The 18th Sunday After Pentecost
Sunday, October 12, 2025
Regina Berens
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Please be seated.
Naaman was a powerful man but there were some things even he couldn’t control. His leprosy was one of them.
Leprosy, until about a century ago, meant that the rest of your life here on earth would be debilitating and disfiguring and you’d be exiled, away from friends and family.
But Naaman had connections. He was the right-hand man of the King of Aram. His wife’s servant girl, who had been captured from the land of Israel, know of a prophet in Israel who could cure Naaman of his leprosy.
Today’s reading leaves out some verses with key details. (This is why they tell those of us who preach to read the entire passage, including sections before and after, for more insight.)
In the four verses we skipped, the king of Aram sends Naaman, loaded down with “ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold and ten sets of garments”, and a letter from the king of Aram to the king of Israel asking that he do the impossible and cure Naaman.
The King of Israel is so distraught he tears his royal garments. All the gold and silver and designer clothes in the world can’t cure leprosy. Yet, if he can’t cure Naaman it might be considered an act of war against the King of Aram.
Fortunately, the prophet Elisha hears of Naaman’s situation and reminds the King that he, Elisha, is a prophet and a man of God and asks that the king send Naaman to him.
But it still doesn’t go the way Naaman expects. He shows up with his horses and chariot only to be dealt with by one of Elisha’s servants- how insulting!- and just told to go wash in the Jordan. Elisha doesn’t even show up. No heartfelt prayers- just, in effect, “go take a bath” in this foreign river. And yet, after some persuasion by his men, Naaman complies, he is cured and he expresses his faith in Elisha’s God.
Compare this story to today’s Gospel. This is yet another example of a story in the Old Testament foreshadowing something later that will happen in the life of Jesus. (I never noticed these till we started pointing them out in our class on Genesis- so thank you, Gabriel!)
In fact, in Luke 4:27, when Jesus is preaching in the temple in Nazareth, he refers to this story, saying, “And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.” It wasn’t all the riches Naaman brought with him that resulted in his cure. He wasn’t even “from around here”- he was a powerful man from an enemy kingdom. It was his faith and his willingness to pursue a direction that wasn’t what he expected that healed him.
In today’s Gospel story there are ten lepers, one of them a Samaritan. We don’t know their names or their standing in the community and there’s no mention of chariots, horses, gold, silver or garments. They kept their distance. They knew they were outcasts.
Jesus’ response is not to lay hands on them and cure them but to tell them to go and show themselves to the priests. For all they knew, the priests might have shunned them because of their incurable disease. But they went anyway because they had faith and they were cured. The Samaritan who returned to thank Jesus was told: “Your faith has made you well”.
What do these two stories have in common?
A disease with no known cure- in other words, a hopeless case.
Status, riches or lack thereof weren’t a factor. My late husband Ron once started a stewardship sermon in his church in NJ by saying. “The good news is, God doesn’t want your money. The bad news is, God doesn’t want your money.”
(I miss Ron.)
That applies to these stories.
There’s healing, even for the foreigner, the enemy and the destitute.
Our Hymnal has a song for just about everything and there’s one about this, too, called “Just as I am”.
It was written by a woman named Charlotte Elliott, who was born in 1789 and grew up to become a vivacious young woman and a talented painter- until her health began to fail in her 30s, leaving her bed-ridden the last fifty years of her life. She went through periods of depression and frustration. When her brother was trying to raise funds for a special project for his church, she felt she could do nothing- and then remembered a Swiss evangelist who had told her years before “Just come to God as you are, Charlotte”.
She wrote the words to “Just as I am”. It raised more money than all the other fund-raising efforts combined. The words describe where most of us have been: “..tossed about, with many a conflict, many a doubt, fightings and fears within, without….Poor, wretched, blind”…”seeking sight, riches, healing of the mind..”
Sound familiar?
God’s grace and healing don’t depend on how much or how little you have. Just come to God as you are.
All you need is faith.
Amen.
