October 12, 2025

2^nd Kings 5:14-17; Responsorial Psalm 98; 2^nd Timothy2:8-13; Gospel Acclamation 1^st Thessalonians 5:18; Luke 17:11-19

The theme in the liturgy of the Word this Sunday is  clear when comparing the first reading and the Gospel. Both readings have common elements: someone (s) with leprosy, suffering from isolation from community, feared by family, and foreigners. The persons in both stories suffer from a painful disease, from forced separation from family and friends, and feared by community. The only release for such victims in those days was death.

At first thought, those readings lead us to thinking about gratitude, gratitude for liberation from the affects of the disease. It is obvious we should be grateful for every good that comes to us. A person cured of leprosy was required by Jewish Law to have that cure certified by a priest. The priest had to follow a prescribed examination, in large part to certify this person could reenter society and no longer posing a threat to the health of the community.

The added detail in both narratives is important. In the narrative of Elisha and the Syrian general, Naaman, Naaman is a foreigner who is actually an enemy of Israel. He comes to Elisha at the recommendation of a slave girl captured on one of Syrian’s incursions into Israel. Enemies helping enemies! In the gospel narrative, a Samaritan has joined up with Jews. Distress, disease, and despair often join unlikely companions. The hatred of Jew for Samaritan and Samaritan for Jew is forgotten in common suffering.

Both readings from 2^nd Kings and Luke focus on the cure and the gratitude of the foreigner. The nine in the gospel who experienced clear skin were delighted in their good fortune and forgot about giving thanks. This is a lesson about the obligation of gratitude to God, to family, to neighbor, to parish, to neighborhood, to state, and to nation for the benefits each confers. That sort of gratitude is being awake, being aware of the gifts received. That’s an easy admonition to absorb and to practice, especially as a model to children. A constant complaint heard is that many of us – adults and children – have a sense of entitlement. Advertising and marketing sell their products by insisting it is “what you deserve.” Isn’t that silly? By what law are we deserving of a product?

Another common element of these two stories is that Naaman is not Jewish and does not think to be certified cured by a priest.

That would be the same for the Samaritan. However, with the Samaritan it appears he went along with the Jewish cured toward the priest. That is, he went with them till he realized as well that he was cured.

If our thinking and listening about these readings stops with the gratitude, we miss a much more difficult lesson.

In the miracle performed through the prophet Elisha, the recipient of the miracle is a foreigner. Not only is Naaman a foreigner, but he is also a military leader who may have been part of an attack that captured the Jewish slave girl who advised him. Elisha is an example of how God is for us. There is no foreigner for God. Our enemies are God’s children as we are. Our criminals are called by  Our Father to come home as called was the Prodigal Son. Aliens seeking a dignified life and survival are welcomed by God with blessings of opportunity. Those who are far off from us by culture, by language, by faith tradition, by gender, by nationality, are God’s people as well as we. Leprosy robbed its victims of community. Hatred of others robs those hated of their dignity and worth. That theft isolates, creates barriers to peace, fills us with a hubris of prejudice and discrimination. In all this there is this one more point. God uses even a captured, enslaved girl to bring healing to a Gentile.

We live in a world-wide culture that operates with a binary mindset. Our thinking works in either/or, black/white, friend/enemy fashion. The lesson in our readings this Sunday is that God’s way is both/and. That method is inclusive, not exclusive. But conversion of heart from binary to both-and is difficult. It takes conversion of thinking, caring, perception, and judgment. Are we suffering from spiritual leprosy? Does our awareness separate, do we scapegoat other humans, other groups of people different from ourselves? Do we endorse by our silence divisive rhetoric? Do we accept without protest behavior that isolates others?

There is more to these readings than gratitude. This is a call for conversion to how God’s life is. God’s life is both and, that is three persons in One God. The only eternal life we can imagine is God’s. If heaven is our ultimate goal and our life now how we get there, then we should consider conversion.

Dennis Keller dennis@preacherexchange.com

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