Sermon based on Luke 17:11-19
Jesus is on the road again—headed toward Jerusalem, toward the cross, toward the final act of his ministry. Luke says he’s moving “through the region between Samaria and Galilee,” which, if you check a map, is not a real place. There is no region between Samaria and Galilee. They are two territories that directly border each other. Luke’s geography doesn’t make sense, but that’s okay. He’s doing theology, not cartography.
Jesus walks the in-between spaces—those edges of belonging where few dare to travel. And that’s exactly where this story begins. Somewhere between here and there, between insiders and outsiders, ten men stand calling out from a distance, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”
They are lepers—people living quite literally on the margins. Not just physically sick, but socially and spiritually exiled. They are cut off from family, from worship, from touch, from hope. If you had a skin disease like theirs in the ancient world, you were considered unclean—an outcast.
And Luke tells us that Jesus sees them.
He doesn’t recoil. He doesn’t ignore. He doesn’t ask for proof of worthiness. He simply says, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they go, they are healed.
That’s the miracle. But the story isn’t over.
Of the ten who are healed, only one turns back. Only one stops mid-stride, notices what’s happened, and returns to Jesus shouting praise to God. He falls at Jesus’ feet and thanks him.
And Luke saves the surprise for last: “…he was a Samaritan.”
If this were a play, that line would come with a gasp from the audience. Because Samaritans were despised. They were the heretics of their day—the theological wrong crowd. Jews and Samaritans didn’t share meals or worship together; they crossed the street to avoid each other.
So when Luke says the one who returned was a Samaritan, we know something important is happening. Once again, the outsider sees what the insiders miss.
Jesus’ question hangs in the air: “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine—where are they?”
We’re left wondering: Why didn’t they come back? They obeyed Jesus’ command. They did what he told them to do—go to the priests, get the official stamp of approval, reenter society. But in their rush to reclaim life as usual, they forgot the deeper miracle—the presence of the One who made them whole.
It would be easy to turn this into a simple “remember to say thank you” story. And yes, gratitude matters. But this isn’t just about politeness; it’s about perception. It’s about learning to see.
All ten were healed. Only one saw.
Only one recognized that this healing was not just a change in medical status but an encounter with God’s mercy breaking into human life. The Samaritan sees, returns, praises, and thanks. Each verb moves him closer—from recognition to relationship, from healing to wholeness.
Martin Luther once said that true worship is the tenth leper turning back. That moment—seeing what God has done and responding in gratitude—is the essence of faith. Faith, Luther said, is not just believing; it’s seeing rightly.
Faith is noticing the holy in the ordinary, the grace hidden in plain sight.
Like I mentioned before, this story unfolds in the borderlands—a “region between.”
Biblically speaking, that’s not just geography. It’s theology.
Jesus always seems most at home in the borderlands. He’s forever crossing the lines others draw—between clean and unclean, Jew and Samaritan, insider and outsider. Those boundaries may keep people safe, but they also keep people apart.
Author Gloria Anzaldúa described borderlands as “a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary.” It’s a space where the forbidden live. A space where two worlds meet and neither one fully claims you.
And that’s where Jesus shows up.
He walks into the thin places where heaven and earth nearly touch—where people have been exiled by fear or shame, where pain hides beneath politeness, where loneliness lingers behind smiles. Those are the places Jesus enters. And there, healing happens.
Maybe that’s why the church exists—to live in the borderlands of the world. To stand where others refuse to stand. To touch what others avoid. To remind those who’ve been pushed aside that God still sees them, still calls them “beloved.”
Luke’s story also tells us something about how healing works. It’s not magic. It’s not passive.
Notice how the men call out to Jesus: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” They’re not bystanders; they take initiative. They step forward in faith even before they see results. Healing begins with participation—with showing up, crying out, believing that something more is possible.
And Jesus honors their agency. He doesn’t touch them or make a grand scene. He simply gives them a direction: “Go.”
Healing is a partnership between divine grace and human courage.
The Samaritan’s act of returning shows what wholeness looks like. It’s not just about physical restoration—it’s about restored relationship, renewed gratitude, and reconnected community.
When Jesus says, “Your faith has made you well,” the Greek word sozo can also mean “saved” or “made whole.” This man hasn’t just been cured; he’s been reintegrated—drawn back into relationship with God and others.
In Luke’s Gospel, healing is never just about the body. It’s about belonging.
Jesus’ final words in this story sting a little: “Was none of them found to return and give glory to God except this foreigner?”
He calls the Samaritan a foreigner—not as an insult, but as a revelation. The foreigner becomes the model of faith.
Throughout Scripture, the “foreigner” is a theological key. In exile, Israel learned compassion by remembering what it was like to be strangers in Egypt. Jeremiah told the exiles in Babylon to build homes, plant gardens, and seek the welfare of their new city. God’s people learned that holiness is not found in isolation but in solidarity.
The Samaritan—this “foreigner”—teaches us the same lesson. He knows what it’s like to live on the edge, to long for home and never quite belong. His gratitude is born from that ache. His faith is shaped by displacement.
Maybe that’s why he sees what others don’t. Those who have suffered know how to recognize grace when it appears.
Theologian Howard Thurman once said, “The disinherited know the language of the heart.” That’s what happens here. The Samaritan’s gratitude is not etiquette—it’s revelation.
Faith begins when we start to see.
That’s the pivot of this story. All ten lepers are healed. Only one sees. Only one allows the moment to sink in. And that seeing changes everything.
He sees that mercy has touched him. He sees that the kingdom of God has drawn near. He sees that gratitude must move his feet.
When he returns, Jesus doesn’t say, “Your manners have saved you,” but “Your faith has made you whole.” His seeing leads to believing, and his believing leads to movement—turning back, falling down, giving thanks.
Faith is not abstract belief—it’s perception. It’s learning to see the world through the lens of grace.
How different would our days look if we practiced that kind of seeing?
When we look at our lives, do we see scarcity or abundance?
When we look at the stranger, do we see threat or neighbor?
When we look at our church, do we see limits or possibilities?
When we look at ourselves, do we see failure or belovedness?
Seeing rightly changes everything.
This story could have ended with ten happy lepers heading home. But Luke insists we watch the one who turns back, because gratitude is not an afterthought—it’s the heartbeat of discipleship.
This fall, as we move through our own stewardship season, this story offers a quiet challenge. Stewardship isn’t first about giving—it’s about seeing.
It’s about noticing how much we’ve already received, how deeply we’ve been healed, how persistently God’s mercy keeps meeting us in the borderlands of our lives.
When we truly see that, generosity follows naturally. Gratitude becomes a way of life.
Each year, we invite our congregation to prayerfully consider their giving—not out of obligation, but as a response to grace. The Samaritan didn’t return because he was told to; he returned because gratitude overflowed.
That’s what we hope for in our stewardship, too. To see all that God has done among us—the lives touched through GriefShare, the families sheltered through Family Promise, the growing laughter of children on Sunday mornings—and to realize that all of it is possible because we, like that Samaritan, have turned back in gratitude.
Stewardship is not a campaign to fill a budget; it’s a spiritual discipline of seeing God’s work and responding with joy.
At the beginning of this story, ten men are stuck between regions—socially, physically, spiritually. They live in a “no-man’s-land.”
By the end, all ten are healed. But one has something more: he is made whole.
The difference is not in what Jesus gives but in what the man sees.
All were cleansed; one was transformed.
That’s the difference between being cured and being saved. One changes your circumstances; the other changes your soul.
The Samaritan’s gratitude becomes an act of worship. And Jesus names it as such. “Your faith has saved you.” He’s no longer just a healed man; he’s a worshiper, a witness, a disciple.
True worship is the tenth leper turning back. It is the moment when awareness becomes praise, when gratitude becomes faith, when the gift points us to the Giver.
Notice how the story moves:
- The lepers cry out for mercy.
- Jesus sees them.
- They go in faith.
- One sees, returns, praises, thanks.
Each movement draws us deeper into relationship. That’s the pattern of discipleship: cry out, be seen, go in faith, return in gratitude.
Gratitude doesn’t erase hardship; it transforms how we live within it. It reorients us from self-preservation to communion.
The Samaritan shows us that faith and gratitude are not two separate things—they are the same motion of the soul turning toward God.
Maybe that’s what this story is ultimately about: seeing.
Seeing what God has done. Seeing who God includes. Seeing how mercy crosses every border we draw.
In a world obsessed with drawing lines—who’s in, who’s out, who belongs—Jesus still walks through the “region between.” He still meets us where we least expect, healing what we didn’t know was wounded.
And when we see it—when we really see it—we can’t help but turn back.
There’s also something tender in this story for each of us personally.
We all have our own borderlands—those unspoken corners of our lives where we feel distant, unseen, or unclean. The places where we keep our shame, our doubts, our grief.
But the Gospel says Jesus isn’t afraid of those regions. He walks right into them. He meets us in the middle space—between what we’ve been and what we hope to become.
And when he speaks, it’s not condemnation but mercy: Go. Show yourself. Be made whole.
Maybe the invitation for us this week is to name the borderlands we’ve been avoiding—and to trust that Christ meets us there.
Imagine a church shaped by the vision of the tenth leper.
A community where gratitude is not a reaction but a rhythm. Where worship is not confined to an hour on Sunday but lived in acts of mercy, generosity, and awe. Where we practice seeing God’s grace in each other’s faces, in every shared meal, every stitch of a quilt, every pledge card offered as a prayer of thanksgiving.
That’s what it means to be the body of Christ in the world—to keep turning back, again and again, until gratitude becomes our native language.
At the end of the story, Jesus tells the Samaritan, “Get up and go; your faith has made you well.”
He stands, rises—anistemi in Greek—the same word used for resurrection. The one who turned back now steps forward into new life.
That’s what gratitude does—it resurrects us.
It lifts us from routine to wonder, from duty to delight, from healing to wholeness.
So this week, may we learn to see as the Samaritan saw.
May we notice the grace that has already healed us.
May we turn back with joy, giving glory to God.
And may our lives—our words, our giving, our service—become acts of thanksgiving that point to the One who still meets us in the borderlands and calls us whole. Amen.
Sermon by: Rev. Dave Wasson
Dove Sermons 
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