Sermon for The Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, 2026

This one, this Samaritan, was twice the outsider: an outcast, both because of his disease, and to the very priests who would examine him. And because of that latter reason, perhaps less inclined to mistake their pronouncement for the whole of his healing. When he saw that he was healed, he turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks. No priest sent him back. No law required his return; everything demanded of him, he had already done. He returns because something in him would not settle for just their pronouncement when the One who authors its declaration stood within reach. 

Here, then, is the second “Go.” “Arise, go your way. Your faith has made you well.” Hear what has changed. The first “Go” sent the man to a priest who could only examine and pronounce what he found. This “Go” comes from the mouth of the One that priesthood was ever only a shadow of; and, He does not announce a condition, He creates one. When Christ says, “your faith has made you well,” He is not confirming something already true and waiting to be noticed. No, rather, He does, with a word, exactly what the word says. And that, Beloved, is the whole distance between a priest’s endorsement and Christ’s Absolution, compressed into four words. 

So return, now, to that word once heard and rarely sought a second time. You need no hidden room for it, no door shut against the rest of the congregation. Kneel where you already kneel each week to receive His Body and Blood, here at this rail; I, your pastor, will stand here and offer individual Absolution, vested exactly as I am vested for every other public act of the Office.

Readings:

• Old Testament: Proverbs 4:10-23

• Epistle: Galatians 5:16-24

• Holy Gospel: Luke 17:11-19

Sermon:

https://youtu.be/etMWAbnqwLc