Proper 23 (28) – Year C
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost: October 12, 2025
Gospel Lectionary Text
Luke 17:11-19
17:11 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee.
17:12 As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance,
17:13 they called out, saying, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!"
17:14 When he saw them, he said to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were made clean.
17:15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice.
17:16 He prostrated himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan.
17:17 Then Jesus asked, "Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?
17:18 Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?"
17:19 Then he said to him, "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well."
Context
Welcome to the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost. In our Gospel this week, Jesus heals ten lepers. Nine of them go to the priest for further inspection hoping to be declared "clean" and thus cleared to be reintegrated into the life of the community.
But the leper who is a Samaritan cannot be cleansed of his Samaritan-ness. He has no place in the community, even when cured of leprosy. And so he "turns back" to Jesus’ fledgling community of outcasts and "gives thanks.”
What we are witnessing here is perhaps a second and even deeper healing — a turning away from human sorting systems and a turning to the kind of community in which belonging is not built on othering. Perhaps it is this turning that Jesus is thinking of when he says to the Samaritan, “Your faith has made you well."
Question
How does our need for belonging get twisted into complicity with systems that thrive on exclusion?
Reflections
The In-between Space
By Fred Laceda |
A couple of weeks ago I was invited by a seminary classmate to “speak” at a camp for the homeless just outside of Manila. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what I would share with them. So, I decided to listen to their stories of hope and hurt. I found out that they are from...
The Salute of Grace
By Joel Van Dyke |
A children's version of the story captures the triviality of the narrative - the last frame exclaims, “Don’t Forget to Thank Jesus.”In such simplified, moralistic versions of the story, the other nine lepers who don’t return to Jesus are vilified as ungrateful. However, we shouldn’t rush to cast judgment on them.
Praying Eucharistically - Weekly Homily by James Alison:
Understanding the Bible anew through the Mimetic Theory of René Girard.
Poetry
This week, we invite you to read and reflect on “Mindful” by Mary Oliver. In this week’s gospel lectionary text, a Samaritan who cannot be cleansed of his Samaritan-ness turns back to Jesus and does all he can do: "give thanks” for his healing from leprosy.
Unlike his nine companions, this man has no temple he can run to which will affirm his “cleanness.” And yet, in the face of Jesus – where, as Oliver writes, he is “instructed…in joy, / and acclimation” – this one man is set free from the burden of “cleanness” altogether. “Cleanness” and goodness, we realize, can become an obsession that runs us. Letting it go allows us to be inducted into a whole other form of life – the sort of life Oliver rhapsodizes about below: “To look, to listen, / to lose inside this soft world.”
If this is part of faith “making us well” – releasing us from being run by “cleanness” – perhaps it is also the beginning of “new creation”: to see the world as God presents it to us, soft and enthralling, unfiltered by our worries about how we fit into it.
Mindful
by Mary Oliver
Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for –
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world –
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant –
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these –
the untrimmable light
of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?
Prayer
This week, the call to prayer comes from the Street Psalms Centering Prayer:
Come, Holy Spirit, wild and free. Do as you please. Shine your light on me that I might see things as they are, not as I am. Free me to act in your name with courage, creativity, and compassion.
