Reflection for Sunday – October 12, 2025

Susan RollSunday Readings Homilies

Readings: 2 Kings 5: 14-17; 2 Timothy 2:8-13; Luke 17: 11-19 
Preacher: Susan K. Roll

“Are you having any trouble crossing the border these days?” ask a few of my friends who know that I cross between the U.S. and Canada regularly.  I tell them, fortunately no, I’m always asked more or less the same simple questions and then I’m on my way.  Except for the time I was bringing into Canada a used cellphone for my housemate.  I had to pull over and three Canadian border officers went to work: one broke into the cellphone, another searched my trunk, and a third quizzed me on my links to Canada.  Border crossings can be easy, or they can be hard.

Negotiating the borderlands or simply being a highly suspect foreigner in an unfriendly land, provide the setting for both our Hebrew Bible and Gospel readings for today.  So does prejudice.  And so does disease, of course.

It’s actually quite remarkable that a young, enslaved girl spoke up to her mistress, helpfully telling her that the prophet in the girl’s native land could cure Naaman of his skin disease.  Naaman was the military commander of forces ranged against Israel.  And just as remarkable was that Naaman was open-minded enough, or desperate enough, to go and visit the prophet, whom he assumed was on the staff of the king of Israel.  And after following Elisha’s directions, he returned with his retinue to give thanks.

What’s not obvious at the end of this short reading was why Naaman believed that the God of Israel who had cured him could only be worshiped on God’s native soil—which is why he asked to take several bushels of dirt home.  His own cultural prejudices blinded him to the fact that the God who worked healing miracles through the agency of the prophet in Israel, was not some tribal god bound to the land.

In the Gospel story, we don’t know whether one or several of the ten men afflicted with a debilitating and contagious skin disease belonged to the Samaritan people that the Hebrew people despised.  Jesus remarks gently on the irony that the only one who turned around to return and thank Jesus for healing him, was a foreigner who belonged to a people considered as enemies. 

Jesus wasn’t afraid of the borderlands, or of crossing enemy territory for that matter.  In John 4 he engages in a whole conversation with a Samaritan woman at the well and, also remarkably, reveals himself to her as the Messiah his people were waiting for.  He gave her privileged knowledge that even his own disciples hadn’t guessed at that point. 

Several of Luke’s accounts can be grouped under the heading, “the Great Reversal.”  God puts down the mighty from their thrones and lifts up the lowly.  The rich man who ignored Lazarus and other destitute persons at his own gate languishes in eternal torment, while those who suffered poverty and disease find comfort in the afterlife.  And here, one afflicted person who happened to be on enemy territory was healed by the local prophet—and returned with a grateful heart to give thanks.

The healing of the ten afflicted men appears in Luke as Jesus was making his way toward Jerusalem, where he would be met with, first welcome, then contempt, condemnation and execution as a criminal himself.  On his own home territory.

Where did we get the idea that foreigners are not just different in some ways from us, but threats?  Since when did a tragically mistaken ideology affirm that people who cross the borderlands, if their skin is a certain color or they speak a certain language, are automatically criminals?  And how, oh how, did it come to the point of incarcerating them under brutal conditions, in other foreign lands?

We need only look toward the border on the south side of the U.S., and to the millions of persons who made their way into the U.S., whether to build a better life or to save their lives, and now live in the U.S. as if it were a potentially dangerous borderland.

How are we called to live out our faith in increasingly threatening circumstances?  Who are the prophets who can act as a source of welcome and healing?  And what are some concrete ways in which we can model compassion, empathy and practical support?

Susan Roll
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