Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost October 12, 2025

Prayer of the Day Almighty and most merciful God, your bountiful goodness fills all creation. Keep us safe from all that may hurt us, that, whole and well in body and spirit, we may with grateful hearts accomplish all that you would have us do, through Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Lord. Amen.

Gospel: Luke 17:11-19 11 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he entered a village, ten men with a skin disease approached him. Keeping their distance, 13 they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” 14 When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. 15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. 16 He prostrated himself at Jesus’s feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. 17 Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? So where are the other nine? 18 Did none of them return to give glory to God except this foreigner?” 19 Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.

Reflections: ” If Jesus’ words never strike me as strange, if Jesus’ words never cause me some sense of unrest, if Jesus’ words never trouble me, then I can be sure of one thing: I can be sure that I am missing something important. Professor Eric Baretto, Princeton Theological Seminary, NJ, US

True as these words are for me, I am merely repeating a more eloquent statement of my experience offered by Professor Eric Baretto from Princeton Seminary in the U.S. Words that churn up things for us include…

a region between, as in the margins or a border land

lepers—-even St. Francis was creeped out by leprosy before his spiritual awakening

Samaritan—-

and finally, Did none of them return to give glory to God except this foreigner?”

We find Jesus walking among people exiled because of a skin condition thought to be contagious—they have been deported to a border place neither here nor there and consigned to a life belonging nowhere. In this land for nobody, God shows up and heals everyone—including a Samaritan which means this one is doubly outcast. And Jesus marvels at his faith even calling him a foreigner. Takes one to know one.

Jesus’ history was as a refugee fleeing Herod’s infanticide. Jesus’ ancestral tradition harks to prophets reminding the returned exiles to extend hospitality to those now displaced. Jesus’s heritage to the time of Moses insists we remember our own wilderness wandering and displacement and that we exercise empathy toward the outsider.

On a Thanksgiving weekend, if you’re looking for things to be thankful for, consider rejoicing that God shows up in the no-where places and brings healing to those living on the margins. Rejoice that God’s table, as Jesus demonstrates in this nowhere land is one that extends both in size and in breadth of those invited to it.

If you’re looking for a grateful response, consider committing what some purported Christians denounce as sinful; lean into empathy for those who are displaced, shut out or marginalized for any reason. Yes, exercise that sinful empathy and if I might riff on Luther’s words, when you do, ‘sin boldly’ and believe more boldly still in God’s scandalous forays into the margins where God heals and embraces indiscriminately and lavishly. Thanks be to God.