Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Josep Martinez-Cubero
The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, October 12, 2025
“I little dose of ‘get over yourself’ with a good measure of gratitude will take you a long way.” I used to that to my students in NYC all the time when the whined about something they didn’t get or when something didn’t go in the way they wanted. It’s not a very sweet statement, but I don’t think I’m remembered for being a sweet teacher. And I still believe that. I may have even said that to a novice or two here. On the surface, the themes of today’s lectionary readings seem clear: gratitude, the importance of humility, and the enduring power of faith. But I think there is a deeper and more important message that is incredibly relevant for all of us today!
In the reading from 2 Kings, Naaman is an Aramean military commander who suffers from leprosy. A young Israelite serving his wife tells her that a prophet in Samaria could heal him. Naaman is directed to the Israelite prophet Elisha. But instead of receiving Naaman, Elisha sends a messenger to tell him to wash in the Jordan River seven times. Well, Naaman is offended by this and becomes angry. He was expecting a little more respect and individualized attention from Elisha. He says that the rivers in his homeland Damascus are better than any of Israel’s waters. But his servants carefully and gently persuade Naaman to follow the prophet’s instructions, which he does, and his skin is restored. This leads to his conversion. The message seems clear: to receive God’s blessings, we must get over ourselves, let go of our sense of entitlement and our pride and exercise a little humility. But there is another very important message in this story. God’s grace and mercy are not limited to the Israelites but are available to all people, even a foreign soldier whose wife’s servant is an Israelite taken captive by his troops!
Now, in the Gospel lesson from Luke, Jesus is on his journey to Jerusalem and comes upon ten lepers who beg for his mercy. He tells them to go show themselves to the priests. As they follow his instructions, they are cleansed. One returns to express his gratitude to Jesus. His enormous show of gratitude and Jesus’ response to it tell us that we are created to recognize life as divine gift, and to find our salvation at the feet of the Giver.
Now confession… I am an instructions follower. When there are instructions given, I listen carefully and follow them to the very best of my ability. If they are written, I will read them… and will follow them… step by step! I have a gig every summer housesitting for dear friends of mine. Every summer I make sure they are going to leave me a document with instructions. I’ve been housesitting for them every year for the past eight years. Still, the very first thing I do when I get to the house, after greeting all the crazy dogs, that is, is to sit with a highlighter and read that document carefully and highlight anything that is important and I do not want to forget, or I may not already have memorized. So, when I read in today’s Gospel passage that Jesus asks, “‘Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?’” I can picture myself in this scene saying: “What do you mean where are they?? You just told them to go and show themselves to the priests. They are following your instructions, thank you very much!”
But the statement that follows is even more triggering, especially given the reality in which we are currently living in this country: “Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" It strikes a chord because Jesus is all of a sudden not talking to the healed man in front of him, but about him, calling him “this foreigner” in a loud voice. I read that and think: Who in their right mind says that, especially while traveling through a border region that was surely full of these foreigners?! But of course, all we have to do is read the news and see yet another awful statement by one of our political leaders about foreigners and their situation as immigrants in this country.
Since I love Jesus and want to give him the benefit of the doubt, I have to wonder what is the intention of the Gospel writer by having Jesus ask such a preposterous question and in such a way? The Gospel writer has been building on this theme since Chapter 9. Jesus is now on the last leg of his journey to Jerusalem. At the beginning of his journey, Jesus and his disciples are refused hospitality in a Samaritan village. His enraged disciples ask him if they should “command fire to come down from heaven and consume them,” which is itself a reference to a Hebrew Scriptures story about Elijah having fire come down from heaven and consuming a captain and his whole army. Jesus, of course, rebukes his disciples for their violent reaction. Then, in the very next chapter, tells the famous “Good Samaritan” parable in which he casts the Samaritan as the hero of the story. This is, of course, something that would have been incredibly provocative to Jesus’ contemporary Jewish audiences.
Why this tension with Samaritans? Samaritans were the descendants of generations of intermarriage between Jews left behind during the Babylonian exile and Gentiles settled in Israel along with the conquering Assyrians. So, Samaritans shared a common heritage with Jews but were also quite different. They disagreed on how to honor God, how to interpret scripture and where to worship. They did not socialize, mistrusted each other and expected the worst of each other. By the first century, the hatred between Jews and the Samaritans was old and entrenched.
Now, in order to get to Jerusalem, Jesus has to cross the region between Galilee and Samaria- the borderland that marks the boundary between the land where he was raised and the land he was raised never to go. It is the borderland that marks “us” and “them”. So, this story is about more than gratitude. It is about the gratitude of a foreigner who receives welcome. It is about exclusion and inclusion. It is a story about the reign of God- about who is invited, and who belongs in the realm where God dwells. As we are flooded with headlines about the horrendous human rights violations on immigrants in this country, including family separation, medical neglect, physical and sexual abuse in detention centers, racial profiling, and their experience of total trauma, isolation, and utter and complete non-belonging, what does this Gospel lesson have to say about our ongoing responsibility to the stranger, the alien, the other?
In ancient Israel, leprosy was a dreaded disease considered the picture of sin. It rendered a person ceremonially defiled. Once healed, the person still had to go to the priest and carry out an extensive ritual of cleansing before being accepted back into the religious community and worship. While the physical disease was horrible, the terrible social consequences in ancient Israel only added to the misery. The Mosaic Law prescribed that lepers be cut off from society, including their family. They had to wear torn clothing, have their head uncovered, cover their lips and shout “Unclean! Unclean!” wherever they went, to warn others to keep their distance.
When Jesus heals the ten lepers, he doesn’t merely cure their bodies; he restores their identities. They can now return to all that makes us fully human: community, companionship, and intimacy. They can feel again, embrace and be embraced, worship in community. So the response of the tenth leper to Jesus is not only an expression of gratitude for the healing, but also the expression of deep thankfulness for being seen, accepted, welcome because that tenth leper is a Samaritan, a “double other” marginalized by both illness and being “this foreigner”. It is the only time that expression is used in the New Testament, but stories about foreigners are everywhere in the Hebrew Scriptures: Naaman the Aramean, Ruth the Moabite, Hagar, Jethro, Rahab, all of them had been “this foreigner” and challenge our ideas about the lines between “us” and “them” and who gets included when we talk about the people of God. The center of gravity of today’s Gospel story is the surprising fact that the exemplar, the one who returns and gives thanks, is an outsider, a detested foreigner.
May we examine the places in our lives where we feel most comfortable, most complacent, most privileged. May we journey to the borderlands of our lives where we encounter those who are excluded, forgotten, alone and afraid and remember what God requires of us: to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly. And may we all come to understand that God’s salvation is available to all whose vulnerable souls are in desperate need for Christ to welcome them and say: “Your faith has made you well. Yes, your faith, whatever faith and whatever path led you to meet God. Come in. You, the one I just called foreigner.” ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+
Now, in the Gospel lesson from Luke, Jesus is on his journey to Jerusalem and comes upon ten lepers who beg for his mercy. He tells them to go show themselves to the priests. As they follow his instructions, they are cleansed. One returns to express his gratitude to Jesus. His enormous show of gratitude and Jesus’ response to it tell us that we are created to recognize life as divine gift, and to find our salvation at the feet of the Giver.
Now confession… I am an instructions follower. When there are instructions given, I listen carefully and follow them to the very best of my ability. If they are written, I will read them… and will follow them… step by step! I have a gig every summer housesitting for dear friends of mine. Every summer I make sure they are going to leave me a document with instructions. I’ve been housesitting for them every year for the past eight years. Still, the very first thing I do when I get to the house, after greeting all the crazy dogs, that is, is to sit with a highlighter and read that document carefully and highlight anything that is important and I do not want to forget, or I may not already have memorized. So, when I read in today’s Gospel passage that Jesus asks, “‘Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?’” I can picture myself in this scene saying: “What do you mean where are they?? You just told them to go and show themselves to the priests. They are following your instructions, thank you very much!”
But the statement that follows is even more triggering, especially given the reality in which we are currently living in this country: “Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" It strikes a chord because Jesus is all of a sudden not talking to the healed man in front of him, but about him, calling him “this foreigner” in a loud voice. I read that and think: Who in their right mind says that, especially while traveling through a border region that was surely full of these foreigners?! But of course, all we have to do is read the news and see yet another awful statement by one of our political leaders about foreigners and their situation as immigrants in this country.
Since I love Jesus and want to give him the benefit of the doubt, I have to wonder what is the intention of the Gospel writer by having Jesus ask such a preposterous question and in such a way? The Gospel writer has been building on this theme since Chapter 9. Jesus is now on the last leg of his journey to Jerusalem. At the beginning of his journey, Jesus and his disciples are refused hospitality in a Samaritan village. His enraged disciples ask him if they should “command fire to come down from heaven and consume them,” which is itself a reference to a Hebrew Scriptures story about Elijah having fire come down from heaven and consuming a captain and his whole army. Jesus, of course, rebukes his disciples for their violent reaction. Then, in the very next chapter, tells the famous “Good Samaritan” parable in which he casts the Samaritan as the hero of the story. This is, of course, something that would have been incredibly provocative to Jesus’ contemporary Jewish audiences.
Why this tension with Samaritans? Samaritans were the descendants of generations of intermarriage between Jews left behind during the Babylonian exile and Gentiles settled in Israel along with the conquering Assyrians. So, Samaritans shared a common heritage with Jews but were also quite different. They disagreed on how to honor God, how to interpret scripture and where to worship. They did not socialize, mistrusted each other and expected the worst of each other. By the first century, the hatred between Jews and the Samaritans was old and entrenched.
Now, in order to get to Jerusalem, Jesus has to cross the region between Galilee and Samaria- the borderland that marks the boundary between the land where he was raised and the land he was raised never to go. It is the borderland that marks “us” and “them”. So, this story is about more than gratitude. It is about the gratitude of a foreigner who receives welcome. It is about exclusion and inclusion. It is a story about the reign of God- about who is invited, and who belongs in the realm where God dwells. As we are flooded with headlines about the horrendous human rights violations on immigrants in this country, including family separation, medical neglect, physical and sexual abuse in detention centers, racial profiling, and their experience of total trauma, isolation, and utter and complete non-belonging, what does this Gospel lesson have to say about our ongoing responsibility to the stranger, the alien, the other?
In ancient Israel, leprosy was a dreaded disease considered the picture of sin. It rendered a person ceremonially defiled. Once healed, the person still had to go to the priest and carry out an extensive ritual of cleansing before being accepted back into the religious community and worship. While the physical disease was horrible, the terrible social consequences in ancient Israel only added to the misery. The Mosaic Law prescribed that lepers be cut off from society, including their family. They had to wear torn clothing, have their head uncovered, cover their lips and shout “Unclean! Unclean!” wherever they went, to warn others to keep their distance.
When Jesus heals the ten lepers, he doesn’t merely cure their bodies; he restores their identities. They can now return to all that makes us fully human: community, companionship, and intimacy. They can feel again, embrace and be embraced, worship in community. So the response of the tenth leper to Jesus is not only an expression of gratitude for the healing, but also the expression of deep thankfulness for being seen, accepted, welcome because that tenth leper is a Samaritan, a “double other” marginalized by both illness and being “this foreigner”. It is the only time that expression is used in the New Testament, but stories about foreigners are everywhere in the Hebrew Scriptures: Naaman the Aramean, Ruth the Moabite, Hagar, Jethro, Rahab, all of them had been “this foreigner” and challenge our ideas about the lines between “us” and “them” and who gets included when we talk about the people of God. The center of gravity of today’s Gospel story is the surprising fact that the exemplar, the one who returns and gives thanks, is an outsider, a detested foreigner.
May we examine the places in our lives where we feel most comfortable, most complacent, most privileged. May we journey to the borderlands of our lives where we encounter those who are excluded, forgotten, alone and afraid and remember what God requires of us: to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly. And may we all come to understand that God’s salvation is available to all whose vulnerable souls are in desperate need for Christ to welcome them and say: “Your faith has made you well. Yes, your faith, whatever faith and whatever path led you to meet God. Come in. You, the one I just called foreigner.” ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+
