By now, no doubt all of us have heard about the corona virus that is spreading around the world. Some are calling it a pandemic. It has already affected many thousands of people, and many have died. People are doing all kinds of things to deal with this outbreak.

Fortunately, for most people, the corona virus poses little serious threat. Even if you get it, if you are in relatively good health, it will not be fatal.

2000 years ago, the threat was not the corona virus; it was leprosy. And it was not a plague that appeared from time to time; it was a constant in that culture. If you contracted that disease, your life became a long, drawn-out process of pain, leading ultimately to death.

In today’s passage, we have the account of Jesus healing ten lepers. To heal one leper would have been a great miracle. To heal ten of them all at once, simply by giving a command, is a monumental display of divine power. So the passage reveals Jesus as God in the flesh; only God has the power to heal people like this.

This is also one of the classic NT passages on the importance of thanksgiving. Jesus commends the one leper for coming back to return thanks and wonders why the others failed to express their gratitude. The obvious lesson for us is that we should follow the example of the leper who stopped to say thank you. We should always remember to express our gratitude to God and to others.

Today I want us to consider what the story of the Ten Lepers has to tell us about gratitude.