Seventeenth Sunday After Trinity
“your faith has made you well.”
This Autumn, the Church of England is celebrating
THE SEASON OF GENEROSITY.
A time set aside to give thanks for God’s gifts; to reflect on what it means to live with gratitude for all that we have and all that we are; and to commit ourselves to living generously.
At Holy Spirit we are dedicating three Sundays (from Sunday 28th September to Sunday 12th October) to the themes of this season: Generosity, Giving and Gratitude.
This week our final Week Three, 12th October, when we receive five of our young people into Communion, our theme will be GRATITUDE and how it shapes our lives and transforms our understanding of who we are.
Summary
Today, as our children receive their first communion, our focus is on gratitude. When Jesus heals ten lepers in Luke 17:11-19, only one gives thanks. The word used is the same word Jesus uses when he takes bread and wine at the Last Supper. It is the word from which the term Eucharist derives. God invites all of us to the table, each one of us has a place. Yet to take our place we must stand shoulder to shoulder with all those whom God invites. This is something which Naaman, in 2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15, finds difficult. He is offended that a man of his wealth and status has been invited to take his place among the general public who come to wash in the Jordan River. His sense of entitlement very nearly prevents him from receiving the gift God is offering, it seems too humble, too ordinary to be of value. All of us come to God’s table in need, all of us are hungry for what God has to offer but often our egos and our own sense of what we deserve prevents us from receiving God’s abundant grace. When we stand shoulder to shoulder with our children around the Lord’s Table, we acknowledge that none of us are more worthy than anyone else, that all we have is a result, not of our efforts, but of God’s generosity and mercy. Knowing this, we can be truly grateful that we too are included in God’s grace and that we are privileged to invite others to join us at the Lord’s table.
FIRST READING
2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15
Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master because by him the Lord had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from a skin disease. Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, “If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his skin disease.
When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, “Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his skin disease? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me.”
But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, “Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel.” So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and halted at the entrance of Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.” But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, “I thought that for me he would surely come out and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God and would wave his hand over the spot and cure the skin disease! Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?” He turned and went away in a rage. But his servants approached and said to him, “Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, ‘Wash, and be clean’?” So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.
Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company; he came and stood before him and said, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel; please accept a present from your servant.”
GOSPEL
Luke 17.11-19
“On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten men with a skin disease approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’s feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? So where are the other nine? Did none of them return to give glory to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”
