Weekly Seeds: Return to Give Glory
Sunday, October 12, 2025
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost| Year C
Focus Theme:
“Return to Give Glory”
Focus Prayer:
Miraculous God, we give glory to your name and for your wonderful works. Amen.
Focus Scripture:
Luke 17:11-19
11 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he entered a village, ten men with a skin disease approached him. Keeping their distance, 13 they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” 14 When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. 15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. 16 He prostrated himself at Jesus’s feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. 17 Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? So where are the other nine? 18 Did none of them return to give glory to God except this foreigner?” 19 Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”
All readings for this Sunday:
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7 and Psalm 66:1-12 • 2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c and Psalm 111 • 2 Timothy 2:8-15 • Luke 17:11-19
Focus Questions:
What is glory?
How do we give glory?
What miraculous acts have your witnessed?
What is the relationship between gratitude, faith, and wellness?
How can our faith communities further glorify God?
Reflection
By Cheryl A. Lindsay
What does it mean to give glory? Is there a difference between giving credit and giving glory? Does giving glory amount to a form of footnote or attribution? Perhaps expressing gratitude is the same as giving glory? Is giving glory simple acknowledgement and recognition…or is gratitude a necessary component? Perhaps, giving glory represents the love language of words of affirmation, signaling to the object of our affection, admiration, and adoration our emotional connection and attachment in a way that other expressions and actions cannot. Does not God want to be loved back?
In the gospel narrative, Jesus has been traveling throughout the region. Presumably, he has a destination in mind that he hopes to reach. His plans, however, get interrupted when he enters a village and encounters a group of ten men with skin diseases. They keep their distance out of respect or decree as they would have been ritualistically unclean. Touching them would have made Jesus unclean as well. Seeking his favor, they keep their distance even though they recognize the need for proximity for Jesus to assist them. Jesus follows their lead and offers a word of instruction that he imparts while maintaining that same distance. Then the miracle happens.
In re-telling this story, the attention is aptly put on the divergent response of the one who returns. As a result, the otherness of the one who returns goes unnoticed or overlooked. It is worth noting that within this group that has been made outcasts, there is at least one within the group who is singled out for dual otherness—a Samaritan. Although the location in which Jesus demonstrates healing power influenced that inclusion and particularity.
Jesus’ journey toward Jerusalem, in the company of the disciples whose formation as a community of and for God’s realm he has been nurturing on the road, is interrupted by a group of men afflicted by leprosy. Aptly, given the “border” setting in proximity to Galilee and Samaria, the Samaritan among the lepers aided by Jesus models the thankfulness and the acknowledgment of God’s glory—and the faith—that such an act of gracious deliverance should evoke.
John T. Carroll
It is also not coincidental that this story follows another story about a marginalized group and relational responsiveness to favorable actions. The ambiguity of the former story with its question of an owner showing gratitude to a slave evaporates when the question is realized. Did the nine who continued without expressing gratitude situate themselves, unwittingly or not, in the position of the owner who has no obligation to appreciate the favor bestowed upon them?
But precipitously, hearers are made to play roles not of slave owners but of unthanked slaves. In sorting this out, hearers confront a story about ten lepers who encounter Jesus. Jesus does nothing except to say, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” On the way, they become clean (17:11–14). One returns to give thanks, and the narrator calls him a Samaritan (17:15–19). Jesus calls this faith(fulness); that is, the Samaritan dramatizes faith(fulness). The other nine treat Jesus as an unthanked slave, and now hearers perceive that Jesus’ mustard-seed basic minimum is gratitude to God for God’s works.
Robert L. Brawley
In this story, Jesus assumes the role of the unthanked slave, who does what is expected and within the realm of regular activity. How routinely does humanity take Creator’s good gifts for granted? In the cleansing of those with skin diseases, their lack of gratitude seems obvious. Yet, that act takes no more effort on Jesus’ part as the progression of creation as the Holy One speaks and material existence transforms. Brawley also notes,
But if the parable is taken with the healing of ten lepers, and with 12:37 in the larger context, the unthanked slave corresponds also to Jesus, who is unthanked by nine out of ten lepers who are healed. Green (1997, 614) asserts that thanking a slave would put a master in debt to the slave. But the Samaritan leper who returns with thanksgiving does not obligate Jesus (17:16).
Robert L. Brawley
Perhaps the nine do not return because they do not believe they have any way to compensate Jesus or reciprocate the blessing they have received. Perhaps, they are so overwhelmed by their changed circumstances that good behavior temporarily eludes them. Perhaps, they have been ostracized from society for so long that they have forgotten their manners. Whatever the case, there is one who does not forget, keeps their composure, and recognizes that gratitude is enough. That one was the least likely to be seen, heard, acknowledged, or welcomed. A ritualistically unclean foreigner breaks all barriers to give God glory for wellness, for wholeness, for shalom. They have been restored and will not continue without giving thanks. Jesus receives their praise and releases them to live fully.
So he bids the man, “Get up and journey on,” this time without specifying a destination (v. 19). “Your faith has delivered you,” he says—made you whole, saved you, restored you to health (sesōken)—thereby placing the Samaritan leper in select company among community outsiders aided by Jesus, alongside such diverse characters as a Roman soldier (7:9), a woman despised as a sinner (7:50), a woman suffering from chronic bleeding (8:48), and just ahead on the route to Jerusalem, a blind beggar (18:42). Once again a person on the margins exemplifies the bold trust that is able to accept the restoration to wholeness and to full community participation that God’s saving purpose for human flourishing intends and accomplishes. The vocabulary of healing in the account progresses from a petition for mercy (17:13) to the experience of being made clean (v. 14; cf. v. 17), which the Samaritan interprets as healing (v. 15) and Jesus then reframes as deliverance, salvation, to which the man’s faith has opened up access (v. 19). When did the Samaritan’s faith deliver him? The careful nuancing of vocabulary for the healing and the sequence of action and speech suggest that the faith that “has saved [delivered]” includes the return to thank Jesus and honor God, even if it also encompasses the initial bold approach to seek Jesus’ help in the first place—hence, both preceding and following the experience of physical healing. In Luke’s story, salvation draws together the multilayered (physical, spiritual, and social) human quest for health and restoration (cf. Green 624)—often from beyond the margins of the community—and the gracious divine initiative encountered in Jesus’ ministry.
John T. Carroll
At the end of the movie Titanic, the woman who depicts the lead character in her later years recounting her experience tells of her rescue from the freezing waters. She notes how many boats were in the water with room to spare, but she bemoans that only one came back. While these stories are not the same, both reflect a response to being saved to new life. As the movie goes back and forth between memory and present, the audience witnesses the looks of disbelief, shock, and dismay when the leader in that one boat tells the occupants they are going back to see if any may be saved. In the Lukan narrative, the nine do not even turn back to consider the One who liberated them.
When we seek after God, do we turn to the Holy One as a divine servant who we expect to do our bidding or do we adopt the posture of the outsider’s outside and experience gratitude at everything, from the dawn of a new day to the liberation of an asylum seeker? Return to give God glory.
Reflection from Voices of People of African Descent
The 33rd General Synod adopted a Resolution to Recognize the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024). As part of its implementation, Sermon and Weekly Seeds offers Reflection from Voices of People of African Descent related to the season or overall theme for additional consideration in sermon preparation and for individual and congregational study.
“Black Glory Dead!”
By Edward S. Silvera
(Published in The Messenger, May 1925)
Black Glory dead! Black Glory dead!
And Ethiopia is no more,
Who from her earthly garden’s bed
Her golden fruits of glory bore!
Ah! she was trampled by her foes,
They trampled her with fruits and seeds,
Beneath the garden’s bed where rose
Her power now overgrown with weeds.
Ye who’re of her posterities
Till, till the bed where she has lain;
And from her seeds a thousand trees
Shall rise to Ethiope again!
For Further Reflection
“In a very real sense not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God continually chooses the most unqualified to do his work, to bear his glory. If we are qualified, we tend to think that we have done the job ourselves. If we are forced to accept our evident lack of qualification, then there’s no danger that we will confuse God’s work with our own, or God’s glory with our own.” ― Madeleine L’Engle
“Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.” ― Bruce Lee
“Odysseus inclines his head. “True. But fame is a strange thing. Some men gain glory after they die, while others fade. What is admired in one generation is abhorred in another.” He spread his broad hands. “We cannot say who will survive the holocaust of memory. Who knows?” He smiles. “Perhaps one day even I will be famous. Perhaps more famous than you.” ― Madeline Miller
A preaching commentary on this text (with works cited) is at //ucc.org/SermonSeeds.
The Rev. Dr. Cheryl A. Lindsay, Minister for Worship and Theology (lindsayc@ucc.org), also serves a local church pastor, public theologian, and worship-practitioner with a particular interest in the proclamation of the word in gathered communities. You’re invited to share your reflections on this text in the comments below this post on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SermonSeeds.
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