Homily, October 12, 2025, Rev. Holly Cardone

The One Guy that Said Thanks.

18th Sunday after Pentecost

First, let’s be clear that Luke is not referring to Hansen’s disease when he is writing about leprosy.  Most likely, what Luke is referring to is a broad category of skin conditions like rashes, scaley skin, infections, depigmentation, or open sores, that made those inflicted ritually impure. So, this is not only about how contagious or unhealthy someone is, but about how holy and pure they are. These guys are at rock bottom. Because of their disease, they have been thrown out of their community, their tribe, their home and their family. They are a threat to the survival of their communities and are left to survive on their own. They couldn’t enter the temple or synagogues. They couldn’t live n. , their families. Every time someone would come near them, they would have to shout, “Unclean! Unclean! to warn people to stay away from them. Their clothes were torn, and they were unkempt, as a public sign of their condition. 

Isolated, unwanted, alone. They helped each other survive, because no one else would.

Then Jesus walks by and they beg for his mercy. Jesus tells them to go show themselves to the priests and as they walk away, they are made clean. One of them, seeing that he is healed, turns back, “praising God with a loud voice.” He lays down at the feet of Jesus and thanks him. The one who thanks him, the foreigner

We’ve talked about foreigners before. Jesus, using the faith of foreigners to drive home a point to the religious elite and the Jewish people about where their faith took a wrong turn. The religious elite, comfortable with their positions of power in the temple, were more interested in maintaining the status quo than they were in following the law of love and service, mercy and compassion for the widow, the orphan and the poor. How you worshipped God became more important than your neighbor having everything they need to live in the world. So, there are these stories in scripture where Jesus is challenging the beliefs and practices of his Jewish followers, and people in power who were threatened by Jesus’s ministry by focusing on the faith of the foreigner.

But this morning, I’m taking this gospel story in another direction.

The writer Anne Lamott wrote a small, but encouraging book called Help, Thanks, Wow! We can distill our prayers down to these three words.

I’m a morning person. I usually wake up in a good mood. You know, like, what’s not to be in a good mood about. I’m alive, and let me tell you, as a teenager and young adult, it was touch and go for a while. I have everything I need. A roof over my head, a bed to sleep in, a car to drive, food in the fridge, meaning and purpose in my work, great kids, my mom is still here, good friends. So, yeah, I usually wake up in a good mood.

But I must confess, it’s been more challenging, this year, to wake up in a good mood. I’m up early, and as I toss in turn before my alarm goes off at 5:30am. I’m thinking to myself:

Ugh! Another day. I don’t think I can do another day.

No, you can. It’s going to be hard, but you can do it. Pray.

Ok. Pray. Our Father, (you know the rest.)

Then I’ll say the Serenity Prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.  

I say a couple of other prayers I have memorized. My Help! prayers, all of them. Oh, my eyes are still closed, reticent about facing the day. Help!

Anne Lamott says, “The first great prayer is Help. There’s no shame in asking. God already knows what you need.”

I’m worn out, as Anne Lamott writes, “…from our efforts to manage what is unmanageable, to fix what is unfixable, and make sense of what is senseless.” Because there is so much I can’t fix, and so much I can’t make sense of, that all I can do is surrender the whole mess to God and say, Help!

The group of lepers in the Gospel this morning is crying out for Help! They are asking Jesus to have mercy on them. You only chase after Jesus when every other weapon in your arsenal is not working. Rarely are people chasing after God when they have it all going on. When life is working for them. When the flow is happening and they are in one of those big innertubes, like on the lazy river at a Las Vegas resort, with a drink in their hand and not a care in the world.

We need only one word, Help!

Then one guy in the group, after realizing what has happened to him, he has been healed, made whole, saved from a life of poverty, isolation, despair and death, he makes himself prostrate in front of God and says Thanks!

His gratitude is for full restoration not just healing. The healing has given him the gift of being restored to his family, his community, his synagogue, his life. He becomes a contributing member of his society again. His life has meaning and purpose again. God’s grace has restored his body, mind and spirit. German Catholic priest, theologian, and mystic, Meister Eckhart, said “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is "Thank you"' it will be enough.” True gratitude humbles us before God and inspires us to live lives that reflect that gratitude in all we do.

God help me. Thank you God for helping me. Now there is space to experience the Wow! When that happens, we see miracles everywhere! For me the miracles look like finding the right apartment for a person who has been unhoused, even though it took 9 months. Wow!  Everyday I go to sleep sober and wake up sober. Wow!  Like the miracle I experience every morning when I swing legs to the side of my bed, put my two feet on the floor, turn my light on, and pick up my dog and cover her in kisses. I put a sweater over my pj’s and take our two dogs out before the sun comes up. Yesterday morning I saw stars. Wow!