Wishing all in Canada a wonderful Thanksgiving, and all of you throughout the world a wonderful day.
Thanksgiving
Sunday Reflection – Thanksgiving Sunday, October 12, 2025
Giving thanks
Luke 17 11 On his way to Jerusalem, Jesus went along the border between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he was going into a village, ten men with leprosy came toward him. They stood at a distance 13 and shouted, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!”
14 Jesus looked at them and said, “Go show yourselves to the priests.”
On their way they were healed. 15 When one of them discovered that he was healed, he came back, shouting praises to God. 16 He bowed down at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. The man was from the country of Samaria.
17 Jesus asked, “Weren’t ten men healed? Where are the other nine? 18 Why was this foreigner the only one who came back to thank God?” 19 Then Jesus told the man, “You may get up and go. Your faith has made you well.”
Kids Korner: Saying ‘Thank you’ (October 12th)
Read Luke 17:11-19 with your family.
This is the story of ten people being made healthy, but only one of the ten returning to tell Jesus “thank you”.
Are we supposed to believe only one of them was grateful to Jesus for making them well? I do not think so. But I do think only one of them stopped for a minute and realized he forgot to do the gracious thing of giving thanks.
Every child has been reminded to say “thank you”. But no one reminds adults. Adults have to remember on their own. This man did.
Just because people did not say thank you does not mean they did not feel it, but it was still something Jesus wanted to hear.
Jesus told the man his faith had made him well. The faith of the other nine made them well also, but they never got to have the experience of Jesus telling them that was what happened, because they were too focused on something else.
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Thanksgiving
This week we celebrated Thanksgiving in Canada. It’s not a day covered in myths of the past, it’s just a simple time of families and friends gathering together to appreciate the good things in life and the food from the harvest. It’s a celebration I look forward to every year.
This year I had the opportunity to preach at a church I haven’t visited in over a year and a half, and the welcome was overwhelmingly kind. I spoke to them about thanksgiving as an act of praise rather than a social contract that observed the niceties of appreciation.
Far too often we trip over that social contract. The expectation that we will receive some kind of acknowledgement for anything we do, from giving money and time to holding doors open. We have been trained up to expect a passing word of gratitude for simple things and and more complex offering of thanks for bigger things. If those thanks are not automatically given, we are put out, perhaps even insulted.
But why?
If we were only doing it to receive thanks, then why do it in the first place?
In the telling of Jesus healing the ten men with leprosy, Jesus recognized the man who returned to praise God, not for giving thanks to Jesus himself. It was that act of praise that mattered. Who knows why the other nine didn’t do it. Perhaps they were overwhelmed with being reunited with their families and that thanks came later, or in our expectations of the day, perhaps they ‘paid it forward’.
Jesus didn’t demand his healing back, he just acknowledged to the crowd who gathered that praising God was part of being made whole.
Perhaps it’s time to worry less about the social contract around the words “Thank you”, and think more of giving and receiving in terms of gratitude and praise to God.
We give because God first gave to us without exception or expectation. It is now our turn to have that attitude. Offering gratitude to God simply completes the circle.
The Barefoot Evangelist 