Wider still and wider

Wider still and wider – receiving the gift of salvation A homily for Year C Proper 23, 12 October 2025 Readings – II Kings 5.1-19; II Tim 2.8-15; Luke 17.11-19 In recent months there’s been much talk, notably from followers of Mr Nigel Farage and Mr Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, of something called Christian nationalism. This seems to be an attempt to marry together a certain vision of England with a cultural, albeit theologically illiterate version of Christianity. Insofar as it seeks to co-opt Christianity in its work of establishing a particular notion of our nation, it reminds one of nothing quite so much as Hitler’s attempt to do the same thing in 1930s Germany with the establishment of the Reichskirche, a state-controlled pan-Protestant Church which existed to provide a sanctification of Nazism and deliberate confusion between Hitler as Führer and Christ as Messiah or source of Heil (salvation). Of course, as courageous critics like Dietrich Bonhöffer pointed out (an act that cost him his life), Christianity and nationalism are incompatible, as anyone following Christ’s command to love their enemies will be well aware. Today’s readings are full of questions of nationality and tribal identity. In the Old Testament reading, Naaman the Syrian, the military commander of Aram, whose empire had swallowed up Israel and its vassal king Jehu, is advised by his wife’s Israelite slave-girl to seek healing for his leprosy from Elisha, the prophet in Israel. Naaman’s Aramean or Syrian identity makes this request for healing from the Israelites somewhat complex, and explains both why the Israelite king is made jumpy by the proposed visit (who knows what the repercussions might be if the prophet fails?), and why Naaman himself is so very cross about being told to go and bathe his leprous limbs in the river Jordan. Why on earth would the waters of a conquered territory be more efficacious than the rivers back home? In the end, after his healing, he performs a complete volte-face, and concludes that ‘there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.’ Quite a claim from someone who has defeated Israel in battle. So great is his enthusiasm, indeed, that he makes the considerable return journey from the Jordan back to Elisha, asking him for the gift of two donkey-loads of earth so that, when he gets home, he’ll be able to build an altar of sacrifice and, by worshipping even on a thin layer of Israelite soil, be deemed acceptable by his new-found God. Saint Luke clearly has this wonderful story in mind when he (alone among the evangelists) gives us the healing miracle of the Ten Lepers and the Faithful Samaritan. Although seven centuries had passed since conquering Assyrians had filled Samaria with immigrants, bringing their foreign wives and unorthodox religious practices, the great gulf thus formed between Samaria and the rest of Israel was still unbridged in the time of Christ; and, in shining the spotlight of praise on good Samaritans not once but twice in his gospel, Luke is insisting that salvation cannot be confined to narrow regional allegiances. Indeed, as the author of Acts, Luke launches salvation across the Mediterranean into the whole known world. For salvation is absolutely what the Samaritan is offered in this morning's gospel. Whereas verbs of cleansing and healing have been used both for Naaman and for Luke’s group of lepers, for the returning Samaritan alone is there talk of salvation. Although some editors translate the line simply as ‘your faith has made you well’, the Greek of verse 19 isn’t so much an extract from his medical notes as a theological statement. Yes, his faith has cleansed and renewed his skin, and re-established his membership of the community; but it has, much more, enabled him to take his place through Christ in the coming Kingdom of God. He accesses salvation through faith, just as Paul describes in the passage from II Timothy: ‘if we have died with Christ, we will live with him; if we endure with him, we will also reign with him.’ Such salvation is supremely not a function of geography or nationhood: Christ was indeed the Son of David, and a child of the Covenant with Abraham. But rather more than that, he is the Universal King, risen from the grave and glorified, who calls people from the earth’s four corners to repent and turn to him. ‘Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set; God who made thee mightier make thee mightier yet.’ So, perhaps, we sing at the Last Night of the Proms. But what is clear is that salvation is not dependent on the spread of earth’s empires, no matter how useful in propagating the Gospel St Paul may have found the peace and straight roads of the Roman Empire. No, the one thing needful to each of us is a widening and deepening of our openness to the saving Spirit of God, so that, like the Samaritan, we may be cleansed and made whole, and live the abundant life our Saviour longs to share with us, had we but sufficient faith to receive his gifts with confidence.