One of them, when he saw he was healed,
came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and
thanked him—and he was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed?
Where are the other nine?” Luke
17:11-19.
Several months after Joy and I were
first married, we went to a park in the west end of Toronto. The swimming hole
was just a widening of the river and there had been a heavy rain the night
before so it was pretty murky. As she and I walked into the water, we noticed a
few bubbles coming up to our right. We walked on in and swam for five or at the
most ten minutes.
We came back out and Joy’s foot touched
something. “There’s a body down there,
there’s somebody down there!”, she shouted. So I reached down right to the
bottom of the river—it was about three feet deep—and pulled out a seven or
eight year old boy. I lifted him up and shouted for the lifeguard. The two
young lifeguards who were on duty went to pieces, but the master lifeguard came,
got the child over his shoulder and drained the water out of his stomach and
his lungs; the ambulance came and they took care of him; they took my name and
address and phone number. And as the ambulance left they said over the loud
speaker that the little boy would be okay.
The next morning we called the hospital
and couldn’t get any information. We tried to find something of the story, but
nothing—absolutely nothing. So in the end, we know how Jesus felt—we saved that
boy—he was as good as dead—we saved his life—nobody ever thanked us, we never
even found out any more of the story.
That takes me back to this story of
Jesus and the lepers. I was thinking that in the Breaking of Bread, we’ve done
what Jesus wanted us to do. He said, “Do this in remembrance of Me.” And in doing
this, we return to give Him thanks.
There were ten lepers, and if we look
around at a typical Lord’s Supper there are not huge numbers. Are there nine
more out there somewhere, who have never come and given Him thanks? I believe
there are.
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