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Evening Prayer/Bible Study, 7 pm

Reaching out to the least, the lonely, and the lost

Holy Communion Service at Friendship South

2nd and 4th Sundays, 2:30 pm

Thoughts from the Lectionary: The Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity

From the Gospel Lesson: St. Luke 17:11-19

Vss, 15+16 15 And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, 16 And fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks: and he was a Samaritan.

Here we see a group of lepers healed by Jesus. They see Him from a distance (as all lepers were required to keep away from others) and call out to Him for mercy. He tells them to go show themselves to the priest which was an act required of one who had been healed of the affliction. We can note however that He at this point had not touched them nor had He even declared that He would heal them, He simply tells them to go to the priest. In obedience to His order the lepers go on their way to the priest and as they travel they are healed of their disease. Noticing his healing one of the company, a Samaritan, returns to give thanks to Christ and God. Jesus remarks that this one man alone had returned to give thanks and notes that he is a foreigner.

How often we are as the nine that did not return to give thanks. They continued on their way and likely received leave from the priest to rejoin society and no longer be outcast. We daily receive mercies from the Hand of God and take them for granted. Still, the nine were, as far as we know, Jews. They were members of the religious people around them and beneficiaries of the covenant they shared with them. The Samaritan was a foreigner and, leper or no, and outcast from that covenant people. It is likely the others only grouped together with him because they all shared the same affliction of leprosy. Yet, once healed this man recognized and runs back to his healer the Great High Priest giving praise to God. It was not the community around him, or the customs of religion that had saved him but placing his faith in Christ.

We all come to Christ like this Samaritan. Soiled and damaged by the “leprosy” of our sin we are foreigners to the Kingdom and outcasts from the Covenant People of God. But just as Christ healed this man of faith, though a Samaritan and outcast, He can save and heal all who by the saving grace of God place their faith in Him. Let us rejoice and give thanks to Christ for the faith that makes us whole.

Blessings,

Fr. Duane+