Sermon Video: Only the foreigner praised God - Luke 17:11-19

On his way to Jerusalem with his Passion drawing nigh, Jesus is confronted by ten men suffering from leprosy who cry out to him for pity.  In response, Jesus sends the men to the priest to be certified as being cleansed, before they are healed.  When they act in faith and begin the journey, all ten of them are healed.  Only one of the ten, however, takes the time to return to Jesus to praise God, and that one was a foreigner, a Samaritan.  This episode is one of many in which Jesus finds greater faith among foreigner than among his own Covenant people.  This phenomenon reinforces his teaching that Paul will later make explicit that with God there are no racial, geographic, or class distinctions.  There is one Lord, he is Lord of all, and all who would approach him must do so alike through grace by faith.
There is thus no room, whatsoever, in the Christian faith for prejudice or racism of any kind.  It is incumbent upon us, as followers of Jesus, to be on the side of the refugees, the aliens, and generally all those who are treated like "them" by "us".  In Christ, distinctions of "us" and "them" become meaningless, for there are only two types of people in the kingdom of God: sinners and redeemed sinners.

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