The language of thanksgiving
O give thanks to the Lord of Lords,
For his steadfast love endures forever. Psalm 136:3
Read Luke 17:11—19
I take it that the Samaritan was the only Samaritan of the ten. When they were all sick together their common illness, their common exclusion from society must have brought them together. The prejudices and ethnic and religious slurs that would normally keep them apart did not matter. They were sufferers together and outcasts together. All of them had called out to Jesus, ‘Master!’ But when they are healed, what is going on? Now they split. The other nine get on with their lives with no thought of Jesus. It is this one Samaritan who is again the outcast. Is that what does it? Something about him, anyway, causes him to fall on his face before Jesus’ feet. Do I need to be an outcast, a saved outcast, to do that?
Lord God what language can I borrow to thank you as I should? Because I am a human being, given life, given the breath I breathe this day, I owe a profound word of thanksgiving. I thank you, for you are the Lord and giver of life. Because you have called me, named me, cherished me as your own, chosen to be my God, sent your Son to do the deal, baptised me in your Spirit, I thank you. I barely have the word: thank you from my heart. Because you have touched me in special ways, healed me in particular parts of my body and my spirit, and given me special graces and my own story, what language can I use except the repeated and continual word of thanksgiving?