Oct. 12, 2025 | Word Out!
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Sermon – Pastor Dan Peterson
Has Your Faith Made You Well?
October 12, 2025
SCRIPTURE READINGS
First Reading: 2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c
1 Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master because by him the Lord had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from a skin disease. 2 Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. 3 She said to her mistress, “If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his skin disease.”
7 When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, “Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his skin disease? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me.”
8 But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, “Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel.” 9 So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and halted at the entrance of Elisha’s house. 10 Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.” 11 But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, “I thought that for me he would surely come out and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God and would wave his hand over the spot and cure the skin disease! 12 Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?” He turned and went away in a rage. 13 But his servants approached and said to him, “Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, ‘Wash, and be clean’?” 14 So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.
15a, b, c Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company; he came and stood before him and said, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.”
Second Reading: 2 Timothy 2:8-15
8 Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—that is my gospel, 9 for which I suffer hardship, even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But the word of God is not chained. 10 Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, so that they may also obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory. 11 The saying is sure:
If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
12 if we endure, we will also reign with him;
if we deny him, he will also deny us;
13 if we are faithless, he remains faithful—
he cannot deny himself.
14 Remind them of this, and warn them before the Lord that they are to avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening. 15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth.
Gospel: Luke 17:11-19
11 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he entered a village, ten men with a skin disease approached him. Keeping their distance, 13 they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” 14 When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. 15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. 16 He prostrated himself at Jesus’s feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. 17 Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? So where are the other nine? 18 Did none of them return to give glory to God except this foreigner?” 19 Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”
Sermon:
Grace to you, and peace, from God, the giver of life, and from Jesus, the Christ, who is that life and light in the world. Amen.
Now, as you know, from the wearing of a mask and from my comments at the beginning of the service, I am a bit ill. I am under the weather, but my condition, my state of being, will hopefully illustrate the paradox I intend to address in today’s sermon, which is “being ill, but at the same time being healed/being made whole.”
So to begin, I have a simple question for all of you, based on the last verse of our Gospel reading: Has your faith made you well?
Has your faith made you well?
Now, when I’m talking about wellness here, as I indicated a moment ago, I’m not talking about curing a disease or an ailment. It seems that wellness, at least as Jesus presents it in today’s Gospel, is more profound. It speaks to something that lies more at the depth of our being. So again, I ask you this question, each of you: Has your faith made you well?
Now we might ask, what does it mean to be “made well?” Perhaps it means to be made whole, to become a better person, to become, as our Second Reading the last couple of Sundays have said, more content, more willing to share, more generous, more free, more full of “Life that is really Life,” to quote 1 Timothy 6 from two Sundays ago.
Now, as you might guess, there is something missing from this list when it comes to being made well, and that, of course, is gratitude; gratitude, as an essential part of what it means to be healed from a Christian perspective.
Now, recently, I did something that I probably shouldn’t have done, and that is, got into a minor debate on Facebook. You see, I belong to a group called “Christian Poets and Writers,” and I’m positive that I am the only Lutheran Christian in that group. The rest are evangelical. And so, because I tend to troll a little bit, I decided to make a comment in response to a meme that was posted. The meme says this: “Under the category of “Religion:” “Religion says, I obey, therefore, I am accepted.” (My guess is that this is an indirect reference to Catholicism, that in order to be accepted by God, I must obey, I must do the right thing, and then God will accept me.) Evangelical Christianity, on the other hand, in our second category, says, “I am accepted, therefore I obey.”
I am accepted, therefore I obey.
So what I suggested was that “obey,” which is common to both categories, is a problem. I will tell you at the end of today’s message my response.
But first, let’s dig into the text a little for our readings. It’s interesting. Did you know that in the New Testament, which is 27 books, approximately 8,000 words, only a dozen or so words say, “submit to God” or “submit to Christ.” And again, in the New Testament, 8,000 words, 27 books, there are only about a dozen references to “obeying God.”
Guess how many references there are when it comes to “giving thanks to God”? By contrast, 150, approximately 40 of which are in the letters from Paul. It seems, therefore that giving thanks is more important, from a Biblical perspective, than simply submitting or obeying.
Think about it. Every Sunday when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, what does Jesus say right before he breaks bread? “And he gave thanks.” Doesn’t say that Jesus said, “Obey God,” and then broke the bread. He gave thanks.
This is why we call Holy Communion Eucharist. The word Eucharist, eucharisteo in Greek, means thanksgiving. It lies, accordingly, at the core of our faith to give thanks, as a constituent part of what it means to be made well, to live the life worth living.
Now, let me offer a few caveats, before I make more of a case for gratitude as part of wellness. There are some times where giving thanks is not appropriate. True. Ephesians 5 says, “Give thanks to God in all circumstances.” But sometimes giving thanks does not meet the situation. Think, for example, of the book of Job. Job is rightly protesting to God, asking the question that some of us ask when we’re in pain or hurting, “How can you let this happen? How can you permit this?” Obviously, in that context, the context of protest, which is core to the Old Testament, giving thanks is not appropriate.
The same is true—and I offer this as an example of something that happened yesterday to me—I drove out to Auburn to visit one of our members. Her name is Debbie Rosenthal. A few of you know her. She is at the end of her life, and I sat with her husband, Lloyd and her daughter, and together, we prayed for her. We did the Commendation of the Dying. That wasn’t the right time to give thanks.
Now, later on in the process of grieving and mourning, thanks may and probably should and will become appropriate again, but in moments of pain, of suffering and loss, thankfulness doesn’t necessarily have a place. That’s the first caveat.
The second caveat is that sometimes obedience and thanks are woven together in the New Testament. I’ll give you one quick example. In Romans 6, Paul talks about “being obedient to God through Christ from the heart.” Now that’s not simply submission. There’s something more, that qualifies that kind of obedience.
So, it’s not always the case that thanks and obedience are two distinct categories. Categories, as one of my professors used to say in seminary, are always leaky. So, there are some moments, as in the case of Romans 6, where the two seem to be more interconnected, more fused. That’s my second caveat.
Third caveat: sometimes people in power abuse the language of giving thanks to exploit others. I’ll give you a quick example. When I was a professor at Seattle University, making a salary that was not sustainable, the upper administration, many of whom, all of whom were making six figures, would tell faculty like me, “you should be thankful.” You should be thankful for being underpaid while we exploit you for your love of teaching. That is an abuse of gratitude.
So those are my three caveats; that gratitude, though essential to a life that is whole and made well, doesn’t always have a place. It can be abused. It may not meet the situation, and indeed, in some cases, it’s woven together with obedience.
Having said that, most of us would probably agree that being thankful as a general attitude of life is an essential component of feeling more content, more joyful, more appreciative, being made whole, being made well, which is why I am glad to be a Lutheran. Let me explain.
In the 16th century, there were two branches of classical Protestant Christianity that broke away from the Roman Catholic Church. The first was Lutheran Christianity, initiated by Martin Luther, a university professor who read the Bible and discovered something that had been forgotten for centuries, namely, the centrality of the Gospel for faith. And then after Luther, a generation after, to be exact, Reformed Christianity, which was initiated by John Calvin. Luther in Germany, John Calvin in Switzerland, the two first major expressions of Protestant Christianity in the 16th century.
Now, with regard to these two expressions, there is significant overlap. Both Lutherans and Calvinists, which would include Presbyterians today, affirm salvation by grace, that there’s nothing we can do to earn or merit God’s love and favor; that God unconditionally embraces us and sets us free to love others in Christ.
But there are also significant differences, and my thinking is that one of those differences is in terms of how we respond to that grace that we receive. Now, at the risk of oversimplification, let me put it this way: Luther, in the majority of his writings, emphasized gratitude as the appropriate response to God’s grace, that is, God’s unconditional love.
Calvin, on the other hand—or in moments like these, I call him Darth Calvin, or Lord Sidious Calvin—Calvin, by contrast, emphasized obedience. Duty. That’s not to say that Calvin never spoke of thanksgiving for grace, but it’s much less emphasized historically in his writings and the Calvinist tradition. As for Luther and the Lutheran tradition, gratitude is much more central to the response of grace, and we have many examples of this in Lutheran writings. I’ll share one.
This is from his preface to the New Testament. Luther writes, “Truly, if faith is there, he (that is the Christian) cannot hold back. He proves himself, breaks out into good works, confesses and teaches this Gospel before the people and stakes his life on it. Everything that he lives and does is directed to his neighbor’s profit in order to help him. Seeing that Christ has done this for him, namely, set him free from sin through the power of unconditional or reckless love, which is grace, he thus follows Christ’s example out of gratitude, out of gratitude, not out of duty.”
Favor with God is not something required, I used to tell my students, for Luther it’s something inspired, something that should compel us, not out of duty, but out of gratefulness, to love our neighbor as we have experienced God’s love for us unconditionally, here in the Word and at the table in the Eucharist.
Now, gratitude as a response to grace is essential to Luther’s teachings. We heard about that this morning in Cantor Kyle’s forum. We’ll hear about it again next week—we’re doing a three part series on Lutheran Christianity in honor of Reformation Day, which is at the end of the month. Gratitude as a response to grace is essential to Luther’s teaching. It’s fundamental to our worship; it’s in our music; it’s in our liturgy; it’s also right there in Scripture.
Return with me for a moment to our Gospel reading for today. Question: What did the tenth leper do that the other nine didn’t? He thanked Jesus.
He thanked Jesus, and this is how, I submit, his faith made him well. As you can see, that’s different than the curing of a disease. It’s being made well again, being made whole, in this case, through gratitude.
And you know, we have a lot to be thankful for. The world right now is in turmoil. It’s messy. People are at each other’s throats. There’s violence.
And yet, here in this sanctuary, every Sunday, we are reminded that God loves us, that God claims us, and that there is nothing we can do about it. That is good news.
Life, the renewal of life, comes from God. Gratitude is the appropriate response—but don’t take it from me. Take a look for a moment at our Second Reading for today, verses 11–13. (Probably, and I include this for our choir—you’ll notice the way it’s formatted—a quotation from an early hymn.) The author writes,
“If we have died with Him” that is, Christ, “we also live with Him.
If we endure, we will also reign with Him.
If we deny Him, He will also deny us.”
So, in these first verses, you have a conditional statement, one after the other, if we do this, then we will be rewarded. But watch what happens in the last verse, verse 13:
“If we are faithless, he remains faithful.”
In other words, if we fail in our call to discipleship, if we don’t stop and meet the stranger in need, if we speak unkindly to another person or another member of the Body of Christ—if and when we fail, Christ remains faithful.
That’s the gospel right there.
And what’s our response to a Savior who, over and over again, remains faithful to us in spite of the fact that over and over again, we fail?
Gratitude.
This is why we should be thankful; not simply because Luther teaches it, but because it’s right there in Scripture, in the Second Reading, as well as our Gospel reading for today.
Now, let me return to my original question. You recall that perhaps-mildly-unpleasant Facebook debate that I got into? Let me repeat the nature of the debate. The first category was “Religion says: I obey, therefore I am accepted.” In other words, if I do this, then God will love me. The second category says, “I am accepted, therefore I obey,” which I would argue now is half right.
Indeed, “I am accepted.” That is the good news; not that I accepted Christ, but God in Christ accepted me—the great reversal of classical Protestant Lutheran Christianity—"therefore I obey,” not so much.
So what I did was draw a third column. (This is where things got really ugly.) I put “Lutheran Christianity: “I am accepted, therefore I give thanks. And out of that thanks, and to glorify God, I love and serve my neighbor.”
I am as sick as a dog right now, but I couldn’t be more filled with joy at this gospel. I am accepted, therefore I give thanks, and that giving of thanks is essential to the kind of life to which Jesus calls us in today’s Gospel, a life that we are made well, made whole, and then sent back out into a broken, divided world.
So here’s what I wrote. “It’s funny how ‘obey’ crosses over here from Religion to Christianity. (Uh oh.) And I added, “my faith tells me, not to “obey” in response to God’s grace, but joyfully to serve others out of “gratitude.”
And with that, I was removed from the group—just kidding, I was not removed from the group. But my hope is that my partners in dialog saw that there’s something more to this life of gratitude than simply obeying. We have been called to give thanks.
Not sure if your faith has made you well, if your faith has made you more content, if your faith has enabled you to cling less to the possessions you have and share out of the spirit of generosity with others? Practice gratitude. Keep doing what you’ve done today. Come to church, and practice gratitude with us.
And beyond that, I would invite you to do this, whether it’s in the morning or at night, before you go to bed or after you wake up, think of three things for which you are grateful, and then pray for the Holy Spirit to instill gratitude and thanksgiving in you, so that you, and I, may be made well.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.