From Rev’d Caroline – carolinesymcox@googlemail.com, 01285 712467
Readings for Sunday: 2 Kings 5.1-3, 7-15c; 2 Timothy 2.8-15; Luke 17.11-19
To hear Caroline’s sermon click on the arrow below.
The following is taken from the Parish Newsletter for Sunday 12th October 2025.
This Sunday at St Mary’s we will be celebrating the season of harvest, bringing gifts to be distributed to those who have need (via the Cirencester foodbank, which of course supports families in Fairford as well Cirencester and the surrounding villages), and giving thanks to God.
Our readings this Sunday are appropriately all about gratitude, and in what circumstances it might emerge. Both our Old Testament and Gospel scriptures show us examples of gratitude coming from perhaps unexpected sources – both people with leprosy, but the one a foreign general, and the other a denizen of Samaria – a region famously on bad terms with the Jewish people. We see thankfulness from both, the end result once pride and arrogance and despair have given way to God’s goodness.
The celebration of Harvest is all about thanksgiving. It is an occasion to consciously call to mind all the goodness in the world, in all its different forms – richness, beauty, fruitfulness and peace. Goodness in the natural world, and goodness and fruitfulness in people as well. It is easy for us to go through our normal pattern of days without noticing all the wonderful gifts that surround us, and so this time of naming and recognising all that we should be thankful for is a vital part of our spiritual awareness.
It pushes back on both of those negative ways of being we see in our scriptures. Firstly, the arrogance that we see in Naaman – entitlement and pride, expecting honour and particular treatment, and being prickly and put out when we don’t get it. The thankfulness of harvest reminds us that the goodness of the world doesn’t exist because we are owed or demand it – it exists out of God’s good and free gift, and his endless love for us. Secondly, the despair that was initially the lot of the leper and his companions healed by Jesus. Leprosy was a terrifying death sentence, and without Jesus putting hope into his heart, that man might have given up. Instead, we see the joy and gratitude of a man given a new gift of life.
This harvest-tide what might you be grateful for, in this amazing world of ours? What fruitfulness might there be in you, for you to share with others – gentleness, kindness, perseverance? We raise them all before the Lord our God, and give thanks!
Rev’d Caroline
Updated 13th October 2025