Grateful Response - Sermon for Thanksgiving Sunday (October 12, 2025)

Scripture Readings: Jeremiah 29:1, 4–7 | Psalm 66 | 2 Timothy 2:8–15 | ​Luke 17:11–19

“Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15).
 
There’s lots of things that we can be grateful for today.
 
Yes, there are still many ways that our world is broken… that we need real healing, and help, and hope… for ourselves and our loved ones… and also as a whole… as the worldwide human family.
 
But all the difficulties and troubles that we face don’t need to make us forget all of the good things that we have been given, and all the wonderful blessings that we’ve received.
 
What can you and I be thankful for today?

How about the beauty of an autumn day here in New Brunswick? What about the chance to gather with friends and neighbours? Maybe even sharing a delicious meal?

What about something as simple as our next breath? The gift of another day? A moment of stillness and peace?

On that note, what about the hopeful signs this week of a ceasefire in Gaza, and at least a pause in the terrible hostilities that have turned so many lives upside down?
 
There really are many things that we can be grateful for today. But what then? What do we do with that feeling?
How do we tend to express our gratefulness?
 
Thinking about those times when someone in our lives has been really gracious with us, do we tend to take some kind of concrete action… taking time to say a heartfelt thanks… to write a card… or maybe even offer them a small gift of appreciation? Or do we tend to simply let the moment and feelings pass us by?
 
Now I have to confess that I’m not the best at expressing gratefulness. It’s not that I don’t feel thankful in the moment when people are kind and gracious to me. I really do. But I’ve noticed that I seem to struggled with how to show it more… with turning my inward experience into an outward expression of thanks… that is, with how to practice a life of gratitude… and not just settle for feeling it.
 
Maybe you’re like me in this respect, and expressing gratitude doesn’t come all that easily. And if that’s the case, then that’s great! Because God’s word has some good things to say to us this morning to help us grow even more. And in our Gospel reading today, we are all being called to consider the important role that gratefulness plays both in our faith… and in our daily lives.
 
As we heard just a few moments ago, Jesus was once approached by a group of ten lepers… begging Him from a distance to have mercy upon them… to bring them some hope, and help… and perhaps most of all, some healing.
 
Back in those days, all sorts of different skin diseases were called leprosy, but without access to the kinds of more or less precise medical diagnoses that we are accustomed to, everyone with these kinds of skin diseases went through the same treatment plan: that is, after a time of examination by a priest, if they determined that the symptoms fit the criteria, then the patient would become an outcast, unable to live near others in order to avoid spreading the illness.

Here’s what the book of Leviticus Chapter 13:45-46 says must be done when this dreaded diagnosis was made.
 “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 remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.”
 
Now I know that our medical system may not be perfect, but I think we’ve just found yet another thing to be thankful for. I mean, this made sense at that time as a way to preserve the health of the whole community in the face of an unknown illness… but I’m really glad that we have very different kinds of treatment plans these days.
 
But the instructions from Leviticus Chapter 13 about leprosy sheds some light on why Jesus sends these ten people to visit the priests, and that’s because the priests were the ones responsible for determining if someone was leprous or not. Unless a priest officially signed off on someone’s recovery, they would be considered unclean forever. And so, Jesus sends the ten lepers to go see the official experts to get their clean bill of health certified.
 
But notice the order of events here: Jesus tells the group to visit the priests before they are healed! No miracle took place before all ten of them first choose to take Jesus at His word… trusting Him and doing what He said. They only experienced His healing power on the way… once they had already put their trust into action.
 
This in itself is a remarkable story, especially as there was no known cure for leprosy. And so, when Jesus heals them, He gave them a truly life-changing gift. A chance to return to their families… and friends… to begin life again instead of facing unending days of isolation and pain. 
 
So it’s really no surprise then that they just rush ahead to see the priests, as Jesus told them to… so they could get the green light to return to their loved ones, and the lives that they had to put on hold as soon as possible.
 
Which makes it all the more amazing that one of the healed men stops before seeing the priests. He puts the return to his old life on hold for a moment, and takes the time to return to Jesus and to give thanks to God for all that He has done for him.

And it’s even more amazing when we hear that this lone one who returns is an outsider. A Samaritan, the distant and estranged relatives of the Judeans, who traced their lineage back to the Northern Ten Tribes of Israel, and who were often looked down upon by their Jewish neighbours as corrupt and heretical… completely cut off from the true traditions and teachings of God… and distanced from His holy ways. And yet, it’s only the Samaritan who actually comes back… drawing near to Jesus to give thanks.
 
At this point, we see that this is the real focus of this story: the disparity between the nine who were healed and then went on their way, and the one outsider who returned and drew near with a heart full of thanks and praise.
 
And the implications of this story seem to be that the one who returned showed signs of a depth of faith that the others did not. The other nine missed something in their miraculous healing experience that made expressing their gratitude directly to Jesus somehow less important. 
 
Now of course, they probably deeply appreciated it! It was a life changing event that they must have remembered for the rest of their lives. I mean, how could they not? And yet, they still quickly went back to their old lives… missing out on the opportunity they had just been given to express their gratitude up close and personally to God by drawing close to their Saviour, His Son.
 
And yes, all ten were healed. All ten received a new lease on life. All ten experienced God’s mercy and grace. But only the grateful Samaritan the outsider was told: “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” (Luke 17:19).
 
This story invites us to think about the deep connections between our faith in God and gratitude… about how the two of them are intertwined… supporting and nurturing one another.
 
It is our faith that keeps the gifts of God in focus… reminding us, again and again, of all that the Living God has done for us and our world. How in self-giving love, God sent His Son Jesus Christ to rescue us and set our broken world free, laying down His life at the cross to cleans us all from our sins, and from everything that keeps us cut off from God and one another.

When the reality of this… of our faith sinks in… when we are able to receive into our hearts and minds and lives what God has so graciously given to us… it inspires a response. It lights a fire of gratefulness inside us… a fire that can then begin to grow stronger.
 
And we can choose not to act on it… and let this positive feeling this fire slowly fade away without expressing it. Or we can choose to do something with it… to find some way to let this fire shine… to communicate our thanks, and try and embody the gratefulness that we feel… drawing us even closer to the Lord by offering Him more of our hearts and our minds and our daily lives.
 
As Christians, we believe that we have already received so much good from the hands of God! Jesus our Saviour King has already reached into our lives and brought God’s healing, and help, and hope to us in so many ways. 
 
We have received the gift of Creation itself… all the beauty and blessings that exist all around us. A world full of wonderful sights, and sounds, and sensations, and smells… and great foods to savour.

In Christ, we have received the great gift of salvation… of God’s mercy and forgiveness… and freedom from our fears and shame. And the renewed life, the reconciliation Jesus achieved for us at the cross… turning our lives around by sharing His New Life with us, once and for all. 
 
And we have received the gift of this new worldwide family of fellow believers… brothers and sisters to share all our joys and our struggles with… a family made up of all sorts of strange, and inspiring, and wonderful outsiders… learning together how to live and love God’s way, and how to share God’s love with, and lift up those around us. 
 
And last but not least, we have received the gift of God’s Holy Spirit at work inside and among us… to draw us deeper and deeper into God’s fellowship, remaking us in the image of Jesus, our great Saviour King… and equipping us to do God’s will in our world… especially when it seems the most broken and in need of His healing, help, and hope. 

What would be the best way to say thanks to God? How can we not only receive these great gifts, but respond in a way that shows that we are thankful for all God has done?
 
Well, we can start by following the example of the thankful Samaritan, and take time to intentionally draw close to Jesus, and bring our thanks directly to Him! We do this intentionally in our worship… in our words of prayer, and praise… lifting up our voices and hearts to the Lord… especially when we gather to celebrate Eucharist together around Christ’s Table in remembrance of Him.
 
But as important as our Sunday gatherings are, worship is not limited to them, or to our private times of prayer. Every day, everywhere, and in everything that we do, we can worship the Lord and express our gratitude to Him… drawing near by offering Him our hearts and minds and actions… with lives being shaped by the Good News of Jesus, and committing to walking in His good ways.
 
In our second reading today, St. Paul commends St. Timothy and those in his community not to simply go about their lives heedless of God’s grace, bickering over words… but to live as those bound by love to their Lord.
 
He tells Timothy to take his faith in Jesus Christ seriously… to explore it, to invest in understanding it, and in putting this Good News into practice. 
 
He says to him, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15). And although we are not all called like Timothy to be the leader of a Christian Church (although some of us here might be!), we can all heed St. Paul’s words as a way to give thanks to God: to set aside time to regularly draw near to His Son, Jesus… alone, and with others… in order  to do our best to learn His good ways, and to diligently serve the work of His good Kingdom.
 
So then, whenever we receive something good… and whenever we notice the many blessings around us… which are even there to be found in the midst of truly difficult times… it is an invitation for us to pause… to take a moment, and to draw near to Jesus our Saviour in faith, and to offer Him again our hearts and minds and daily lives as a gift of love and thankfulness. Amen.