November 23, 2025
• Rev. Dr. Rob Fuquay
St. Luke’s UMC
November 23, 2025
Turn Around
Luke 17:11-19
Thanksgiving Celebration Service
I’d like to start by asking us, if you are able, to stand. Now turn around…now turn back again. You may be seated.
Now aside from being highly unusual, how did you find that experience? Was it annoying? Were you ready for the sermon to begin so why I am distracting us by turning us around? Did it change your perspective? Did you become aware of things you wouldn’t have noticed had you not turned around? Did you decide you liked looking the other way better and wish you could turn your pew around?
The simple act of turning around can have profound implications. It is that simple thought I want us to explore on this Sunday before Thanksgiving.
Turning around precipitated one of the most emotional outbursts of thanksgiving in the Gospels. Jesus was approached one day by a group of lepers, ten we are told. Leprosy, then as now, was a dreaded disease, except then it was often a death sentence, at least socially and spiritually.
John Ortberg in his book Love Beyond Reason, describes what leprosy was like in the first century. What started as aches in the joints and loss of energy became discolored patches of skin that turned into ulcerated sores and open wounds. You could lose feeling in the extremities. Leprosy was believed to be highly contagious, so lepers were often isolated away from the community. It was indeed like a social death.(p49)
As it says in the Torah, “Those who suffer from a serious skin disease must tear their clothing and leave their hair uncombed. They must cover their mouth and call out, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ As long as the serious disease lasts, they will be ceremonially unclean. They must live in isolation in their place outside the camp.” (Leviticus 13:45-46)
No wonder, that when the ten lepers met Jesus, they stood at a distance and called out “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” They had to practice social distancing! They no doubt heard that Jesus had power to heal. So they didn’t miss this moment.
Jesus didn’t touch them as he did in most of his healings. He didn’t say, “Be healed.” He simply commanded them to go show themselves to the priest. Why? Because the priest had the power to declare a person healed. Only by a priest’s declaration enabled one to enter community again. So Jesus commanded the lepers to go as if they had been healed, and it says, “As they went, they were cleansed.” That statement alone is worthy of a sermon. The blessing came as they acted in faith.
But what I want us to pay attention to this morning is what happened next. “One of them, when he realized that he was healed, turned around and came back, shouting his gratitude, glorifying God…and he was a Samaritan. (17:15-16 MSG)
In realizing that something wonderful had happened to him, that in Jesus he had experienced something supernatural, that he had encountered the divine, he turned around to give thanks. And in the turning around he received Jesus’ blessing. Jesus said to him, “Go on your way, your faith has saved you.” Understand this is not a knock on the others. The number of sermon that criticize the other nine for their lack of gratitude is legion. But there is no judgment from Jesus on their ingratitude. There is just recognition that they didn’t turn around. This one did, and he received even deeper blessing.
It is a subtle reminder that when we become aware that God has somehow blessed us or met us in a moment, that turning around to acknowledge a unique moment, often leads to greater blessing.
This happened to me this week, at a funeral no less. At the end of the service for Terry Bobzien, I led the family and worshippers to the Great Hall where Chef Joseph and his volunteers prepared a beautiful meal for them. I was trying to herd everyone into the room so they could be seated and we could say a blessing and start going through the line. As I was in my herding and greeting mode an older woman came up to me and shared gratitude for the service. She mentioned having written two books that included poems. She asked if I would like to hear one. I said, “Sure.” She began reciting it and closed her eyes. It wasn’t like “Mary had a little lamb” This recitation last several minutes. It became a little awkward for me as I was trying to herd people and talk to those who wanted to speak to me, but this woman was right in front of me with eyes reciting a poem I could tell was meaningful and deeply spiritual.
Finally, she finished and opened her eyes. She said, “Would you like another one?” I politely said no, I needed to get the lunch started. About fifteen minutes later I saw this woman again. I went up to her and said, “You know, I would like to hear that other poem.” I took her away from others so we wouldn’t be interrupted. She recited another poem, very moving and deeply spiritual. I looked her book. I asked if all the poems were hers? She said they were.
Then she looked at me and said, “I was diagnosed last month with Alzheimer’s. I know I won’t be able to do this much longer, but I’ll be okay. I said, “What makes you okay?” She said, “When I was 14, I was in a church on Maundy Thursday. I was Catholic then and people were draping the statues of the saints as is a tradition. Suddenly I became aware of all these people around us moving about. I couldn’t understand why others in the church didn’t seem to notice. Then there was the most moving, amazing music I had ever heard. I knew in that moment that God was with me.”
I said, “So your whole life, you have relied on an experience you had at 14 that tells you whatever you go through, God is with you?” She said, “That’s right.”
I am so glad I turn around. It would have been easy not to. To rush on to the next thing. But what a blessing to me.
I believe God gives us a reason everyday to turn around, and some days multiple times a day. Often, when we sense those moments, when we pause, when we turn around like Moses on Mt. Sinai who turned aside to go see a burning bush, we encounter something that is not everyday; something that makes us say, “Thank you Lord.”
But lets go back to the Samaritan in our story. He turned around to face Jesus, but let’s understand He was also turning away from limited possibility. This thought is an important one. You see he was a Samaritan. That was like two strikes against him. He was an outcast because of leprosy, but in Jewish society he was outcast because of his race. Being proclaimed clean by a priest would have been fine for the other nine who were natural born Israelites, but for this Samaritan, he would still not have been fully included in society. No amount of ritual cleansing would have changed that. In fact, religion just added to his exclusion.
But he turned around from that. He turned away from voices that said, “You can excel but only so far.” He turned away from conditional acceptance. Instead he chose to praise. What does it look like to make that choice?
On the first day of this month the Dodgers won the World Series. Before Game 6, a feature story was shown about one of the most beloved members of the team, but he’s not a player. His name is RJ. Let’s watch…
Have you ever had a never day? A day full of people telling you what will never happen. How you might succeed but only so far? Filling you with discouragement about what you can’t do or won’t become? It’s so easy and so quick to be done in by those voices. And we have turn around. We have turn in the direction of praise.
A colleague of mine shared how a couple in his church had a child born with Down’s Syndrome…
What did that nurse do? She invited them to turn around. Turn around from limited possibility. Turn toward hope. Turn toward praise.
Is that a helpful thought for you today? In a world with so much negativity and fear, to turn away from that, and toward a God who is always doing a new thing; a God with whom all things are possible; a God who will give us a reason for praise if we seek it.
One last thought about this unnamed, unidentified Samaritan in history who turned toward Jesus. He Turned Around to See His Own Hardship Differently. All of the group would have no doubt had new appreciation for experiences in life that they once could have easily taken for granted: being able to enjoy a meal with their family; hugging or children or grandchildren; attending worship services. Perhaps for the first time they appreciated these things in a much deeper way because of having leprosy.
But I wonder about the Samaritan who turned around to give thanks and discovered a Savior in the process. And this is not in the story. It is completely my own imagination, but I wonder how he would have looked at that event as an old man. That perhaps he didn’t just see it as a one time occurrence that changed him, but he saw it in a larger scope. He saw what became of that day, people he was able to touch because of that day, and the things those people went on to do. I wonder if it changed how he saw future hardships. That he knew God was in the picture of his life and that
Every path leads to praise eventually.
Again, it is not in the story, but I wonder.
When you let your mind wonder when it comes to thanksgiving, it can be interesting where your wonderings take you. In fact, that’s a good way to close this sermon and offer an exercise you might try to deepen your Thanksgiving this week. I call the Thanksgiving Map.
I got the idea from an article I read by Melissa Kirch.