October 12, 2025
Last week, I went to get a tune-upfor my car and was drawn into a community of sorts. Normally when I wait for my car to get its tune-up the waiting area at the Toyota dealership is undramatic. There isn’t much to do but wait and read or watch the television set up in the waiting area. This time I brought my laptop to catch up on some work, and much to my surprise I didn’t need it. What I discovered in the waiting area was pretty much every eye focused on the large television. They were watching the Mariners game. It was the fourth game of the American League Division series against the Detroit Tigers. The Tigers easily won that game. Still, excitement was in the air because we were local Mariners fans rooting for the home team. I’m sure these same people were quite pleased with the results of the Friday night game.
So, yes I walked into a community of sorts. A kind of spontaneous community brought together around a common passion for the Mariners. The game was the focal point. I was drawn in immediately when I asked someone “what’s the score?” Along with the others I was totally into the game and joined in the cheering on the Mariners and booing the other team.
A friend of mine believes emphatically that sports have a unifying effect. As an avid Seahawks fan he tells me that by definition the fan base for teams share a common loyalty and interest. They are a kind of community. It’s a pretty big community consisting of people you will never meet but made real at places like the waiting lounge at Toyota or enjoying the game with others around the TV in your living room. My friend and I have discussed this at length. I feel he has a good point but I also wonder if such a community is fleeting and it certainly lacks intimacy. Still, I’ll be listening to the next series of games and know that even if I listen to them alone, I know that some people somewhere are doing the very same thing rooting on our home team.
Such a broad sense of community is similar to belonging to a political party or having allegiance and taking some pride in the culture of your nationality. These are identity markers rooted in large networks and years of tradition.
There are many manifestations of community. Most of us are in search of some form of community organized around a common hobby or interest or passion. Some communities are safe to belong to because they demand little from us. Some communities are inherently difficult because relationships like family and friendships tend to get more than a little complicated.
And sometimes, like our families of origin, we don’t get to choose, and sometimes community is thrust upon us. Sometimes we may find ourselves belonging to a community that is bound together by common suffering.
The ten lepers were such a community, brought together by their common pain and exclusion. Since leprosy was highly contagious, these ten had to keep their distance from others and keep to themselves. They could communicate with others from a safe distance but not go any farther. The ten like other groups of lepers were left to themselves. They had each other and they shared a deep longing for a fuller community where upon being healed and made well they could find themselves in relationship with other neighbors. They looked for healing and wholeness, safety and salvation.
Together they lamented. Together they survived. Together they cried out for mercy. Seeing Jesus enter the village on his way to Jerusalem, they cried out: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”
Jesus heard their cry and gave them mercy and more. Jesus healed them. He raised them from a place of death to new life. They went together to present themselves before the priests as Jesus instructed and on the way they were healed.
What happened next?
One of them returned to Jesus to give thanks. Just one. This prompted Jesus to ask, “Where are the other nine?”
Why did only one of them return to give thanks for what Jesus had done for them? Where was their community?
“Where are the other nine?” Jesus asked this question not because he needed to be thanked. Jesus wondered why this community had been dispersed. United around their common need why would they not be united around the one who changed their lives? Each of them, except one, went their own way.
This sounds this familiar. Often we may belong to a community to get our needs met and then we flee. Whether the other nine were grateful or not, the opportunity they abandoned was the opportunity to be together in a new way marked by a common sense of gratitude. More than that, they were a community that could be tethered to Jesus because he saved their lives. They could choose to be a new community whose faith made them well, community of Resurrection linked to Jesus the author of their health and salvation. Such a community would live as a community of gratitude, bearing witness to others.
Jesus asked with great disappointment “where are the other nine?” His question mirrors his lament when he wept over Jerusalem because God’s people refused to listen to the prophets and come together as a brood under God’s protective wings. Jesus was keenly aware that people were like sheep without a shepherd, dispersed far and wide and far away from God. Jesus had compassion on them for they were a people severed and split apart. Jesus longed again for God’s people to find their true home in God – a community of thanksgiving to God knowing the deliverance God enacts and living in expectation that God is alive and well and living in the expectation that God changes lives and raises us from death.
Jesus’ lament finally brought him to a cross. In great love, Jesus gave his life for us and for all the world so that such a community might exist. Thanks to Jesus we’ve been baptized into this community.
What Jesus did for the lepers he did for all the world. The church is called to be tethered to Jesus, a community of resurrection, choosing life over death, living lives of thanksgiving.
I remember well a fine person from a previous congregation. She was faithful beyond belief. Every Sunday, without fail I greeted her and asked how she was doing. Each time she replied, “I’m grateful.” Always, without missing a beat, “I’m grateful.”
I had to hear that many times over to really appreciate her quiet witness and learn in new ways the nature of the Christian life.
Here we are gathered as we do every Sunday and what is it that marks our gathering here to worship God? Gratitude. From start to finish the Holy Communion service is marked by gratitude. Eucharist is a word that means “giving thanks.” We make Eucharist each Sunday in response to God’s saving love. We give thanks at the Table for God’s wondrous deeds and we pray that the Spirit will fill our hearts with mercy and love and so live gratefully. God calls us to be a Eucharistic community.
Too often we narrow our gratitude or thanksgiving to self. We limit thanksgiving to being grateful for getting what we want or what we have and we forget to give thanks to God for who we are: a people forgiven, loved, redeemed, and set apart to serve Christ in our neighbor.
A community of gratitude in an antidote to our self-centeredness for we become part of something greater than self and in thanking God together, we are shaped in the habit of giving thanks. Such a habit forms our hearts to respond to each other and our neighbors in love.
This is one reason why I think the church is a “tough sell.” We live in a world that prizes the autonomous self. To be a community centered in thanksgiving to God is to admit our dependency on God. Weaned on self-sufficiency, we don’t like to admit our need of God. We who are members of the church have a difficult enough time doing so.
As members of this community of thanksgiving we can relate both to the Samaritan who knew where to go when giving thanks and the other nine who prefer to go each their own way. We are both the Samaritan and the other nine.
One of my favorite Eucharistic prayers includes a beautiful line that acknowledges this reality and speaks to our constant need for God. The line is this: “We give you thanks, O God, not as we ought but as we are able.”
“We give you thanks, not as we ought but as we are able.”
Henri Nouwen wrote about gratitude helping to release us from resentment and the need to make ourselves righteous. He wrote: “what I have to offer others is not my intelligence, power, skill, influence or connections, but my own human brokenness through which the love of God can manifest itself. Ministry is entering with our human brokenness into communion with others and their brokenness … the more in touch we are with our own need for healing and salvation, the more open we are to receiving in gratitude what others have to offer us.”
What Jesus did for the ten lepers he does for us. So, together we pray “have mercy on us” and together we give thanks to God. So, here we are again in this community where we meet the Risen Christ who feeds us with the food that is everlasting and sends us into the world to bring the bread of compassion to a world in need.
Let us continue to give thanks to God, as we are able, for it is our duty and joy to give him thanks and praise.
Amen.