Sermon Thoughts – 28th Sunday (Lk 17, 11-19)

Sermon Thoughts – 28th Sunday (Lk 17, 11-19)

There is a ‘Tintumon Joke’ spreading in internet:
One day Tintumon comes home and asks mother:
“Mum, people think that I am God!”
“why?” “Who said that?” asked his mother eagerly.
“I went again to our neighbour house and the lady shouted;
“Oh, my God, are you again here!”…
(…because it was nearly a week he broke their window-glass with a cricket ball.)
It may be a simple joke.  But it says a truth.
We use the word “God” most time out of place or with out much awareness of the meaning. Awareness of God in the life is 10%; says the Gospel passage of this Sunday. There were 10 asked for a healing. All the ten were healed, without any hard work from their side at all. On their way to the priest (for purification) and to convince the society, it is just only 1 out of 10 returns to Jesus. There is less awareness about God in the lives of 9 healed Jews.
There may be 2 reasons for that:

1. The urge to fulfil the necessary “rituals” might have compelled the healed 9 Jews to go to priest, rather to return to Jesus.
2. Taken for Grantedness or unawareness of God’s assistance in the life.

The Samaritan ‘pagan’ had no such thoughts of ritual-compulsions. His prime aim was a healed body. And he returns to Jesus to thank him, who healed him; intervened in his life.
Just like the 9 Jews, we too forget God in our daily worries and hurries.
Jews had the thought that they were God’s chosen people. So it was God’s ‘natural duty to work wonders for them’???
If an old person gets help in a street, I used to hear such a comment, “you are an angel”. It is not the “word of gratefulness” for that we have to go after. But more than that, it reminds me and you, about a mission- an angelic mission.
We are called to be the Messengers of God in our life –a unique messenger; to represent God in our own style.
As in a prayer, “…we are the hands of God in world, as God has no hands to do it”.
If a society is away from God, we are somehow responsible for that. Because we are not representing Him: remember, we are created in the “image of God” and our images have less resemblance to God’s image.
We see some change in this passage very clearly: ‘Master’ becomes ‘God’. ‘Cry’ becomes ‘adoration and praise’.
That is the wonder, the inner wonder of this Gospel. Meeting God in our daily life, must give us such changes in our lives: our sorrows and grievances must be changed in to praises. God must be nearer than the past.  May God bless us. Amen!
-
Fr Thomas Kalathil