Surprise

Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity

12 October, 2025

St Bene’t’s

Jer 29.1, 4–7; Luke 17.11–19

The Rev’d Dr Matthew Bullimore, Senior Provost, The Woodward Corporation

I’ve just come from Yorkshire and I am a bit surprised at how much more religious it is up there than down here. Hanging from nearly every lamp post in my town is a red cross on a flag. On some lamp posts, for those who have a particular devotion to the saints, they fly the flags of St Andrew, St George and St Patrick all united together.

Of course it’s no joke. We live in discomforting times as a country. The flag flying is a symbol of that. For some of my extended family it is simply the work of racists, the emphatic assertion of an invented British identity over against the identity of others who would dilute or challenge that identity.

For others in the family it is an exuberant demonstration of national identity in the face of political forces who have abandoned an indigenous working population and dismissed its cultural life. There are deep divisions here.

I mention it because Jeremiah enjoins the exiles in Babylon to seek the welfare of the city for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

This could be advice to any immigrant community – to seek the welfare of the place that they have settled. If it is flourishing then they will reap the benefit.

Perhaps as Christians we might see ourselves as immigrants – and I say that because there’s a long and noble tradition of seeing the Church as something like a community of resident aliens. We are a people with our own King, of course, members of a Kingdom not of this world, yet living here and now. We are not called to be of the world, but called out of the world – and yet still remaining within the world. Our Christianity comes before our national identity.

We too should seek the welfare of this place where we abide, for in its happiness, in its good estate, harmony and social cohesion, we will also find our good. As the Prayer Book says, it is a great blessing to be godly and quietly governed.

How shall we seek the welfare of the city?

Jesus is on his way to a city – Jerusalem – the city of peace which will be, for him, a place not of peace but of suffering and death – but also, of course, the place of resurrection. It is a troubled and troubling city.

He is on his way when he meets the lepers who shout out to him beseeching him for mercy. It is a mercy he freely bestows. He doesn’t say anything except show yourselves to the priests. Jesus is fully committed to the worship of the Temple and sends them there for the rites that the healed and restored would expect to undertake.

As they leave – that is, as they go, in obedience and faith – they are healed.

At that point, one of them, a Samaritan returns praising God and thanking Jesus. Jesus is surprised that only one has returned to praise God. He sends the man on his way noting that his faith has not only healed him but made him well – it is the same word as saved. Healed and saved, he departs.

Of interest is the fact that the man who returns is a foreigner – Jesus remarks on it. The man is an outsider – a foreigner and, as a Samaritan, a religious heretic to the Jews. As a leper he is an outcast. He is as low as you could go.

Jesus had not asked the 10 men to return, or to praise, or to thank. All did as they were bid. They set out to the priests faithfully even before they were healed.

But there is something about this man’s response – his response to Jesus. He was also going to the Temple – and what he made of that as a Samaritan I don’t know – but he stops, he turns, he comes back to Jesus. He seeks another encounter with Jesus. His heart is full. So he comes back to worship – throwing himself at Jesus’ feet. He is not only obedient but he is thankful, his faith is alive.

Now I suppose I could take us back to the flags, to the marches and the protests, to the irruption again of nationalism, to all the political attention to immigration – and I could say that here in the Gospel Jesus is delighted by the attitude of the foreigner, the outsider, who not only does what he is told to do but makes a genuine and life-changing response to Jesus. I could do that. Jesus finds joy in the outsider in the midst of the city. A Christian rejoinder to the demonization of the immigrant.

But doubtless that would not be a great surprise. Nor would it be a burden here where – I imagine – there is a loving heart for the vulnerable and the poorest and those most in need of shelter and refuge and asylum.

And since we are speaking of the welfare of the city – the welfare of the country in which we find ourselves – then I wonder if it might not be worth thinking who it would be who would surprise you when they returned to Jesus with heartfelt praise. Which characters – real or imagined – in the divided and dangerous political and social landscape would you expect not to return, who would surprise you by throwing themselves at the feet of Jesus?

Or, more starkly, who might you have put outside the pale, outside the bounds of the acceptable?

There is a whole world of raw need around us – our city desperately needs for us to seek its welfare – for it is in so many ways broken and suffering and riven.

There are many – from so many walks of life – who need some mercy, a little grace, someone to hear them say what it is they feel that they have lost, someone to hear them say what it is that they are afraid of, someone who will stop and listen and attend to them.

It is not for us to have to agree with all they say. We don’t have to accept the answers to their plight that they might propose. That’s not what they need.

But they do need us to love them and to attend to them. And maybe that might be the first step to them coming to meet Jesus where a life-changing encounter is awaiting them.

There is no-one in fact that Jesus has not come to serve. There is no-one seeking mercy and grace who he will turn away. Is not the shepherd overjoyed by any one who is found?

If we wish to seek the welfare of the city, then let us first turn to Jesus ourselves in thanks and praise. Then let us look on every child of God with Jesus’ eyes of mercy – for in so doing then our city will be a little closer to being the Kingdom of God.

Amen.

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