Reflection 12th October 2025  

Gratitude and ingratitude 

“When We Forget to Say Thank You” 

Luke 17:11–19 – The Ten Lepers and the One Who Returned 

By Rev Dr Fei Taule’ale’ausumai 

Have you ever done something kind for someone — maybe you gave them a ride, cooked them a meal, or lent them something valuable — and they forgot to say thank you? It stings a little, doesn’t it? You tell yourself, “It’s okay, I didn’t do it for the thanks,” but still, something in you notices.  If I was given $1 for all the times I was not thanked for things Ive done for others I’d be a very rich person.  But the beautiful thing about grace and accepting that it’s not necessarily an act of discrimination, maliciousness, but more perhaps ignorance or clumsiness.  Sometimes forgetting to give thanks can  come back to bite you when you least expect it.  And sometimes fate presents you with an opportunity to make amends discretely without making a scene.  Gratitude has a way of completing the circle of grace. 

I’m sure many of us here can site one or two examples in our own lives where ingratitude became the straw that broke the camels back.  How much more will I put up with this thanklessness?  But the reality  is that dwelling on the hurt of being forgotten or left out can do more harm and cause more brokenness.  Is it worth it?   

This Sunday’s gospel story is all about — about gratitude, about healing, and about what it really means to be made whole. It’s one of those deceptively simple stories that carries deep spiritual truth, not only for the first followers of Jesus, but for us today — people living in a world often too busy or too entitled to pause and say, “Thank you.” 

Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem — the gospel writer tells us he’s travelling through the borderland between Samaria and Galilee. That border is important. It’s a place of mixed identities, outsiders, and crossing over. It’s where social rules blur and boundaries are tested. 

At the edge of a village, Jesus encounters ten people with leprosy. In that time, leprosy meant more than physical disease. It meant exclusion — social and religious banishment. Lepers lived apart from everyone else. They had to shout “Unclean!” when others approached. Their disease didn’t just scar their bodies; it severed their belonging. 

So when these ten cry out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us,” they aren’t only asking for their skin to be healed. They’re pleading for their lives to be restored — their relationships, their dignity, their chance to be seen as human again. 

Jesus doesn’t touch them. He doesn’t even speak a healing word. Instead, he gives them an instruction: “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” 

That’s what you were supposed to do under Jewish law — priests could certify a person as clean so they could rejoin the community. It’s an act of faith for the lepers to go while they’re still sick. But they go. And as they walk, the text says, “they were made clean.” 

Notice the subtle grace here: healing happens as they go.
Sometimes God’s mercy meets us not in the safety of certainty, but in the movement of faith. They step forward, still broken, still scarred, still uncertain — and on the way, wholeness begins to unfold. 

And then comes the twist in the story. Ten are healed, but only one turns back. He praises God in a loud voice, throws himself at Jesus’ feet, and gives thanks. 

And Luke makes sure we don’t miss who this one is: “And he was a Samaritan.” 

This is the outsider of outsiders. The wrong ethnicity, the wrong religion, the one despised by both Jews and Romans alike. Yet he’s the one who returns. 

Jesus asks, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” 

Then Jesus says to him, “Get up and go; your faith has made you well.” 

In Greek, that phrase “made you well” is sozo, which doesn’t just mean “healed.” It means saved, restored, made whole. 

The nine experienced physical healing. But the Samaritan experienced something deeper — the kind of wholeness that only gratitude can bring. 

Healing restored his body.
Gratitude restored his soul. 

If we read this text through a progressive lens, we see a radical subversion of religious hierarchy. The nine follow the rules. They do exactly what the Torah requires — they go to the priests, the official gatekeepers of holiness. But the Samaritan turns toward relationship, not ritual. He returns to the source of grace — to Jesus himself. 

The story tells us something revolutionary: Gratitude is greater than ritual. Relationship is greater than religion. 

The Samaritan sees that grace is not confined to the temple, nor to those who are deemed pure or worthy. Grace flows freely — especially in the borderlands, among those who have been told they don’t belong. 

Throughout Luke’s Gospel, faith keeps showing up where it’s least expected — in a Roman centurion, in a bleeding woman, in a tax collector, and now in a Samaritan leper. 

Those on the margins seem to understand Jesus better than those at the centre of power. The insiders often miss the miracle right in front of them because they’re too caught up in preserving their own order, their own entitlement. 

The Samaritan, however, is free — free to see, free to love, free to give thanks. His gratitude becomes an act of spiritual liberation. 

This story invites us to see gratitude not as a polite nicety, but as a transformative practice. Gratitude changes how we see ourselves, others, and God. 

When we live with gratitude: 

• We stop seeing blessings as entitlements. 

• We stop measuring our worth by what we have. 

• We begin to see grace in ordinary places — in the kindness of strangers, in the rhythm of the ocean, in the breath that sustains us. 

In a world driven by scarcity and competition, gratitude becomes a countercultural act. It shifts us from “I deserve” to “I receive.”
It teaches us that mercy, not merit, is the heartbeat of divine love. 

It’s tempting to judge the nine who didn’t return. But maybe we are often among them. We get caught up in the rush of daily life — moving from one task to the next, forgetting to pause and notice where grace has touched us. 

We’re healed in so many ways — from grief, from fear, from self-doubt — yet we rarely stop to return, to give thanks. 

Perhaps this story is not about condemning the nine but about awakening us to the joy of being the one.
The one who stops.
The one who turns back.
The one who recognizes the holy in the midst of ordinary life. 

We see this story re-lived in countless small ways: 

• The refugee who finds safety and still gives thanks despite loss. 

• The patient who survives illness and volunteers to support others. 

• The community that rebuilds after disaster and celebrates not what was lost, but what endures — love, compassion, solidarity. 

Each act of gratitude is an act of resistance against despair.
It says, “I will not let pain define me. I will return and give thanks.” 

Jesus still walks the borderlands — between privilege and poverty, belonging and exclusion, health and sickness. And the lepers still cry out for mercy — in hospital wards, on the streets, in refugee camps, in lonely homes. 

If we are to follow Jesus, we must also walk into those borderlands — not to judge, but to heal; not to preach, but to listen; not to pity, but to share in the gratitude of those who, despite everything, still say, “Thank you, God.” 

Gratitude that springs from suffering is often the most honest kind. It’s the gratitude that knows what it means to lose and to find again. 

So, where do we need to return this week?
Who do we need to thank?
Where has grace touched our lives, and we forgot to notice? 

Maybe it’s time to write that note, make that call, or whisper that prayer.
Maybe it’s time to return — not to the temple, not to the institution, but to the heart of God — and simply say, “Thank you.” 

Because gratitude doesn’t just change our mood; it transforms our life.
It opens the door to wholeness — to sozo — to being made well in body, mind, and spirit. 

Ten were healed, but only one was transformed.
Ten received mercy, but only one discovered grace.
Ten walked away, but only one returned —
and in his return, he found his salvation. 

So may we be the ones who return.
May we be the ones who remember to give thanks.
May our gratitude draw us back to the heart of Christ —
where all are healed, all are welcomed, all are made whole. 

Amen. 

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