190922 Sermon on Luke 17:11-19 (Trinity 14), September 22, 2019 Leprosy was a terrible disease not just because of what it did to the body, but also what it did to a person socially. If anyone had leprosy they were considered unclean. They were shunted off to a colony by themselves. Therefore, there wasn’t hardly a single aspect of their life that was left untouched.In our Gospel reading Jesus comes upon practically a crowd of lepers. Ten men were desperately calling out to Jesus for help. Jesus tells them to go show themselves to the priest. The reason why Jesus says this is because this was part of the Law God gave to Moses. Leprosy made the person ceremonially unclean. They couldn’t be readmitted to society until a priest had looked them over and sacrifice was made. When Jesus tells them to go to the priest it is so that they could be checked over and return to their former lives.All ten lepers believed what Jesus said. They began to make their way to the priest. Accordingly they were healed by Jesus’s almighty power. Their situation had previously looked quite hopeless. Now they could return to the lives that they had known and loved. How happy they must have been as they looked forward to reunions and celebrations! In a sense they had been lost to their families, but now they were found. They had been essentially dead to all who loved them, now they were alive.But one of these men was not like the others. He did not go home to celebrate with family and friends. He turned back to Jesus. St. Luke says that he glorified God with a loud voice. When he came to Jesus, he fell on his face at Jesus’s feet, thanking him. And he was a Samaritan. Samaritans were not from the right church. They combined some biblical truths with a whole bunch of pagan notions. The Jews looked down on them, and at least partly, for good reason, because they were in error about many things. In spite of this, however, there the man was at Jesus’s feet on his face.Have you ever been on your face at Jesus’s feet? To some this might seem like groveling. You wouldn’t find Frank Sinatra in such a pose. He lived life his own way, and that meant that he didn’t kneel, much less fall on his face. To others who aren’t so godless this might just seem weird. “That’s not the way we thank and praise God in church. We sit and stand and fold our hands.” Still others will say, “Well, this is what’s in the Bible, so that’s how we should give thanks.” Henceforth they will lie down in church with their faces in the carpet during the Divine Service.All of these ways of looking at it, however, are only external. The attention is on the appearance. The appearance is not so important as what is going on internally. The Samaritan is filled with thankfulness. It’s bursting within him. What he does outwardly is just how the thankfulness happened to be expressed. He was not putting on a show. He didn’t do it to gain Jesus’s approval or to be seen as more thankful than others. His motives were genuine. Therefore, all his actions were natural and a joy for him and for everybody who was saw it.Jesus asks about the other nine. Where were they? Weren’t they happy? Weren’t they thankful? There’s no reason to think that they weren’t happy and thankful in a sense. But their hearts were not lifted up to the Lord. Their hearts remained firmly planted on the earth. They were glad to see their families and have their lives get back to normal. They were glad to be sleeping in their own beds and to take up those projects that they had to abandon when they got leprosy. Jesus says in another place, “Where you treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Everybody treasures something, or even many things. Whatever those things might be, that is where the happiness and thankfulness is focused. The Samaritan’s treasure was in the God of Israel and his Son, our dear Lord Jesus Christ. Since that is where his treasure is, that is where his heart is also.Where our heart is, where our happiness and than