In November I guest preached within my own congregation, on the Unitarian Universalist theme of Gratitude. This is from then.
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Pure Religion vs Real Gratitude
In the Gospel of Luke Jesus heals ten lepers - but only one seeks out Jesus later to say thanks. What happens when we become grateful?
FYI: Samaria is approximately where southern Lebanon is now. Where, as of this morning (3/20/2026), the Israeli military is bombing. Death toll in Lebanon, so far, is over one thousand.
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Some friends were visiting while we happened to have two kinds of cookies in our kitchen. We offered their toddler a cookie. She looked at them, picked one and ate it. Her parents prompted, “Now what do you say?”
She said, “I want the other one.”
I had just started to work on this sermon on a day when I went for a walk by Carroll University. Suddenly, running straight towards me, was a bunch of college guys, probably their track team. I got off the sidewalk so the pack of them could keep running. They passed; I was about to get back on the sidewalk when here comes one more guy. Shorter, skinnier, slower, big glasses. I just KNEW this guy was going to say thank you as he passed and thus become the star of my sermon. But nope. Ran right past. Whatever. Kids these days.
I kept walking. A couple minutes later here comes the girls’ track team. All running, their ponytails bouncing. I got off the sidewalk, stood there, they came up and don’t you just know.. ALL of them called out thank you thank you thank you!
I laughed. You wanna see gratitude? Watch women. We’re good at it. We pave our way through the world with good manners because 1.) it makes life more pleasant and 2.) nice manners tend to make us safer.
If Jesus’ ten lepers had been women, they would have all come back.
Here’s our story from Luke 17: 11-19. Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” When he saw them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed. One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”
What too much of the religion in which too many of us were raised taught us is this. The leper got his health back because 1.) he was properly thankful. And 2.) also because he really, really, really believed. Ergo, if you need a miracle, you just have to squinch your eyes shut, tap your ruby red slippers and .. oh wait, wrong cultural legend. Funny how often gospel and happy ending stories run into each other. We keep waiting for Hallmark Christmas Special Jesus.
So first - don’t forget the inconvenient part of this gospel story - the other nine guys who were also healed DIDN’T come back - apparently ‘proper gratitude’ isn’t a requirement for obtaining grace.
Jesus comments that the man who came back was Samaritan. Curiously, there are two other Jesus stories where the punch line is – “and they were a Samaritan.” The woman at the well who recognizes that Jesus is Someone. The Good Samaritan who stops in a dangerous place to helps a guy who was mugged.
Why do we care that these people are ethnically Samaritan?
Quick history lesson here. In the Abraham to Moses to King David era there was one united kingdom of the twelve tribes called Israel.
In 930 B.C.E. – so about a thousand years BEFORE Jesus - the kingdom of Israel split after King Solomon died - more or less because Jerusalem leaders were heavily taxing poorer folks until their tribes revolted; and da-da, those people were in Shechem aka Samaria. (today this is southern Lebanon) This section of Israel would be, in Wisconsin terms, Eau Claire, La Crosse, and Chippewa Falls. Up and over.
North and the east aka Green Bay and Manitowoc became known as Galilee because it surrounded the Sea of Galilee. The Galileans stuck politically with the middle and southern Judah Jerusalem Madison and Milwaukee bunch.
Over the next several hundred years everyone was invaded by Assyria and later Babylonia. It was rough for everyone but devastating for Samaritans. Many were killed, kidnapped, forced into slavery over a period of two hundred years. When they finally returned to their own land, they brought with them their partners and kids who were no longer “pure” Jews.
When the Judeans were sprung from their fifty-year Babylonian captivity, they wanted to rebuild their temple and return to their pure and holy old time religion. The Samaritans said hey, it’s been hell for all of us, we would be glad to come down and help you build that new temple. The Judeans said nope, we don’t want your unclean hands and wives with accents and multi-racial kids in our religion. There’s obviously more than this, but you get the picture because, sadly, we know about “Religion so pure it’s for the likes of us - but not for the likes of you.”
So Jesus is walking towards Jerusalem. Disciples are with him when they hear yelling in the distance and the good thing it isn’t robbers - but it IS lepers.
The lepers recognize Jesus. “Look! There’s that prophet guy who’s been healing sick people. Well, that’s us!” “Yo, Jesus. Heal us!”
The story says that Jesus tells them to go and present themselves to the local priest and they will be healed. They did that.
Except this one guy; this Samaritan leper; this outcast of outcasts. We don’t know how far or long he had to walk or what he was thinking as he found his way back to Jesus after he realized he was healed - but when he finds Jesus he falls face down on the ground. He’s probably crying as he offers the best prayers of praise and gratitude he knows. He glorifies the God of the Universe by thanking this man who changed the trajectory of his life.
This verb used here for this moment of this man thanking Jesus is eucharistōn (Pronunciation: yoo-khar-is-TEH-o) and it’s an uncommon word in the Bible. It’s the root word of Eucharist which (all you ex-Catholics and Lutherans etc.) know is the Latin word for communion. Eucharist is when and where everyday bread and wine becomes more than bread and wine. Eucharist is where sustenance becomes a miracle.
Eucharist is when and where we wake up to our lives, when we acknowledge what we have been given and we become floored and humbled with gratitude.
Because 1. Gratitude stops us in our tracks. We thought our day or our lives were going to go one way – then something unexpected happens – and suddenly the moment we are in is different. We feel healing, we understand that at least in this moment and place we are seen. Gratitude creates in us a place to acknowledge our situation, our fortune, the gifts of healing and understanding we are given.
2. Gratitude calls us into relationship What we received was not a thing we could have won, stolen, or achieved all on our own. We were sailing along thinking we were coping – when we received a moment, help, awareness, a gift – and we thank the child who gave us a hug, the partner who did the dishes at the end of a hard day, the friend who listened to us, the musician who played Build Me Up Buttercup that brought back wonderful memories, the doctor, nurse, or prophet who healed us.
3. Gratitude reequips us for what comes next. We can pretty much assume that the Samaritan leper - who is no longer a leper - goes back into his community to share himself and his story mightily.
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So now I have a story and in my defense, I probably think about prairie dogs and coyotes more than most people.
Once upon a time there was a UU prairie dog named Cheyenne who was ALWAYS grateful. She was grateful for sunshine but then, if it rained, she was grateful for a wet head. “Oh My Friends, I am just so thankful for drenched fur, aren’t you?”
Her friends would look at her sideways and roll their eyes. But whatever. That’s the way Cheyenne was. Always grateful. Always thankful. Kind of a wimp but in a true Unitarian Universalist congregation, you just let people be who they are and hope they don’t get too much nuttier than they already are. (Says the woman offering you a sermon that includes an imaginary prairie dog.)
In their congregation, although he didn’t attend very regularly, was also a poorly raised coyote named Cillian. I don’t know how he got a traditional Irish name like that, sometimes you really wonder where people erupted from. But Cillian Coyote was NEVER grateful. He was always watching people interact poorly, who were seldom, well, really never, up to his standards. The coffee was weak. The bacon was vegetarian and, he said “All I can ask is Why?” The congregational children were loud and confident. The old ladies of the congregation had too much assurance of their value to humanity and wore pants with stretch waistbands and went to movies without inviting him.
Sometimes during Joys and Sorrows, if Cillian was in the congregation that Sunday, he’d trot right up to the front. He was, he said, upset by teenagers in his neighborhood who rang his doorbell on Halloween even though he had no decorations, no lights on, and his front door said, “Go Away.” It had been disrespectful and disruptive and no wonder people were so harried these days. They were not getting enough rest because the nation’s young people only ate what they wanted to eat, not what was good for them, and they were undisciplined in other areas, too.
Then one day, deep in that autumn, Cillian became sick at heart. At first even he didn’t know what was happening. His fur started to thin around his ears which made him feel awkward. The pelt on his haunches turned gray almost overnight. Whiskers grew straight out of his eyebrows and his voice kept cracking awkwardly, like sticks breaking in a windstorm.
He had always been so confident about his good health, his sleek fur, and energetic lope. Suddenly he looked and felt entirely rumpled, and his loping gate was more of a limping gimp.
Being substandard embarrassed him so he didn’t go anywhere anymore. He ordered in rabbit and chipmunk fricassees from Door Dash and was grouchy when the stews were lukewarm. He’d hobble down to the creek in the morning for a drink and a washup, but that was all he went out. And of course, no one visited him because no one knew he needed anything. Being a shut-in coyote is a drab existence.
Until the morning, freezing creek water coursing over his threadbare snout, he looked up and there was Cheyenne, briskly sashaying along the other side of the creek, her prairie dog physique magnificently plump in the rising sun.
He gulped so loudly that Cheyenne looked over and then, Cheyenne stopped in her tiny tracks.
“Mr. Cillian, there you are! We haven’t seen you in a chihuahua’s age! We’ve missed you! No one complains as beautifully as you! How are you?”
Killian stood there, threadbare ears, crooked legs, ice on his whiskers, utterly stymied.
Cheyenne realize that not all was well with her fellow congregant, and as a representative of the Social Concerns Committee, she slid plumply onto the creek ice, plunked in and under, and then bobbed back up laughing. “Oofda, now that’s what I call brisk! Lovely way to finish waking up.”
She climbed out onto the bank by Cillian.
“You know, you look a bit peaked. How can I help?”
Cillian said nothing although one tear started to roll down his sunken cheek. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” He squawked. “I’m disassembling and I don’t know who to blame.”
Cheyenne furrowed her plump brow. “Well, dear, I think blaming is low on the list of what’s important right now. It seems to me you need a good luncheon with plenty of roughage, an afternoon with friends, and an opportunity to share yourself with others. Or at least, this always helps me when I’m down.”
He was so exhausted by his months of heart sickness that he just let Cheyenne take over. They walked to town and had parsley soup. Cheyenne was going to quilting group at Marcia’s that afternoon so she brough Cillian with and he was so overwhelmed he kept his mouth shut except to bite threads for the others. And that evening, Cheyenne hauled him along to snack time at the evening study hall for teenagers who didn’t have actual homes of their own. Cillian was astonished to see the teenagers who had rung his doorbell on Halloween. Of all the things he never expected to learn, learning those kids had probably been hungry and had hoped they might get snacks at his house devastated him out of his life of opinions.
He turned to Cheyenne, tears in his eyes. “It never occurred to me that I am blessed. Thank you.”
And as he said that, unbeknownst to him, some purple fur started to sprout around his ears.
Within weeks his lope was back, a family of poor robins was sharing his den, he had a regular gig leading the Alaskan malamute choir. He had learned that being grateful was a wonderful way to grow thick fur. Especially when it grew in, amazingly, in LGBTQ supporting rainbow colors.
He had become a grateful coyote and it was way more fun.
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