The call to be polite

I was reading through my bible blog from last year and came across this which I think was one of the best things I wrote.  What are you fostering in yourself?  What are you fostering in your children? What are you fostering in the guys in your house group, what are you representing to the guys in your workplace?

Luke 17:11-37

My sons have been to various kids groups where they have been read this 10 lepers story and then told that this means Jesus wants them to say thankyou when people do nice things for them.  What a load of crap.  This is just absolutely not about politeness and it angers and distresses me so greatly that anyone would feel that they should tell kids that it is.  What our children, and us, need to know is not that God wants us to sit calmly at the dinner table but that he wants us to acknowledge that all saving and healing power flows from Jesus.  Jesus is perplexed by the other 9 lepers because they have failed to see who he is.  These 9 lepers have been wasting away outside of the city, cut off from all prospects and relationships, permanently ringing a bell and saying “unclean, unclean” and watching their body decay before their eyes.  Now they can live again - they are healthy and pure, they can marry and gain employment, they can rejoice and converse with others.  How can they not see that this points to Jesus as the Healer, to Jesus as God with Us bringing hope to the hopeless and life to the lifeless?  Jesus expresses surprise not because he wanted recognition of himself but because the 9 lepers have chosen only to go 1 step along a 10 mile journey.  The 9 have received the tiniest scrap of grace and have been too thick or too self-obsessed or too distracted to come back for some more.  The greatest gift this 1 leper received was not his healing but his faith in Jesus.  That is what we should be teaching our children.  That is what we should be acknowledging ourselves.  This is what we should be screaming out to our world.