2 Timothy 2.8; Luke 17.11–19

“Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David – that is my gospel.”

May I speak in the name of the living God, who is our Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer. Amen.

“Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead.” That’s where our epistle reading begins and that’s where our faith begins too. Not with Jesus the teacher, nor even with Jesus crucified, but with Jesus raised. Because without the resurrection, the cross is just another violent ending. Without the resurrection, the disciples’ fear is justified, the story is over. But with the resurrection, everything is transformed. The scattered disciples become bold witnesses. Death is not the end. The tomb becomes a womb of new creation.

And what rises from the tomb is not some polished, idealised body. It’s not the ‘Gym Jesus’ of classical art. What rises is a wounded body – still marked, still scarred – but radiant with God’s life. This is not erasure, it is transfiguration. Not the removal of fragility but its revelation as holy. Resurrection, then, is not fantasy. It’s flesh. It’s memory. It’s us breaking to become the bread of life.

The risen body of Christ teaches us that salvation doesn’t mean being “fixed” or perfected according to the world’s standards. It means being gathered – wounds and all – into divine glory. It means our fragility is not an obstacle to God’s presence, but the very place where grace breaks through.

And today’s Gospel makes this real. Ten people with leprosy cry out from a distance – each excluded from society, family, temple. Jesus heals them, restores their place. But only one returns to say thank you. And that one, Luke emphasises, is a Samaritan – the outsider among outsiders. The only one who sees that healing is not just about restored function. It’s about restored relationship. It’s about recognising Christ at the centre and giving thanks.

Healing, in this story, is not a return to the norm. It’s not certification of usefulness. It’s not about being reabsorbed into systems that exclude. It’s about gratitude. It’s about communion. The Samaritan’s act of thanksgiving reorders the whole event. What could have been a clinical cure becomes an act of salvation.

This challenges the way our culture sees worth. Theologian Sharon Betcher puts it bluntly: we live in a world where bodies are judged by productivity, where weakness is constructed as liability. But the resurrection refuses that narrative. It reveals that what the world dismisses as weakness, God calls holy. That what the world marginalises, God makes central.

The Samaritan refuses to be measured by usefulness. He turns back, slows down, and gives thanks. In doing so, he enters what theologian John Swinton calls “gentle discipleship” – a way of life not governed by speed or output, but by patience, friendship, and belonging. In his book Becoming Friends of Time, Swinton reminds us that time belongs to God. Not every healing is about “getting back to normal.” Sometimes healing means lingering. Sometimes it means turning back. Sometimes it means resisting the tyranny of the clock to inhabit resurrection time.

So what do today’s readings call us to?

First, they call us to stop imagining healing as conformity. Too often the Church has mirrored the world’s obsession with smoothness, with being made acceptable. But Christ still bears his wounds. The Eucharist isn’t about fixing. It’s about breaking. ‘We break this bread to share in the Body of Christ.’

Second, they call us to reimagine community. The outsider saw what the insiders missed. Our churches should not be places of polished perfection but of mutual dependence, of shared limitation, of deep thanksgiving. Christian community is not built on independence but on communion.

God never called creation perfect. God called it good. And goodness isn’t about flawlessness – it’s about relationship, openness, and story. Perfection suggests closure. But goodness is the fertile ground of grace. It is through our dependence on one another that love takes root and grows.

Third, they call us to make our worship a radical act of gratitude. The Eucharist isn’t a tidy ritual. It’s the Samaritan’s cry of thanksgiving. It is where we proclaim that Christ’s wounded body is life. That what the world calls broken, God calls beloved.

“Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead.” This is the heartbeat of our faith. This is how the disciples moved from fear to joy, from despair to mission. And this is how we are to live – not by hiding our wounds, not by chasing false perfection, but by trusting that our fragility is the very ground of grace.

So may this Cathedral be a place where wounds are not hidden but honoured, where time is not rushed but redeemed, and where thanksgiving disrupts every system of exclusion. And may we, like the Samaritan, live lives shaped by the risen, wounded Christ – our joy, our hope, and the heart of the gospel.

Amen.