Sermon: Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Luke 17:11–19

Rev. Veronica Alvarez

Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church

October 12, 2025

A few days ago, I returned from Germany, where I spent an incredible time retracing the footsteps of Martin Luther, standing in the places where faith once shook the world.

 I walked through Wittenberg, where Luther nailed his 95 Theses, visited the places where he defended his beliefs.  I stood inside the church where he preached.

Being inside those walls, where the voice of a man who dared to speak the truth even though it cost him everything once resounded, was something that touched me deeply.

Being there confronted me. It made me think about what it means to believe, not only with my mind and my heart but with my feet.

Walking those cobblestone streets reminded me that faith is not something we practice sitting still. It’s something we walk into step by step, often with questions, with doubts, with nothing guaranteed.

Luther had no idea how his actions would change history. He only knew God was calling him to speak, to move, to trust that the truth was worth the risk.

That same faith in motion, trusting before seeing is what we find in today’s Gospel story.

Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. He’s walking along the border between Samaria and Galilee,

between the familiar and the foreign. That’s where he meets ten lepers, people who have been pushed out, ignored, made invisible. They cry out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”

Jesus doesn’t touch them or say, “You’re healed.”

He simply tells them, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.”  That was the rule, only a priest could declare someone clean and allow them back into society.
There was no instant miracle. Just a command that requires faith.

So they go, still covered in sores, still outsiders, still unhealed, but they go. And as they walk in obedience, they are made clean.

 Faith is lived by walking. 

Faith always unfolds in motion. That truth came alive for me as I retraced Luther’s steps, realizing that every step of faith, his, the lepers’, ours is a step into the unknown

It happens on the way, in movement, in trust before proof.

That’s what I felt walking through Germany: realizing how faith calls us to move forward even when we don’t see where the road leads.

Healing happens along the way, as we walk, as we trust without proof.

The same thing happens to us. Sometimes we have to move before we see results. Trust before we see change.

But just when everything seems to be ending well... comes the surprise.

out of ten healed, only one came back. Only one stopped, turned around, and said “thank you.”

And that one wasn’t even from the “right group.” ! He was a Samaritan, an outsider among outsiders.

Jesus asks, “Weren’t ten cleansed? Where are the other nine?”

That question still echoes today.

Because the truth is, we’re not so different. How many times has God carried us through something, an illness, a crisis, a season of worry, and once things get better, we move on?

We don’t mean to be ungrateful, but we forget. We get caught up again in what’s next.

We treat healing like a transaction instead of a relationship.

Maybe, we prayed hard for that job, that diagnosis, that child, that peace, and when it came, we said “thank you” for a moment, but didn’t return. Didn’t stop to truly notice what God had done.

The Samaritan returns, falls at Jesus’ feet, and gives thanks.

And Jesus says “Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”

Then He says to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

The nine got their healing, but the one who came back got something deeper; wholeness. His body was healed, but his heart was transformed. Gratitude does that.

 Gratitude brings us face to face with the One who gives life.

We live in a culture that runs on “more.” More comfort, more success, more approval.

But when we pause to say thank you, we resist the lie that we’re self-made.

We recognize grace. We remember that we didn’t get here alone.

In fact, the word Eucharist means precisely that: thanksgiving.

That’s what worship is, it’s us coming back. It’s us saying, “Thank you, God.

Every time we gather around this table, we come back like that Samaritan, not to earn grace,

but to remember it, to touch it, to say thank you with our lives.

Notice where this happens.  It did not happen in the temple, nor in the city, but on the border.

Jesus moves along the edges. He always does.  He goes where the pain is, where the rules say “don’t go,”

where religion has already given up on people. That’s where healing begins.

Some of us know that in-between space well, between two cultures, two languages, two worlds,

between belonging and not belonging.

Jesus walks that border too. He meets us there.

And that’s what the church should look like, a community on the border. A place where the wounded and the rejected are not turned away but seen, heard, and made whole.

The ten lepers were healed as they went. Sometimes we want certainty before we take a step. But faith doesn’t work that way.

Faith is lived by walking.
Faith means moving when all you have is a word. It means trusting that mercy is already in motion even when your body, your family, or your life still looks the same.

Maybe you’re walking through uncertainty, with your health, your finances, or your relationships.

 The word for you today is simple: keep walking. God’s healing often comes in the journey, not before it.

The Samaritan came back to say thank you, and Jesus calls that faith. Healing is what God does for us. Gratitude is how we respond.

It’s how we live our faith out loud, with joy, with humility, with awareness of how God keeps showing up.

Gratitude changes us. It moves us from surviving to living, from being fixed to being transformed.

Maybe that’s what Jesus meant when he said, “Your faith has made you well.” Not just healed. Whole.

Siblings, as I think about my time in Germany, I realized how easy it is to forget where our faith came from, the people who walked before us, who risked everything so that we could freely gather, sing, and hear the Word in our own language. Gratitude is what connects us to God’s ongoing work in our lives and in the world.

And in our own church, in our community, we have so much to be grateful for, the ways God is healing, guiding, and sustaining us, even when we don’t see it yet.

So maybe this week, we can practice being that one who returned.
Stop.
Notice.
Give thanks.
Because every time we do, faith grows. Healing continues. And Jesus says to us, just as he said to the Samaritan: Get up and go. Your faith has made you well.

May your steps this week be steps of faith.

May your path lead you from complaint to gratitude,

from weariness to trust,

from fear to fulfillment,

from grief to hope.

And when you hear Jesus' voice saying to you, “Your faith has heal you,” may you know that those words are meant for you too.

Amen.