Patrick H. Wrisley

Leviticus 13:45-46

⁴⁵ 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.” ⁴⁶ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.

Luke 17:11-19

¹¹ On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. ¹² As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, ¹³ they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” ¹⁴ When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. ¹⁵ Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. ¹⁶ He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. ¹⁷ Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? ¹⁸ Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” ¹⁹ Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”[i]

My momma was a bit of an eccentric at times and loved to teach life lessons through living hyperbole. One Father’s Day stands out in my memory.  We’d just gotten home from church, and the house smelled heavenly. Mom had worked herself to the bone getting that special Father’s Day meal ready before we even left for church that morning. When my two brothers and sister heard her call, we came running. 

We tore into that meal like a pack of wolves! With dessert finished and all of feeling all fat and happy, we all pushed back from the table, and without so much as a word of thanks, drifted toward the den to watch football. Even Dad. 

 A few minutes later, we heard something strange: crying … and the sound of plates hitting the floor. We ran back into the kitchen, and there was Mom, all five-foot-one inches of her, scraping food onto the floor and dropping plates right on top.

 When she saw us, she stopped, turned, and said,  “I’ve been up since dawn trying to make this a special Father’s Day meal for you. I cooked, I cleaned, I set everything out, and then every one of you came home grumpy grumpy from church. Y’all sat down and ate and then got up and walked away without as much as a ‘thank you.’ You didn’t even clear your dishes! Well, this gravy train ends right here!”

With that, she wiped her hands, dried her eyes, gave each of us “the look”, (you know the look I’m talking about?), grabbed her car keys and walked right out of the house. The silence that followed was thick. We didn’t need to be told what to do. We cleared the rest of the dishes from the table, washed everything up, mopped the floor, and took out the trash. The place was spotless!

 Only years later did I realize there was probably more going on between Mom and Dad than I understood back then. But what stuck with me was this: we had failed someone we loved through sheer ingratitude. We took her for granted, and it hurt her. 

Since that day, I’ve never left anyone’s table without saying “thank you” and I always carry my own plate to the kitchen. If you have had me over for dinner, now you know why I do it! My momma taught me that lesson well. 

She taught me to say thank you — not just with words, but with action. She taught me that gratitude heals relationships, while ingratitude wounds them.

That brings us to today’s story. Jesus is on the road that leads to the cross on his way to Jerusalem; he’s traveling along the border between Galilee and Samaria. You see that fact is important. He is traveling in a borderland, a gray area between “us” and “them,” i.e., between the Jews and the Samaritans.   

For generations, Jews and Samaritans had despised each other. Each thought the other’s worship was wrong. Each believed “they” were right with God, and the other was a sellout. So when Jesus walked through that borderland, he was already breaking down the walls that divide. 

And that’s when he meets ten men with leprosy. According to Leviticus, lepers had to live outside the camp or village; they were excluded, unclean, cut off from all family, friends, synagogue, and community. They were literally the walking dead. 

These ten men call out to Jesus from a distance and if you noticed, they don’t ask for healing; they ask for mercy. And that word “mercy” says it all. When someone asks for mercy, the are really saying, “Please see me. Notice me. Don’t look away from me. Look at me. Speak to me.” Jesus doesn’t touch them and neither does he pronounce them healed. But he does stop to pay attention to them and simply says, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they go “on the way” they discover they’re healed, literally cleansed and made purified.  Can you imagine the joy? The laughter? The tears? Ten men who’d been living as social outcasts and pariahs are suddenly whole again with health, family, and their community! 

 But only one turns back.  Just one. 

And Luke makes sure we notice that he’s a Samaritan, the quintessential outsider among outsiders. The foreigner who’s not supposed to know how to behave in the presence of God is the only one who throws himself at Jesus’ feet in a posture of worship and says, “Thank you.”  And Jesus, with both wonder and sadness, asks, “Weren’t there ten? Where are the other nine?”

Here’s the thing: all ten were “cleansed”, but only one recognized that he was “made whole.” The others were restored to society. This one was restored to God.  Gratitude, it turns out, is not just good manners, it’s good theology. It’s the natural response of a heart that recognizes grace.  And the thing is, once grace of any kind is expressed, that grace always calls for a response. 

Professor Kimberly Bracken Long puts it beautifully: 

To practice gratitude intentionally changes an individual life, to be sure. It also changes the character of congregation. When Christians practice gratitude, they come to worship not to ‘get something out of it,’ but to give thanks and praise to God.[ii]

In other words, gratitude transforms us. It turns our faith from obligation into joy. It makes us see God’s fingerprints in the ordinary places like the dinner table, in a hospital room, at the cashier’s line at Hannafords; we can even see those fingerprints in the borderlands, the shadow moments of our life. 

Gratitude helps us remember that every breath, every heartbeat, every new morning is grace and that grace requires a response from us.

It’s easy to think we’d be the one who came back, isn’t it? But if we’re honest, most of us rush ahead with the other nine. We receive blessings and move on to the next thing.bBut the one who stopped, who turned around, who made the time to say “thank you,” well he’s the one who truly saw, met, and engaged with Jesus. This is what made the man whole and not just cleansed. Maybe that’s where gratitude begins, right at the point when we stop long enough to see what God has done, let that sink in and marinate in us and then whisper, “Thank you, Lord.”  

My momma was right. Gratitude is the difference between taking and receiving, between being polite and being transformed. The Samaritan shows us that saying “thank you” isn’t just manners, it’s worship. It’s our simple way of slowing down long enough to realize that we have been blessed to be a blessing to others.

This morning, I invite you to begin a devotional practice I use every morning. I open my journal, date it, and then write three items I am grateful for in my life. Whether it’s health, my family, food, my vocation, my cat – it does not matter. The very first activity of my day is to stop and list three blessings I have received and then turn those into a prayer of thanksgiving to God. Why not try it this week and turn ordinary moments into holy ones.

© 2025 Patrick H. Wrisley. Sermon manuscripts are available for the edification of members and friends of First Presbyterian Church of Glens Falls, 8 West Notre Dame Street, Glens Falls, NY 12801 and shall not be altered, re-purposed, published or preached without permission. All rights reserved.  

[i] New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

[ii] Kimberly Bracken Long, Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 4: Season after Pentecost 2 (Propers 17-Reign of Christ) (Kindle Locations 6343-6344). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition