14th Friday after Trinity by Peter Lewin

St Luke’s Gospel 17:11-19

St Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians 5:16-24

In today’s Gospel reading from St Luke, ten lepers ask Jesus for healing. Jesus tells them to show themselves to the priests, and, before they have fulfilled his command, he heals them.

One, a Samaritan, turns back to Jesus, who declares that his faith has made him whole.

In healing these outsiders, simply because they acknowledge his authority and ask for his help, Jesus shows the phenomenal breadth of his compassion. His mercy is open to all.

And despite the shortcomings of the nine - now former - lepers, Jesus doesn’t indict them but laments their absence. His mercy and compassion persist, despite their imperfections.

When I visualise this story, I see the Samaritan, a guy with no money, rags for clothes, probably no education, possibly no family, and covered with sores. He’s just walking where he’s been told to go, bare feet on hot dirt and stones, in a last ditch effort for relief. I imagine him taking a step and suddenly noticing his skin looking normal again, the fibres of his body, the nerves and muscles, becoming whole. And this has happened to all ten of them, but he’s the only one who puts two and two together and goes back to God.

In this story, we might consider identifying not with the individuals, the Samaritan who goes back to Jesus or one of the other lepers who does not, but with the whole of the group. Read this way, there’s a dance, between Jesus’s persistent and consistent mercy and compassion, and our sometimes limited ability to recognise it, much less give thanks for it. Indeed, we might be more open to Jesus when, like the Samaritan, who is surrounded by foreigners and a religion not his own, we are at our most vulnerable. And yet, even when we are not, and we don’t turn to him, his grace and mercy prevail.

Now, where the Gospel gives us a beautiful story of mercy, grace, and conversion, Paul’s letter is instructive: now that you are Christian, how should you live?

It's worth understanding the context of the letter. Paul's writing to a dispersed set of Gentile Christian churches in Galatia, in modern-day Turkey. A group of Jewish Christians, with silver tongues and a deep knowledge of the Torah, is proselytising them, insisting that even as Gentile Christians, the Galatians must adhere to the Law of Moses. Paul counters with a passion to match their rhetoric, but his point is simple: Christians have turned away from the pulls of the old self and towards the Spirit. The Spirit is the mark of belonging.

But Paul is not speaking from the proverbial high horse. Although his language is deliberately fiery, he recognises the life of a Christian is one of constant improvement, of the community and of the self. At the beginning of the very next chapter, he reminds the Galatians to treat those who miss the mark with gentleness. He also cautions all to keep an eye on their own sins, as Paul does himself, which we know from other letters.

Paul is not condemning or punishing, but exhorting the Galatians, and us, to turn towards all that is beautiful and good: love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, patience, and, indeed, self-control.

It is for us to recognise Jesus’s authority as the Son of God, to turn away from our base desires, and to embrace his grace. But even if we fall short, as nine times out of ten we undoubtedly will, God is still merciful.

In practice, today, we might say, “In moments of adversity, or any moment, choose love.”

Paul wrote, “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.”