Each Wednesday night our confirmation class begins with a ten-minute small group discussion of the scripture passage for the coming Sunday. It teaches youth how to use the Bible for devotional reflection and preps them for the next worship theme. Two common questions emerged last Wednesday night about our passage from Luke 17, “What are lepers?” And, “What are Samaritans?” So for all of us, I’ll begin with a brief answer to both. Leprosy, or Hansen's disease, is a chronic bacterial disease of the peripheral nerves and the upper respiratory tract; skin lesions are the primary external symptom. Left untreated, leprosy can be progressive, causing permanent damage to the skin, nerves, limbs, and eyes. Since about 600 BC lepers have been quarantined although modern medical opinion asserts that it’s unnecessary. Less than 10% of the population is even susceptible to the disease and effective drug treatments have been available since the 1940’s. Even so, a few leper colonies still remain in the world and the United States has had them during many of our lifetimes in places like Carville, Louisiana and Molokai, Hawaii. Biblical leprosy, “tzaraath” in Hebrew, is a far more generic term and includes this and a wide range of other skin ailments that were considered to be visible punishment for sins that made victims physically and ritually unclean. Lepers were required to keep their distance, for they were under the strict legal proscriptions in the book of Leviticus (see Leviticus 13-14, especially 13:45-46). Lepers were ostracized from their families, their homes, their jobs and their communities. Deprived of all social contacts, they were banished to the boundaries of the village and forced to beg for their survival. Samaritans were considered similarly unclean, not because of disease, but because of their ethnic and religious affiliation. While Samaritans embraced the Jewish Torah as the center of their faith, New Testament Jews shunned them. Jews claimed the Samaritans were not descendants of the tribe of Joseph, nor was their faith authentic because their center of worship was Mt. Gerizim rather than the temple in Jerusalem. So there’s some background to the 17th chapter of Luke which explores the quest for being united in faith. In verses 1-2 faith is united in care for the vulnerable. In verses 3-4 faith is united in forgiveness. In verses 5-6, faith is united in accomplishing unlimited possibilities. In verses 7-10 faith is united in humility and here in verses 11-19, faith is united in thankfulness. In today’s passage from Luke, Jesus is on a road trip, moving between Samaria and Galilee on his way to Jerusalem. As he enters a village, 10 lepers approach him and call out from a distance, raising their voices in unison, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” (Luke 17:13). They are desperate for healing, but as unclean people they don’t dare rush up to Jesus. They know that they are supposed to keep their distance, and live outside the community. Jesus sees them and yearns to help. He gives them a rather unusual command: “Go and show yourselves to the priests” (v. 14). To us, these words sound odd, but in the time of Jesus a leper who was fortunate enough to be healed had to show himself to a priest. Only a priest could certify that a person was truly clean and able to return to the community. As the lepers make their way toward the priests, they are miraculously cleansed, and one of them turns on his heels and races back to Jesus, praising God with a loud voice. That one was ironically a Samaritan. Now the others didn’t do anything wrong, they did exactly as Jesus told them. But a grateful, thankful, attitude put that Samaritan a cut above the rest. While they all found healing in their bodies, this Samaritan found healing in his soul. And Jesus observes, “Your faith has made you well” (Luke 17:19). Our opening devotional time at Thursday’s Worship Committee meeting was shared by Marilee Stevens from our congregation. She mentioned that while recently in a waiting room she started thumbing through the October issue of Reader’s Digest and ran across an article about the importance of gratitude. With that motivation she asked each of us around the table to share one thing for which we’d give thanks that day. It felt like an uplifting way to start our meeting and when I looked up that Reader’s Digest article, I discovered some reasons why… The article is titled, “The New Science of Thank You” with the subtitle, “The two most important words you’ll say today can change your life, and research is proving it”. It was written by Deborah Norville and includes excerpts from her book, Thank You Power: Making the Science of Gratitude Work for You. Norville describes a study by Drs. Robert Emmons of the University of California, Davis and Michael McCullough of the University of Miami. They took three groups of volunteers and randomly assigned them to focus on one of three things for a time each week: hassles, things for which they were grateful, and ordinary life events. The first group concentrated on everything that went wrong or was irritating to them, such as “the jerk who cut me off on the highway.” The second group homed in on situations they felt enhanced their lives, as in “My boyfriend is so kind and caring—I’m lucky to have him.” And the third group recalled factual everyday events, as in “I went shoe shopping.” The results: The people who focused on gratitude were just flat-out happier. They saw their lives in favorable terms. They reported fewer negative physical symptoms such as headaches or colds, and they were active in ways that were good for them. They spent almost an hour and a half more per week exercising than those who focused on hassles. Plain and simple, those who were grateful had a higher quality of life. Others around them recognized that too. “They noticed that these people had more joy, more energy. They could see that they were becoming more optimistic,” says Emmons. The grateful group “even seemed to be perceived as more helpful toward others, going out on a limb to help people.” Emmons was surprised by this result. “This is not just something that makes people happy, like a positive-thinking/optimism kind of thing. A feeling of gratitude really gets people to do something, to become more pro-social, more compassionate.” This did not happen in either of the other two groups. Emmons and McCullough took their study, published in 2003, one step further. Rather than focus on hassles or blessings on just a weekly basis, they rounded up college students to do it every day. The researchers asked for specific personal details as well: how many alcoholic drinks the volunteers had, how many aspirin or other pain relievers they took, the quantity and quality of their sleep. They also asked volunteers to compare themselves with others: Are you better or worse off? The study found that the people who were consciously grateful: felt better about their lives; were more optimistic, energetic, enthusiastic, determined, interested, joyful; exercised more; had fewer illnesses; got more sleep and were more likely to have helped someone else. Related studies have found other benefits as well, all of which could arguably be linked to a grateful mind-set: clearer thinking, better resilience during tough times, higher immune response, less likelihood of being plagued by stress, longer lives, closer family ties, deeper faith. Perhaps this is part of the healing that the thankful leper experienced in our gospel reading for today. And isn’t it fitting for us that this model of gratitude and thankfulness was a Samaritan! We Good Samaritans have a marvelous opportunity to say thank you; to demonstrate our gratitude this fall. In the last couple days you should have received this mailing about our United in Faith, Fellowship and Future Stewardship and Capital Campaign. Please call the church office if you haven’t received one by midweek and take time to read this information. We are embarking together on a single fund appeal for two important purposes: the support of our annual operating budget for 2008 and three-year pledges to address the balance of our debt on our wonderful building program completed one year ago. The message is simple: a 5% increase in operating fund pledges will sustain and grow our ministries in the coming year. Capital Campaign pledges of $1.8 million over three years – equal to what was committed prior to construction will fund mortgage payments for another four years, but anything over and above that will reduce principle and provide significant interest savings. I’ve been absolutely amazed at the response to date. Before the congregation has even been approached, leadership pledges have been coming in almost double over their pledges in our first campaign. If this happened across the board, we’d pay off all our debt within the next four years and save about $1.6 million in future interest payments! Most of us are not lepers on our last leg, but we still are going to benefit from counting our blessings and responding out of gratitude. We’ll find ourselves even healthier in body, mind and spirit. We’ll feel better about our lives, more optimistic about our prospects and more helpful toward people around us. Jesus proclaimed it, and modern research confirms it — uniting in faith can make us well!