Sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity
“And one…turned back…giving him thanks”
In returning and giving thanks we are made whole. Such is salvation. It is also our freedom. The burden of thanksgiving, we might say, is precisely our freedom. It is our freedom in Christ.
The giving of thanks cannot be coerced. In the story of the ten lepers, one, and only one, as Luke is at pains to remind us, “returned to give thanks”. All were healed but only the one who returned and gave thanks is said to be made whole. His returning is a free act by which he signals that he is more than just the recipient of an healing act. He acknowledges the God who heals and restores, the God who has mercy and saves. But even more, his action brings him into the presence of God.
His returning and giving thanks puts him in the presence of Christ in his love for the Father in the bond of the Holy Spirit. Thus he enters into the radical meaning of his healing. Its radical meaning is that our ultimate good for both soul and body is found in the presence of Christ in his will for us.