Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time Yr C 2025

Title

Gratitude for Grace

Outline

Have you ever heard someone talk about “my healing”

Sometimes we talk about healings or other consolations from God as if they were owed to us. Sometimes one hears of people complaining that they had done everything right and yet God has not responded with the expected healing, conversion of a relative, promotion at work, etc. What a contrast with our readings today.

Both the Old Testament and the Gospel start with unlikely candidates

Naaman was an Aramean general, a vicious enemy of Israel. In fact, the slave girl who informs her mistress of the prophet Elisha had been captured by him during a raid - nothing is said of what happened to her mother and father.

In both the gospel and the Old Testament the candidates for grace are lepers. Naaman is a leper and nothing can be done. In the gospel Jesus is met by ten lepers who “stand at a distance” because they are outcasts. Later we learn that one is a Samaritan, an enemy of Israel. Apparently their common plight overcame their ethnic differences.

In both cases there is divine grace

In Naaman’s case it is mediated by a slave girl and then, when he is sent to Israel’s king, by Elisha, who hears of the king’s distress at the request for healing and says, “Send him to me.” Later there is further grace through another slave whose polite and gentle argument gets Naaman to try the cure.

The ten lepers encounter Jesus directly and grace comes in the form of a “nonsensical” command, “Go show yourselves to the priest,” for they had shown themselves to a priest and had been declared unclean. But they obey anyway and only as they go are they healed.

The proper response to grace is gratitude

Naaman shows due gratitude, but Elisha will not let him give him financial reward for it was God’s grace, not Elisha’s “skill.” Naaman is converted to Yahweh, and asks for more grace, two muleloads of Israel so he could worship the God of Israel on Israelite soil. Not the best theology, but still the fruit of conversion.

Only the Samaritan comes back to Jesus with worship and gratitude, perhaps helped by the fact that a Jewish priest would not want to see him. Jesus, his natural ethnic enemy, says, “Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?” And then he points to his trust or obedience, his faith, as the key to his salvation.

Let us find ourselves in these twin stories

Where have we received God’s grace through odd channels? Did we respond to the grace?

Where have we been open to being channels of God’s grace to our natural enemies? Do not seek to profit from it - make sure to point to the true source.

How have we responded to God’s grace in our lives? Have we been full of gratitude or did we think we deserved it? How did we express this to God? Notice that in our stories the impulse is to worship even in a foreigner.

Finally note how God’s grace is often evangelistic. That is the purpose of the healings in Luke-Acts. Paul can accept suffering for it brings him into a closer identification with Christ, but to foreigners to the faith God shows himself in his gracious healing so that they know who is God and turn to him.

Thanks be to God.