SERMON—Hearing hearts series: “Clean hearts—the attitude of gratitude”
This week I read an article in The Advertiser by David Penberthy[1] about the desperate plight of businesses along Jetty Road, driven to the brink of closure by a combination of the algal bloom crisis, temporary suspension of the tramline for overpass works, and the closure of parts of Jetty Road for the precinct upgrade. The article carried extra interest for me as someone local and well acquainted with the challenges of disruption to services, as I am sure many of you are too. I haven’t frequented Jetty Road much myself lately, but when I went a few weeks ago, I found myself in a similar situation as Penberthy wrote about—confused with where and how to access the place I needed to be.
Something that stood out to me was this sign: ‘open for business as usual’. It wasn’t the sign itself, but more about where it was fastened—behind a barrier…and beyond that, the lifeless empty shopfronts with the lights off, the people diverted by barricades from direct access to the doors on the other side.
In today’s Gospel reading there are also barriers which present a dire consequences. As Jesus was going to Jerusalem he passed along the border of Samaria and Galilee. There wasn’t a physical barrier at this border, but there may as well have been—because the Jews hated the Samaritans.
The Samaritans were once Israelites but because they had rejected God’s covenant they were exiled in Assyria. There, the evil King Jeroboam established shrines at places of worship and led the people to bow to idols, rather than to God. Because of this, the Samaritans were cursed publicly in the synagogue with the prayer that they might have no part in the resurrection of life, marriage with them was prohibited, and to eat their food was considered equal to eating swine’s flesh. So this boundary also represented a boundary between spiritual inclusion and exclusion—of what is judged to be holy and unholy; spiritually clean and spiritually unclean. Yet Jesus intentionally draws very near to this unholy place, travelling along the border. And when he entered a village, ten men suffering from leprosy met him.
At the time Luke wrote, there was an even greater social stigma attached to this highly infectious skin disease than there is today. People with leprosy didn’t only suffer from its physical impact, but were also shunned, cut off from the community, isolated, with little hope of any support or care.
Israelites who had the disease were regarded as ceremonially unclean and not able to join the rest of the worshipping community at the Temple. Restoration could only happen after they had undertaken a complex purification rite detailed in Leviticus 14. Those infected were to be examined by the priest outside of the camp and if they had been healed the priest was to sprinkle them with the blood of a sacrificed bird and fresh water, seven times, and pronounce them clean. After this the person could return into the camp, but they had to stay outside their tent for seven days, and on the seventh day shave off all their hair (including beard and eyebrows) and wash their clothes and bathe in order to be ceremonially clean.
The ten men with leprosy had significant social and ceremonial boundaries to overcome. They longed for the day for a priest to pronounce them clean. So, as they see Jesus approaching, they cry out to him for help. Although they know that they have nothing to give to Jesus to merit a favourable response from him, it seems that they know they have no other hope.
Jesus was so close, yet they had to maintain social distancing. How could they have access to him and his divine help? With barriers invisible yet greater than those separating pedestrians from Jetty Road businesses, all that these men with leprosy can do is cry out as beggars for Jesus to show them mercy: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us”.
Jesus could still help them from a distance. All he needed to do is give the word—his powerful word: “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” The implication is that, on the way to the priest, they will be healed, they will be made clean. And so they do what Jesus had told them to do. They trust in the promise implicit in Jesus’ command and set off to present themselves to the priest as clean men to be pronounced clean even though they were ritually unclean. And as the ten men went, they were healed. They were cleansed.
Nine of the ten we hear no more of. But one of the men came back, glorifying God. He comes to Jesus, not only with a cleansed body but a cleansed heart; a heart of faith, glorifying God with thanksgiving. The inference is that he sees the presence and help of God in the Person of Jesus. And Jesus, the Great High Priest, declares: “Rise and go, your faith has saved you.” He is clean from an even greater infection than leprosy—he is cleansed from the infection of sin. He is holy in God’s sight. And he is a Samaritan.
Jesus’ cleansing of the Samaritan points to God’s gathering of people from beyond Israel into the communion of saints of all times and places, transcending all cultural and geographical borders to purify the people of God through Jesus his Son.
This is good news for us, because we are not from Galilee either. And it is good news for us because we are all born sinful and unclean. Everyone in their natural condition is separated from God and unclean in his sight. There is a barrier between us and God from the moment we are conceived. Just as the men with leprosy stood at a distance from Jesus, we too, in our original state, cannot come close to God and live. It has been this way since creation, when Adam and Eve rebelled against God, turning aside from what he had said. God sent Adam and Eve out from his favourable presence in the Garden. This was God’s judgment on his people for their sin—for them wanting to assert their own authority above what God had said. And so by the unrighteousness of one man, sin entered the whole world, and death through sin (Romans 5:12). The chaos and mess of the world is not God’s fault; we humans have brought it about.
Yet by the same action God also showed his mercy. Because that which is unholy—spiritually unclean—cannot be in the presence of a holy God without being consumed, just like the offerings made to God were consumed by fire. Sinners cannot come before a holy God and live. But God did not want us to remain in this situation. He did not want us to remain separated from him and the life, love and blessings he wants to share with humanity. He did not want to keep distance between us and him. He did not want to barricade himself from the world. That is why God ultimately showed his mercy when he sent his own dear Son. In our text, Jesus is journeying towards Jerusalem, and to his own death, to remove the distance between us and God, to open the door to the favour and mercies of heaven for the world, to remove the barrier of unholiness and reconcile us to God through his own holy and precious blood spilt from the Cross.
Today’s reading is less about healing our physical ailments, and more about healing our hearts. The Samaritan falling at Jesus’ feet and Jesus’ beautiful pronouncement to him: “Rise and go, your faith has saved you” shows that this healing went far beyond the leprosy. It is about Jesus bringing holiness and salvation to the world, so that through faith in him people from all nations be made ritually clean and restored to God by crossing the boundary from the unclean to the holy.
We too were once like those in our text. We were once like the Samaritans, unrighteous in God’s sight, having turned away from him. We were once like the ten men with leprosy, unclean with the leprosy of sin. We are not worthy of God’s help because of our pious effort, religious performance, family heritage, righteous appearance, or good service. The cry of the ten unclean beggars in our text: “Lord, have mercy on us” are words given to us to voice in worship, drawing us to join with them in crying out to Jesus for his merciful help. With these words we acknowledge that we too are unworthy and undeserving, and are here simply because of God’s grace to us in Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, with nothing in our hands to bring to him to warrant his blessing of us.
That is why thanksgiving is also a key theme in today’s text: thanksgiving from the most undeserving and helpless of people, to God for his incredible, lavish grace. Thanksgiving is counter-cultural for today’s society, which instead makes demands. Media and advertising teach us to not be thankful for what we have, because it is insufficient. The world teaches us that we never have enough and that we should never be content, because satisfaction, purpose and meaning to life comes from that which we do not yet have. The world teaches us to be unthankful, by always wanting more…to demand more, to demand better—and to just go out and get it. It teaches us to shape our identity by what we do—then we have made it; then we have found worth and value by the approval of others.
But thankfulness is the language of faith; it is the language of those who are at the same time unclean beggars but completely holy saints; the people of God who rejoice in God’s mercy in Jesus. As Christians our identity is not bound up in what we do, but what God has done for us in Christ, in whom God has chosen us before the very creation of the world. You are so loved by his Father in Heaven that you are loved to death—his only Son’s death; whose precious blood was the price God paid to ransom you to be his very own. Whoever believes in him has the right to be called the children of God, whose approval, favour, love and grace from God are found in Christ. As the Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 2:
“…remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the Cross…And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.” (Ephesians 2:12-21).
Once unholy, you are now his holy people. Jesus has given the word, and absolved you again this morning. You have been washed clean by the water and the word of holy baptism, in order for you to be presented to our Great High Priest who declares you clean, and sprinkles you with his holy blood again at his table this morning. Even though there is a barrier to define the space of this sanctuary on earth, note that there is an opening by which your Father in Heaven welcomes you to receive blessings from heaven here, because by Jesus suffering and death you have direct access through faith to God’s grace and favour. So we are called to give thanks to God for the saving help of Christ crucified he delivers personally to you in this holy meal.
God promises to be present with this saving, merciful help as long as we are here. So until the day our Lord comes again to judge the living and the dead, may these church doors always bear the sign: “Open for business as usual”—God’s business of bringing help and mercy from heaven to earth here in this place, as Christ our unseen Pastor continues to make unworthy people holy by his mighty word and sacraments, just as he has for you and me. Thanks be to God! Amen!
Pastor Tim Ebbs
St Paul’s Lutheran Church, Glenelg
Time after Pentecost, 2025
REFLECTION AND APPLICATION POINTS:
“Once unholy, you are now his holy people. Jesus has given the word, and absolved you again this morning. You have been washed clean by the water and the word of holy baptism, in order for you to be presented to our Great High Priest who declares you clean, and sprinkles you with his holy blood…”
- Do you find it easier to pray to God in times of trial or on occasions when all is well? Why do you think this is?
- Does it ever seem like God is keeping his distance from you? Why is this not true?
- How might today’s Gospel reading show that God use times of trial to be a time of blessing?
- Do you find it difficult to be thankful? Take time to carefully reflect deeply on the following:
- Do I often feel discontented?
- Do I feel envy or resentment over the blessings others seem to have
- Am I disappointed with life?
- Do I doubt God’s faithful provision for me?
- Do I often unfavourably compare myself and my situation with that of others?
How does approaching Jesus for his help in the divine service give you hope despite the burdens and challenges
[1]Penberthy, David ‘Glenelg’s Jetty Road is historically associated with good times but right now it resembles 1961 Berlin’ accessed online at https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/opinion/glenelgs-jetty-road-is-historically-associated-with-good-times-but-right-now-it-resembles-1961-berlin-david-penberthy/news-story/d5745ae50586f1be842285ac5e92d20b?utm_source=AdelaideNow&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Editorial&utm_content=ADV_BREAKING_NEWS-ALERT_01&net_sub_id=518669192&type=curated&position=2
last accessed 5:00 10 October 2025
