If I were to stand in the pulpit and tell my pew-sitters to take the tenth leper as their model and be thankful, it would ignore how such thanks truly comes about.
That on Pentecost God’s Spirit should function through a dozen seeming inebriates should be no surprise when this same God saves through the ignominy of the cross.
Repentance comes on account of suffering, loss, failure, and death. It happens when the promise of forgiveness of sin given in Jesus’ death is proclaimed to us down-and-outers.