"The Discipline of Giving Thanks" | Julia McCray-Goldsmith | Sunday, October 12, 2025

Ten lepers healed—shout about that miracle from the rooftops! And you have a really nice new roof, I just want to pause and observe that. In an age of high-quality, if not highly accessible, medicine, it's easy to forget what a disaster chronic illness was in Jesus's time—specifically leprosy, a label that might have described any number of painful and debilitating skin diseases and would have been cause for extreme social isolation.

So, what a party that healing should have been! Maybe like the prodigal son, the ten went home to an overjoyed parent and a fatted calf. But here's the thing—we don't actually know what happened to most of them. We only know about the one who turned back to thank Jesus. And he wasn't, by Jewish standards, polite company. He was a Samaritan.

Now, Luke's hearers would have been aware of the centuries-long history of religious enmity between the Samaritans and the Jews. It was a rivalry that had both religious and geographic dimensions—perhaps a bit like the Bible Belt functions in our country—and the region of Samaria, along with Galilee to its north, had once been part of the northern Israelite kingdom. Northern Israelite tribes separated from the southern tribes of Judah in the 10th century B.C.E., and a couple of centuries later these northern tribes were conquered by the Assyrian Empire, precipitating intermarriage and, from a Judean perspective, ethnic and religious compromise.

Over time, Samaritans developed their own rituals and traditions, although they shared a devotion to Torah. So, to extend that Bible Belt analogy, we could say that everyone in the land was reading the exact same holy books, but they didn't necessarily think that each other's interpretation of faith practices was valid. Does that sound familiar at all?

In fact, the hostility between Jews and Samaritans was such that a Galilean would usually bypass Samaria on their way to Jerusalem, even though it added considerable time to their journey. Which brings me back to Jesus deliberately traveling through the unstable borderlands. And from the very first sentence of the gospel we heard this morning, listen up to the cues that are being given: on the way to Jerusalem, Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. We already know that social norms were being challenged.

And Luke, of all the evangelists, includes the most stories about Samaria and Samaritans. And then in the book of Acts, the post-resurrection continuation of Luke's gospel, the risen Jesus imagines Samaria as a kind of threshold between the Jewish homeland and worldwide ministry: “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, to the ends of the earth,” he says to the apostles in the book of Acts.

So all of this is to say that the story we just heard—actually both stories, including the Old Testament—serve as hints of the ultimate healing of God's whole people, God's whole community; not just the Samaritans and military commanders of Aram and those with persistent skin conditions.

I myself had a small healing recently—or maybe not. That's not really the right word. Maybe it's more like an “I told you so” comeuppance. My son Aaron, who some of you know from when I was privileged to serve here, picked a fight with the Fred Phelps folks on Christmas Eve morning, which was kind of a memorable experience. He's a high school teacher now, and he had a special guest come to his classroom for career day. She's a rather charismatic young finance professional who worked for my husband, and she took a day off to talk to East Oakland teens who were mostly Latino, like herself.

After her visit, Aaron asked his class to write their thanks to Briana. It didn't go very well. “Mom,” he reported back to me, “they were so stubborn about it. I finally understand why you got so frustrated when we didn't want to write thank-you cards to our grandparents.” Thanks for noticing, kiddo. I feel so much better already.

Of ten healed lepers, it was only the one Samaritan who returned to give thanks—that is, the one who shared ancestry with the Galilean rabbi, who really didn't normally engender brotherly love. If anything, they were adversaries in an ancient family feud. So I suspect it wasn't his mother or his teacher who reminded the healed leper to say thank you, because there wasn't really a duty of gratitude between Samaritans and Jews.

To thank someone is an investment—an acknowledgment that we are in relationship with them and that we are committed to continuing that relationship. To whom do we express our gratitude, and how?

Well, let me begin by expressing my gratitude to you. Trinity Cathedral formed me for ordained ministry, and it's a blessing to be back in your midst. And I never forget to be your cheerleader, as you have been mine.

So, let me remind you: you at Trinity are in the midst of a really important pledge campaign. The treasure, time, and talent that you commit to the mission of your cathedral this fall don't just pay the bills. It's a sign of hope in the future of this holy place, in its witness to a community that refuses to be divided by enmity and rumors of war.

Your gifts are an investment in relationship—with the people around you in the pews (pause and take a look at them), with the people in your neighborhood, in your city, who are blessed by Trinity's many ministries, and in the generations to come who will worship and work and study here.

Now, we all know you don't have to make a pledge any more than the Samaritan leper had to thank Jesus. But here's the thing: like so many of our holy and healthy habits, we can actually fake it till we make it. We can exercise our bodies to the point of discomfort until the new activity feels good. We can say our prayers by rote until the day when words as beautiful as those of our Book of Common Prayer well up in us spontaneously. We can pledge a little bit more than feels normal and do it again and again every year until perhaps we arrive at a biblical tithe, or some fraction thereof.

I assure you that there are many people at Trinity who do that, and it has become for them the most joyful and natural thing to do. The spiritual discipline of turning, praising, and giving thanks—it will do that to us.

So maybe this gospel is about something more than restored skin and renewed relationship. Maybe there's also a cosmic significance to this encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan. Maybe it's echoing in the background when we pray, “It is right to give God thanks and praise.” Maybe it's really about a transformation of the heart, born out of the joy of knowing that we can be healed and whole and grateful.

Because haven't we all been a Samaritan in one way or another? Recall that in the parable of the Good Samaritan, which falls earlier in Luke's gospel, the enemy is portrayed as the neighbor whom Jesus's hearers are called to love. But the Good Samaritan is not merely the neighbor we should love, even if we consider him the enemy. In his care for a wounded traveler, the Samaritan becomes the neighbor who loves us.

There's a kind of spiritual development, if you will, from Luke—in Luke—from “love your enemy” to “what if your enemy is someone who bears God's love to you?” The story of the Samaritan leper takes this love even deeper. While the Good Samaritan models genuine love of neighbor, the leper models uninhibited gratitude to God.

“When he saw that he was healed,” the gospel teaches us, “he turned back, praising God with a loud voice.” From Luke's perspective, it seems to be the suspect Samaritans who exemplify the great commandment: to love your neighbor as yourself and also to love the Lord your God with all your heart.

So, which kind of Samaritan are you? The one who cares for the wounded, or the one who gives praise to the Lord your God? Are you the one who, for all the years of bitter feuding, still turns back on your sworn enemy and pauses to say thank you? Well, why not try to be all of them?

You know, our Jewish neighbors who celebrated Yom Kippur, the Holy Day of Atonement, a little more than a week ago, have a prayer that sums up the fullness of healing that God offers us when we choose to be in healthy and reconciled relationship with each other:

“To those I have wronged,” they pray, “I ask forgiveness. To those I may have helped, I wish I could have done more. To those whom I neglected to help, I am truly sorry and ask for understanding. And to those who helped me, I am deeply grateful.”

Amen. Amen.