Lectionary blog for Oct. 12, 2025
18th Sunday after Pentecost
2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c; Psalm 111;
2 Timothy 2:8-15; Luke 17:11-19
Have you ever felt uncomfortable in church because of the person next to you in the pew? Maybe they’re lifting their hands in a congregation where they “don’t do that.” Maybe they hold some opinions about the world that you disagree with.
When I became a Lutheran many years ago, the concept of consubstantiationist sacramentology was a real problem for me. I wondered if people would be uncomfortable sharing the bread and cup with me if they knew that I wasn’t 100% sold on just how Jesus was present. Nowadays, I’m more likely to raise eyebrows by taking ecumenism a bit too far for some folks, and for praying with members of the Body of Christ who can sometimes be hostile to others.
But if you feel like you’re out of place or don’t quite fit in your local congregation, there’s very good news in the lectionary readings this week: God is delighted by praise from outsiders.
The Naaman story is profoundly shocking to me. Here is someone who was leading raids against Israel and using the slave labor of captured children in his house (2 Kings 5:2). Naaman isn’t just some foreigner; he was a key architect of war and violence that targeted Israelite civilians. Elsewhere, those who attacked Israelites by targeting civilians, and especially the weak and those fleeing genocide, were to be annihilated (Deuteronomy 25:17-19; 1 Samuel 15:2). But God didn’t single Naaman or the Arameans out for destruction—very much the opposite. An enslaved Israelite girl told her captor that there was a prophet in Samaria through whom God worked. Imagine a child volunteering information to cure the physical ailment of her enslaver!
Naaman took the child’s wisdom seriously and came to Israelite territory to be healed. However, his Aramean pride and anti-Israelite attitude almost cost him the chance to be restored. But again, a servant told Naaman what he should do, and the man was finally cured of his skin disease. Naaman had apparently sought the help of every last god known to humans, but they had been unable to save him until he submitted to the will of the God of Israel. Naaman reoriented his life and sought to root out all traces of non-Israelite worship (2 Kings 5:17-19). Elisha the prophet told Naaman to go back to Damascus in peace.
If you’ve ever felt like you don’t fit in at your church, there’s very good news in the lectionary readings this week: God is delighted by praise from outsiders.
But Gehazi, Elisha’s servant, didn’t want to let the Aramean off so easily. Instead, Gehazi made a viscous and deceitful plan to take some of the wealth for the general of Aram as reparations for all the harm that he had caused to Israel. Gehazi’s position was understandable, and a repentant Naaman was happy to pay. But God wanted to provide healing and accept praise for and from Naaman without cost. For failing to let go of national grievances and trying to settle scores, Naaman’s skin disease clung to Gehazi. The moral of the story is that God accepted worship, even from the “wrong” people.
Hundreds of years later, Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem, and was between Galilee and Samaria, presumably not too far from where God had healed Naaman. A group of 10 men with skin diseases called out to Jesus to heal them, and Jesus told them to go and show themselves to the priests—the opening of the rite for reinitiation into the community after a skin disease (Leviticus 13). As they went, all 10 were healed. But only one man—a Samaritan who wouldn’t have been welcomed in the temple and probably wanted nothing to do with Jewish priests—turned back to give thanks to Jesus and glory to God.
Jesus pointedly asked, “Did none of them return to give glory to God except this foreigner?” (Luke 17:18). Jesus healed all 10, but nine obeyed his command to show themselves to the priest rather than engage in spontaneous praise. Sometimes, ecstasy, rather than orderly rule-following, is the right option! But for Jesus’ Jewish disciples and Jewish hearers, the returning Samaritan was more than inconvenient. He offered the wrong kind of praise, in the wrong fashion, with the wrong priests, on the wrong mountain! How could Jesus accept this man glorifying God when he was doing it wrong?
We Christians fight over all sorts of things. What exactly is happening in the bread and wine (or juice)? What are the best kinds of worship music? How and when should someone be baptized? These questions can be important, but they can also be alienating and create idols out of our own rules. Then, as now, God confounds expectations of what proper praise looks like, and more crucially, who is allowed to give it. Naaman and the Samaritan can be troubling, to be sure. But they are also healed by God’s grace and welcomed into the community of God’s people.
