Talk to Your Doctor

Unless we have nighttime meetings, Merrie and I usually watch the evening news together, sometimes before or after dinner, sometimes during dinner. The news is often bad enough but what is really bad about the evening news are all the drug ads. I guess the pharmaceutical companies have figured out that old people like me watch the evening news and it’s a good time to promote this or that pill to help fix all the medical maladies that afflict us as we get older.

When I see those ads it amazes me that anyone would ever use one of those medications. A few seconds of the advertisement extol the wonderful benefits of the drug. Then there is a long list of warnings and possible side effects that I’m sure the legal departments of the drug companies insist on being in the ads. If you listen carefully to the possible side effects, you have to wonder why anyone would take such a drug. And in every ad there is this line: “Talk to your doctor about taking … ”

Have you ever tried to talk to your doctor about a drug you saw on TV. “Hello, Dr. Jones. I think this drug I saw on TV last night will do me some good. What do you think?” Maybe your doctors will take calls like that but not mine.

I couldn’t help but think of that as I was studying today’s text. In this story, Jesus meets ten lepers on his way to Jerusalem. Nine of them were Jews and one was a Samaritan. Centuries before Samaria had been part of Israel. But for various reasons, the Jews had come to shun the Samaritans as essentially untouchables. The Jews felt the Samaritans were ethnically impure, economically ruthless, and religiously apostate. But leprosy was such a horrible disease that lepers banded together even if some were Jewish and some were not.

We know that lepers tended to live in groups (2 Kings 7.3) and avoided contact with non-lepers (Leviticus 13.45-46; Numbers 5.2). They kept close enough to populated areas to receive charity.[1] But they were always outcasts. So these lepers cried out to Jesus but kept their distance from him, as they were required to do. Jesus healed them — all ten — and told them to go and tell the priest. That was like saying, talk to your doctor. Let’s read it in Luke 17.

On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, “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?” Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

When Jesus healed the ten lepers, he commanded them to show themselves to the priests. That was proper according to Jewish Law. (Leviticus 14.2-32) Like a doctor today, only a priest could vouchsafe that healing had in fact occurred. The priest would pronounce a leper clean and he or she could rejoin normal society. Of course, the nine Jews could go to the priests at the temple in Jerusalem. They could do what Jesus told them to do. But the Samaritan couldn’t go to the temple. He was doubly outcast. He had been a leper, and would still be thought of as a leper until a priest pronounced him healed, and he was a Samaritan, an outsider. Under no circumstances would any priest talk with him because even if he was healed of leprosy he still considered an outcast who could not be right with God.

Yet as the story unfolds he was blessed even more than the nine. What made the difference for him? I think the difference was his gratitude. The Samaritan had an attitude of gratitude, which sometimes we lack. So let me tell a story I read not long ago, a story about a woman named Gertrude.

Gertrude Behanna was fifty-three years old when she discovered God through Jesus Christ. The shock and wonder of that discovery never wore off. But Gertrude had a different shock the very first Sunday she went to church. She said, “I had never been to church in my life and I remember how eagerly I awaited that first Sunday. I had just a glimpse of God Almighty — me, an alcoholic, a drug addict, rich, lonely, and miserable. Already I was beginning to know what joy really was.” Gertrude was a new Christian and eager to attend church to meet and talk with people who had known the love of God for many years. “What ecstatic people these longtime Christians will be!” she said to herself.

Even though becoming a Christian was the happiest thing of her life, she was hesitant about going to church that first Sunday. “I was afraid they would embarrass me with their love and enthusiasm,” she said.

But Gertrude did not find church people as loving and enthusiastic as she imagined. What she discovered were, “bowed heads, long faces, and funeral whispers.” She expected people to shower her with affection and love for making the right choice and wanting to be part of the church. But no one welcomed her. No one even spoke to her the first Sunday she went to church.

Gertrude wrote, “As time went on, I attended other churches in various parts of the country. I made a bewildering discovery. These long faced, listless people were present in every congregation.” Then she asked a very good question: “How could they come into God’s presence Sunday after Sunday without breathing in the joy that danced in the very air?”

Gertrude didn’t come to church here. But what if she had? Would she have found people alive with the joy of the Lord? Would she have found a church happy to reach out to newcomers and make them welcome as new friends? Yes, I think so. But we do get comments from time to time that we are not very welcoming.

You may be thinking, Bill, it isn’t that simple; besides we’re pretty good people all things considered. That’s right! We are pretty good people and that’s the problem! We are so used to being Christian that we forget how wondrous and amazing it is that God should love eternally people like us. Yes, we’re good people for the most part. So were the nine lepers. They did exactly what they were told: “go to the priest.” They did exactly what was required but they didn’t do what was right. The Samaritan leper, the outsider, the one no one expected to do the right thing, did what was right. He had been healed of a dread, disfiguring disease. He couldn’t help but praise God. We, too, have been healed of a dread, disfiguring disease. It’s called sin and knowing that God has touched us with grace ought to make us leap up with joy.

Sometimes it takes the outsider, a Gertrude or a Samaritan leper, to help us see what is right, to help us see how much we take for granted, and how we lack the attitude of gratitude.

But let’s talk for a moment positively about gratitude. We know we often lack it. But what happens when we are filled with gratitude?

Once more, the Samaritan provides a good example. When he saw that he had been healed, he was filled with gratitude and it moved him literally to turn around from where he was going and get back to Jesus. Gratitude moves us. It is never passive. Gratitude moves us towards God.

Then something else happened. After the healed Samaritan boisterously expressed his gratitude, Jesus said, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” Isn’t that strange? He had already been made well when he was healed of leprosy. But now the Lord says he is well. So that must mean something besides physical healing. And in fact, when we look at the meaning of the words in the original language, we discover that Jesus was talking about the wellbeing of salvation. The leper had been healed physically. When he came back to Jesus, he was healed spiritually. He became a whole person — body, mind, and spirit. Gratitude moved him back to Jesus and only then did he receive the fullness of God’s blessing.

Do we understand that? Maybe the problem for us is that healing is almost routine. When we need healing, we do talk to our doctor. Or, if it’s an emergency we go to the hospital. How many folks come from the doctor or hospital and go directly to church to give thanks? Well, those who were regularly going to church before the illness perhaps do. But many just go back to what they were doing before. They miss the real healing which comes only from God.

Some will say, “Well, Jesus doesn’t heal everything. So how can we believe he heals anything?” That’s right, but let’s remember that faith isn’t magic to protect us from all harm. We don’t live forever on this earth. To dwell on that misses the point. The real healing we all need is the healing of salvation, the healing that goes to the core of our soul and says “all will be well.” Whether we are physically well or not, gratitude moves us to Jesus and then we are made truly well and truly whole.

Gratitude moves us towards God and that brings wholeness. In fact, research has found that grateful people are not only healthier but happier. They are even nicer to be around and care more for others. The Washington Post reported this research a few years ago.[2] But do we need to read it in the newspaper to believe it? How about just taking Jesus at his word? How about just trusting that when our faith leads us to give thanks to God, the Lord sends us on our way, saying , “All will be well.”

[1] Fred B. Craddock, John H. Hayes, Carl R. Holladay, and Gene M. Tucker, Preaching the New Common Lectionary, Year C After Pentecost (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1986) 202.

[2] Shankar Vedantam, “Counting Blessings Is Healthful,” The Washington Post, 10 March 2003: A11.