Twenty Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
The recent attacks on members of the Indian community and of other communities who have made Ireland their home disturbed many of us. We are all aware of how much we have been receiving from those who have come among us from abroad and who consider Ireland their home. A good friend of mine was in a nursing home recently for some months before she died. Almost all of the nurses, male and female, were from India and other parts of the world, and the care they provided for her was just wonderful. The presence of people from other parts of the world enriches us all.
In the gospels, Jesus, a Jew, knew from his own experience just how much his fellow Jews could receive from those who were not Jews and who were regarded by many Jews as foreign and outsiders. In today’s gospel reading, ten lepers approach Jesus. They stood some way off, as they were expected to do, and called with one voice to Jesus, ‘Jesus! Master! Take pity on us’. Nine of the ten were Jews and the other was a Samaritan. Normally Jews would not associate with Samaritans, regarding them not just as outsiders but as the enemy. However, leprosy was a great leveller. Lepers, whether they were Jews, Samaritans or pagans, lived apart from everybody else, with only themselves for company. Jesus responded to their cry for help, not by healing them there and then, as they might have hoped, but by telling them to set out on a journey to the priests at the Temple in Jerusalem whose role it was to formally declare that lepers were cured. Jesus was asking them to trust that on the way they would be healed. So, they set out together, in response to Jesus’ word. They all had some faith in Jesus’ word; they trusted that they would be healed on the way, and so it happened. Yet when they were healed, only one of them, the Samaritan, turned back in the direction of Jesus, praising God at the top of his voice. The other nine, presumably, went back to their families and communities, from whom they had been excluded because of their disease.
When the Samaritan arrived back at Jesus, he threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. In response, Jesus said, ‘The other nine, where are they? It seems that no one has come back to give praise to God except this foreigner’. Jesus didn’t say, ‘No one has come back to thank me except this foreigner’. Jesus was not looking for thanks from any of the ten. However, he wanted all of them to acknowledge that it was really God who had healed them and to give praise to God for their healing. It was only the Samaritan who recognized God as the source of his healing. He saw in his cure not just his own good fortune but the presence of God powerfully at work. He saw more deeply than the other nine. He saw beneath his healing to the Healer, to God who was working in a life-giving way through the person of Jesus. Yes, he thanked Jesus, but his real focus was God, the Father of Jesus and of us all. It was God whom he immediately praised and it was his praise of God that Jesus acknowledged. The gospel reading says that ‘he turned back praising God at the top of his voice’. That physical movement of turning back was the outward sign of the movement of his heart towards God in joyful praise.
Jesus knew that the people he was addressing, his fellow Jews, had something to learn from ‘this foreigner’. We all have something to learn from him. He teaches us to look beyond the gifts we have received to the Giver, to God, and to his Son through whom God gives us all that is good. Every time we feel blessed or graced in some way we are being touched by God through his Son. Every blessing is an opportunity to open ourselves up more fully to God. Every gift that comes our way is a call to grow in our relationship with God, by acknowledging God as the source of the gift and lifting up our hearts in thankful praise to God. The good things that come our way in life can be so attractive that we can lose ourselves in them; they become our focus. We deeply appreciate all these good things, just as the nine lepers appreciated their healing, but we can fail to look beyond them to God who is the source of all that is good. Like the Samaritan we need to ‘turn back’ in the direction of Jesus who is God with us. The blessings of life can be a stimulus to a deeper relationship with the risen Lord, and this deeper relationship with the Lord will turn out to be the greatest blessing of all. The Samaritan was doubly blessed. He was healed of his leprosy and he experienced that deeper healing which comes from recognizing and responding to the presence of God in his blessing. This is why Jesus said to him alone, ‘Your faith has saved you’. The Lord is always touching our lives in some way, hoping we will recognize his presence and respond in grateful praise to God.