Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text is the Holy Gospel reading which has already been read.

Dear friends in Christ, there were ten lepers - nine natives of Galilee who were Jews - and one foreigner, a Samaritan. But this social and religious distinction wasn't so important to them, because all ten lived at the bottom of society. With nowhere else to turn, shunned by the mainstream, they slowly died the torturous death that was leprosy. Doctors couldn't cure it. There weren't painkillers to ease its oppression. It was a dreadful existence. Lepers were the dregs of humanity; they lived in exile even when they weren't exiled from their hometowns.

Then Jesus came to their village. They had heard about this Man. News had spread throughout Galilee and into Samaria. One of the first people Jesus healed during His ministry was a leper. He touched the man, and the leprosy was cleansed. Now this same Jesus was in a certain village on the Galilee-Samaria border, and the lepers there thought that perhaps He would heal ten more lepers.

They stood at a distance. One authority of the time mandated a distance of fifty yards between a leper and a healthy person. Half a football field away, Jesus heard their desperate plea as they cried with one voice, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" He heard them because that's what Jesus does: He listens to cries for mercy. That they were lepers mattered not. Class distinctions are irrelevant to Jesus. He disregarded national and religious barriers, too, because He came to call all to repentance, not just some.

Jesus answered their cry for mercy, saying, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." In other words, Jesus was telling them that these ten lepers would be healed by the time they got to the priests at the Temple. The Old Testament Levitical code required people who were healed of skin diseases to go show themselves to the priest for ceremonial cleansing. You couldn't be spiritually cleansed unless you were physically cleansed.

So the ten men took Jesus at His word, and not far down the road, a miracle happened. They were washed clean of all leprosy, freed from their dreadful disease. Can you imagine their excitement from the lifting of this death sentence? Can you imagine returning to your friends and family after years of exile? They must have been bubbling over with joy. Picture a bunch of football players jumping up and down, giving high fives, after pulling out a close victory.

Amidst their rejoicing, perhaps they remembered, "What was it Jesus told us to do? Oh, that's right - go show ourselves to the priest. Well, we'd better go do it!" So off they scurried to their ceremonial cleansing. At the temple they would make the appointed sacrifices to God for spiritual cleansing. At the temple they would give thanks to God for this gift of healing. But one fellow turned away from the group and went back: the Samaritan, the foreigner.

The Samaritan's return had nothing to do with his social status. The newly cleansed Jewish lepers didn't exclude him or oppress him. He wasn't afraid that he wouldn't be accepted in Jerusalem. Rather, he saw something that the other nine didn't see. His eyes had been opened so that he could see past the healing and look to the Healer. The foreigner, unlike the Jews, saw that Jesus is the Savior God. No longer would God dwell behind the veil in the Temple; now He dwelled in the flesh and blood Man, Jesus Christ. The veil over the foreigner's eyes had been removed, the light of faith had come on, while the minds of the other nine lepers were still dull and blind since they could not see that the Kingdom of God was at hand when Jesus healed them.

Only the foreigner saw the point of the healing miracle; that is, the miracle occurred "to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor". The miracles of Jesus served the purpose of showing that the Messiah had finally come, that God had arrived to redeem His people. The foreigner realized that the time for going to the Temple to see the priests was coming to a rapid end. Instead of going along with the masses, he hurried to throw himself before the true High Priest, Jesus. Where did the foreigner go to give thanks to God and praise of God? Not to the temple, but the feet of Jesus, God in the flesh.

This Gospel reading is the traditional one for Thanksgiving Day. Many preachers expound this text by encouraging Christians to be more thankful and to praise God for all their blessings. Of course. Of course you should be thankful to God. You didn't bring anything into this life and you're not taking anything out. If you have anything in this life, it is because God has given it to you. Of course you should be thankful to Him. You should be on your knees praying every hour for God's goodness to you. You should constantly be praising the Lord's goodness to your friends and family. You should be in church every Sunday giving thanks, kneeling before the flesh and blood Jesus as He comes to meet you hear. Of course, you should pray, praise, and give thanks to the Lord-otherwise you're an ingrate, taking for granted God's blessings. You don't even need this story to know that you should be grateful. So it would be a superficial reading of this story about the ten lepers to conclude that it is only about being thankful.

So what is the main point? What should we learn from it? The main point of this story is to show us where we should direct our thanksgiving, praise, and above all, our faith. Like the faithful foreigner, we must learn that God is not remote and distant, nor is He at the Jerusalem Temple, but He is near us, in flesh and blood of Jesus, the Word made flesh who dwelt and still dwells among us. All our faith, prayer, praise, and thanks are given to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who has come down to save us from an affliction far greater than leprosy; He came to suffer and die for our sins, and rise again in order to redeem us from eternal death. And as Jesus shows in the story, our faith in Jesus for eternal life is far more important than any sort of physical healing or blessing we might receive, as He said to the Samaritan, "Rise and go your way; your faith has saved you."

When the lepers had cried out, "Jesus, have mercy on us!" they were asking only for temporal healing. They just wanted to get better; to feel better, to have their old lives back. Jesus answered their request with much more. Jesus never stops at mere temporal blessings. The Lord always wants to give more - no, not just more, all. St. Paul wrote, "He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all-how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?". God wants to draw people to Jesus so that they might receive faith. Jesus desires not the death of a sinner but his salvation. He wanted to give the lepers more than just a fresh start at life. He wanted to give them eternal life.

We know this from the concluding words of Jesus to the foreigner. The physical healing had already taken place on the way to see the priests. Jesus now tells the foreigner that he has saving faith. "Rise, and go your way; your faith has saved you." The words and works of Jesus had created in this man a living faith, drawing him back to Jesus and allowing him to recognize Jesus as his salvation from not just leprosy, but from sin, death, and hell.

And the reason this faith of the foreigner is a foreign faith is that it is not logical or predictable that we should look for God in the flesh and blood of a Man; that is what makes the Christian faith so disgusting to Jews and Muslims alike-they cannot conceive of a God who would come down here into the flesh and dirty Himself with day to day human affairs, with flesh and blood living. They prefer to think of God as transcendent, remote, untouchable. But the God of Israel was the One who dwelled with His people in the Temple, but then came to dwell with them and us in the Temple of His body in the incarnation. And that Temple was sacrificed on the cross for the sin of the world, which is again the last thing you would expect from the God of the universe-what business does He have dying for His sinful, rebellious creatures? But that is precisely why our faith is a foreign one-it is foreign to our usual ways of thinking about God. He comes down not to give us what we deserve, but to give us what He earns for us on the cross-forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and salvation. And the faithful foreigner was blessed by the Holy Spirit with the gift of this foreign faith. As sinners, our native soil is corrupted by unbelief and rejection of God; but when the Holy Spirit steps in and shows us Jesus our Savior, He creates saving faith in us, a foreign faith because it comes to us from outside ourselves.

What of the other nine lepers? Although they were Jews, they had removed themselves from the true Israel by failing to see God in the flesh and blood of Jesus. They did not realize that sacrifices would no longer be made at the Temple because the Christ would be sacrificed for the sins of the world. They viewed being healed of leprosy as an end in itself. They could not see past this temporal blessing given by Jesus to the eternal blessing found in Jesus. Only the foreigner had received true healing from the hand of Jesus.

What of you, O Christian? Are you a native or foreign-born? Rejoice! You are the Samaritan - the foreigner. You are a naturalized citizen in the Kingdom of God. God in Christ set out to make for Himself a people where there was no people. You once were foreign born, estranged from the Father on account of your sin. Born spiritually blind, you could not seek salvation on our own. Yet He has given you a faith where there was no faith, a robe of righteousness where there was only leprous filth. Your faith is foreign because it comes from outside of you. It is all a gift, created by the Spirit in Baptism which brought you faith and now saves you.

You have the eyes of the foreigner. You see past the temporal blessings you have received from the Lord and cling to the One who blesses you with salvation. The world seeks to find God in health, wealth, and miraculous healings, but you know that God is found in the suffering, bleeding Christ who gave Himself up for you on the cross. The One True God, the Suffering Servant, does not appear flashy or impressive in the eyes of the world. Yet your eyes of faith see that Christ is your Creator and Redeemer who has you written in the palms of His nail-scarred hands.

Even though often we are ungrateful and unfaithful like the nine lepers who did not return, our generous God continues to shower forgiveness upon us. How foolish and wasteful the Lord is! Ingratitude dries up the milk of human kindness, but the wholesome milk of the divine Word remains unharmed by our failure to give thanks. The Lord continues to seek that one lost sheep out of ninety-nine and that one lost coin out of ten.

Jesus asked the Samaritan with sadness, "Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine?" He earnestly desires that all come to true knowledge of Him. He wants all to return to Him and receive the gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation that are found at His feet, here in His Church. Yet He does not compel or overpower us with forced allegiance. That's not His way. He lets Himself be rejected. If people want to despise His goodness in preaching, teaching, Absolution, Baptism, and the Lord's Supper, then Jesus does let them go their way; He will let them go to hell if that's what they really want. Still, Jesus keeps on giving, not because of who we are and what we do, but because of who He is. He gives because it is His nature to do so. He has promised to give us all good things. He gave Himself into death for our sins. He keeps on giving, for He came not to be served but to serve.

The total self self-giving of Jesus is foreign to our usual way of thinking. We feel more comfortable in our native land, living under the Law. When we give gifts, we expect thanksgiving from others, or even return favors for gifts we give. Yet the heart of the Gospel is that Christ was given for us and Christ gives Himself to us. He hears our cries for mercy and answers them with Himself. And so we joyfully throw ourselves at His feet and receive His mercy, as He absolves us of all our sins, and as we kneel before the Lord Jesus at this altar, where God is not remote and far away, but near us in His true body and blood, under the bread and wine. He delivers to us right here in the Church that healing we need the most: the forgiveness of all of our sins, eternal life, and salvation. And to all who believe His Words this morning, Jesus says, "Rise and go your way. Your faith has saved you." In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.