12 October 2025. A life of Gratitude 2 Kings 5: Luke 17:

There is something about human beings that makes us feel that we – and others – need to deserve the good things we have. There’s a certain amount of pride in feeling that we have what we have because we have worked hard, studied hard, made wise choices, invested our time or money well; because we are good people who contribute to society, paid our taxes and so on. Pride in feeling that, to a large extent, we have ourselves to thank for where we are today.

It can be easy to think the same way about God. To think that if we work hard enough, we can win God’s favour, earn God’s blessing. To feel that bring a good Christian involves a checklist of things that must be done before we can stand before God with any hope of acceptance or love. Because that’s such a huge gift, then surely, we must have to do something to deserve it.

So, the story of Naaman may resonate with many of us. He is the commander of the king’s army, and he develops leprosy. He fears that he is beyond help, but then an Israelite slave in his household says that Elisha would heal Naaman. So, the King of Aram writes a letter to the King of Israel, asking him to cure Naaman, and sends it along with Naaman and a lot of treasure.

Naaman goes to Elisha, who sends a message: ‘Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.’ Naaman is furious that he hasn’t been given a grand welcome or an elaborate cure. Elisha’s message is just too unimpressive, too easy. Naaman’s sense of entitlement means he is not prepared to accept this uncomplicated, life-changing invitation – if he doesn’t have to pay for it or work for it, how can it be of value?

But his servants, who would have understood what humility is about, persuade him to see sense. They say, ‘If the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, “Wash and be clean”? And so, he does it, and he is healed, and he is humbled, saying, ‘Now I know there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.’ It was not Naaman’s power that healed him, but God’s power.

We approach the same scenario from the opposite end of the spectrum of entitlement in our Gospel reading. There are ten lepers. Without Naaman’s kind of power and influence. They haven’t been able to hold a place in society, and they seem to have formed a kind of wandering band of outcasts on the edges of the village. When they ask Jesus for mercy, and he tells them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests’, they don’t worry that it’s too easy, they go straight away. They display no sense of entitlement, or of deserving anything, they have no letter from the king or treasures to offer. They simply ask and accept what they are given.

But one of them is the lowest of the low, he is the least deserving of all. He is not only a leper but a Samaritan. And he displays not only humility but gratitude. He is the only one to come back and thank Jesus for healing him.

We are properly good at saying thank you – ours is a society that praises good manners. But could there be some things that we don’t say thank for, because we feel entitled to them? Things we feel that we have earned? Maybe things we may say thank you for, but don’t feel true gratitude for because we feel that they are rightly ours?

The gratitude of the Samaritan leper is profound because he completely understands that he doesn’t deserve the gift he has been given. If we approach God with a feeling that we deserve something because we are good people and we come to church and take our turn on the rotas and put money in the collection plate, are we truly grateful for what we receive from God?

We can’t work to earn God’s mercy and love. But that doesn’t mean being a Christian isn’t hard work. Some of us have to take on the hard work of freeing ourselves from our sense of entitlement, from pride in our achievements, from our feeling of deserving something from God. It takes real humility to acknowledge that we are who and what and where we are because of God’s grace, not our endeavours. But when we do, we can more fully understand the abundance of God’s gift and live a life of true gratitude.

Amen.