URC Daily Devotion 28 July 2026

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Tuesday, 28 July 2026
Reformed Spirituality: A Thankful Spirituality 
 

Luke 17:11-19
On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance,  they called out, saying, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!’  When he saw them, he said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were made clean.  Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice.  He prostrated himself at Jesus’  feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan.  Then Jesus asked, ‘Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?  Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?’  Then he said to him, ‘Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.’

Reflection
Ten lepers were healed, but only one – a Samaritan – returned to give thanks. Giving thanks is at the heart of Christian spirituality.  The great Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth once said that only as we give thanks to God do we express our true being.  The Church is, in effect, the community of ‘tenth lepers’, those who bind together to give thanks to God for the extraordinary gifts of being itself, consciousness by which we become selves, and the salvation which envelops us in Christ Jesus.  ‘Eucharist’, the earliest name for Holy Communion, means simply ‘thanksgiving’ and the prayer at the heart of the service is ‘The Thanksgiving’ for all God has done for us in creation and salvation.

John Calvin was quite clear that the Church should celebrate Holy Communion every week, but the city council of Geneva thought otherwise, and that is why the Reformed initially maintained the medieval practice of quarterly communion – however, no one should confuse the frequency of celebration with the seriousness with which it is taken. 

Worship is the performance of the symphony of God’s love as recorded in the Scriptures, and it relies, in our spirituality, on the discerning ear – first of the preacher, and then of those who hear. It is our Reformed experience that God comes to us through the frail, ordinary vessel of human language as much as through those ordinary things of life, bread and wine. As we worship, God’s Word comes to us through the words of Scripture and its interpretation in the sermon and through hymns and prayers. In 1941 the Reformed philosopher H.H. Farmer wrote of the sermon that it was neither essay or lecture, commentary on political affairs or morals but ‘…God’s great activity of redemption in history of the world of persons.’

Prayer
Lord, you spoke
and a Universe sprang into being;
Lord, you spoke
and prophets proclaimed truth and poets sang praises;
Lord, you spoke
and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
Lord, you speak
hallowing our frail languages,
and as we hear, 
our lives enter the reality of Christ’s kingdom.
Thanks without end be yours, Lord our God. Amen

Today’s writer

The Revd Dr David Cornick is a retired minister living in Cambridge and a member of Downing Place URC. He is an Emeritus Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge.

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