Sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity
admin | 17 September 2017“And one of them … turned back … giving him thanks;
and he was a Samaritan”
Last Sunday we had the powerful and familiar story of the Good Samaritan. Today we have another gospel story in which a Samaritan figures also most prominently. It is an intriguing aspect of the Christian Scriptures, particularly of St. Luke’s Gospel, that the Samaritans are often used by Jesus to teach us about what belongs to the truth of our common humanity. At once an implied criticism of religious divisions, particularly among the Jews but by extension to other religions, Jesus talks about what transcends the differences between and within religious cultures. In these back-to-back Sunday Gospels we are reminded about the true nature of our obligations to God and to one another as well as our failings.
Both Gospels, the one a parable, the other an encounter, reveal to us something of ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’ about our humanity at the same time as they remind us of the necessity of God’s grace as the operative principle in our lives. There are our failings but there is the triumph of God’s grace in us compelling to “go and do likewise” both towards our neighbour and towards God. “A certain man” is wounded, lying half-dead on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, the heavenly and the earthly cities respectively. “A certain Priest” and “Levite” “look and pass by”. There were “ten men that were lepers,” ten that were healed by Jesus.
Only “a certain Samaritan as he journeyed”, who having seen the man who was wounded, “had compassion on him” and “came where he was”, “tak[ing] care of him.” Only one of the ten who were healed “turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks; and he was a Samaritan.” In the Jewish context of the Gospel, the Samaritans were a despised sect, outcasts, the proverbial “other.” The area of dispute between the Samaritans and the Jews is about the place where the Law of Moses was delivered and about what books truly comprise the Scriptures. In the encounter in John’s Gospel with the woman at the well of Samaria – the most intense Gospel story of Christ in his engagement with the Samaritans – Jesus is very clear about how they have erred on these doctrinal points at the same time as drawing them into conversation, even into communion with him.
Outsiders such as the Samaritans provide a corrective lesson to all the forms of religious self-righteousness and division. Jesus uses the Samaritans to show us our failings and to show us the setting right of our hearts and minds. No one lies outside of the reach of the Gospel.
Here the one who turned back shows us that our true wholeness is found in turning back and giving thanks. That is itself a work of grace in our hearts. God turns us to himself and in returning to God in prayer and thanksgiving, in confession and praise, we are being made whole. It is more than being healed. It is about being made whole. It is, once again, redire ad principia, all a kind of circling, a returning to him from whom we have turned away. In turning back and giving thanks, we enter into what God seeks and accomplishes for us in Jesus Christ.
This great thanksgiving story throws us into the deep meaning of the Eucharist. It illustrates something of the meaning of “our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.” It is shown to us by the words and actions of the Samaritan. We are reminded of how God works within and without all the forms of our divisions to bring us to the truth of our humanity as found in him. “Do this in remembrance of me.”
Ultimately, what is seen in both Gospel stories on these back-to-back Sundays in the midst of the Trinity season is what belongs to our life together in the body of Christ. They are about our life of service and sacrifice which flows out of what we read and see in Christ and about the forms of our incorporation into the life of Christ; he living in us and we in him. Today’s Gospel illustrates precisely what our liturgy means and what we do in the service. We “turn back” to God in Christ, and “with a loud voice” – perhaps we need to work a bit on that – we “glorify God,” we fall down, if not literally on our knees then metaphorically, “on [our] faces at his feet”. We “give him thanks.” Only so are we made whole.
Just as in the previous Gospel, we are meant to be like the Samaritan; in each case, they are the good Samaritans – the one in compassion and care, the other in praise and thanksgiving. Go and do likewise!
“And one of them … turned back … giving him thanks;
and he was a Samaritan”
Fr. David Curry
Trinity 14, 2017