“There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger”
He is named, by Jesus, as “this stranger,” the one who is the other, the foreigner, literally, the alien. An outsider, too, we might say, to capture all of the inflections of meaning in this text and story. Luke sheds further light on “this stranger” in the simple phrase “and he was a Samaritan.” He was in the company of nine others sharing with them a further identity of exclusion; they were ten men that were lepers – the rejects and outcasts of ancient society. And on top of that, a Samaritan, the outcasts of the Jewish culture.
What stands out in the story is that “this stranger” is the one who gives thanks and “this stranger” is the one who is not only healed, like the other nine, but more importantly is made whole. Salvation, it seems, is more than just the healing of our physical infirmities.
This is a powerful story about the power and truth and the beauty of a profoundly spiritual activity, the act of giving thanks. A thanksgiving story, it appears in our liturgy in the late summer and early fall as well as being appointed for the Gospel for Thanksgiving Day, meaning our national day of Thanksgiving which in Canada is coincident with the older traditions of Harvest Thanksgiving and often eclipsed by them. It illustrates profoundly, I think, the spiritual nature of all our thanksgivings.
The giving of thanks is a free act, perhaps, the freest act that we can do. And yet, that act of thanksgiving, so central to religious and spiritual life, is not simply about ourselves. It is more about the movements of God’s grace in us; God in us, if you will. This is part of the deep Christian insight that relates to who Jesus is for us. I think this Gospel story provides the Christian understanding that transforms the idea of thanksgiving. It is, ultimately, about our participation in the act of human redemption accomplished by Jesus. His life, and therefore his life in us, is about thanksgiving. His life is his thanksgiving to the Father; the thanksgiving of the whole of redeemed creation has its highest expression in the thanksgiving of the Son to the Father. Like the stranger, in returning and giving thanks we are being made whole.
Made whole? What does that mean? It means being complete. It signifies the realization of the idea that our humanity finds its truth and meaning in God and in the motions of divine love that are opened out to us in the life and death of Jesus Christ. The stranger in the story – the other, the alien, the foreigner, the outsider and the outcast – is made whole by his seemingly simple act of returning and giving thanks. In so doing, I suggest, he is no longer a stranger; he is at home with God in Jesus Christ. He is no longer alienated from himself or from the human community or, more importantly, from God. Present but hidden in the story is the idea that we are incomplete – broken, wounded, diseased and sick – apart from God. Wholeness comes from acknowledging God, giving thanks to the Creator and the Redeemer of the whole world.
Jesus saves but salvation is not simply from outside, something external, something simply done to us. It has to happen within us. That is what makes this story so wonderful. Something happens within the being of the stranger. Something moves in him and it makes all the difference.
He goes beyond the strictures of the Law. The story is, in part, a criticism of Jewish culture and customs, as was the story we had last week about the Good Samaritan. The Samaritans were a despised element of the Jewish community. Yet, both stories go beyond mere conflict and opposition; there is a sense in both of how the Good Samaritan and “this stranger” who was also “a Samaritan” teach us something about the radical nature of God’s redeeming grace in Jesus Christ. The compassion of the Good Samaritan, we suggested, is really the charity of Christ who fulfills the Law understood in its summary form as the love of God and the love of neighbour. We can only “go and do likewise” if Christ lives and moves in us. Here, “this stranger [who] was a Samaritan,” also shows the divine movement that returns us to the beginning and end of our being, God, a divine movement that arises from the encounter with Christ and with the movement of Christ’s Word arising within him.
What moves in him is what is wanted, I have to say, to move in all of us this morning and every day. It is signaled in what “this stranger” has done. He “turns back”; he “glorifie[s] God” “with a loud voice”; he “[falls] down on his face at [Jesus’] feet, giving him thanks.” There it is. The very meaning of our Christian lives as expressed in the liturgy. Our acts of worship, which to a stranger or an outsider might seem so odd, are the very actions of “this stranger.” We have, perhaps, become so accustomed to going through the motions, doing what we do, that we forget the profound significance and symbolical meaning of what we are doing in this service. In a way it is all about thanksgiving, that is to say, our participation in the great thanksgiving of the Son to the Father. That is, after all, one of the names for this service, the service of the Holy Eucharist. Eucharist is the great thanksgiving and at the heart of this service is the Eucharistic prayer which recalls us to the Upper Room on the night of Christ’s betrayal where, in anticipation of his crucifixion and its meaning, he gives himself to his disciples and to us; bread and wine become body broken and blood outpoured. By his stripes – the wounds that he endures on the Cross at our hands – we are healed and made whole.
The forms of our participation in this liturgy signify the movements of God’s redeeming love at work in us. They can be mere ritual – empty formal gestures – but that is to miss the entire point of this Gospel and the further extension of its meaning in the patterns of prayer and praise. Perhaps that is one of the saddest things of our anxious and troubled times. We lose sight of the very patterns and practices which embody our highest freedoms and which are intended to give us strength to persevere and to do so with joy and gladness. It is, after all, really about what is moving in our souls.
In this Gospel, “this stranger” teaches us how not to be strangers to God, to one another and to ourselves. What moves in him is the grace of God freely embraced and acted upon. He turns back and gives thanks. He is the only one who does so, the stranger who is no longer a stranger. He teaches us what belongs to the freedom of our redeemed humanity.
“There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger”
Fr. David Curry
Trinity XIV, September 9th, 2012