Breaking Open the Word

2 Kings 5:14-17
2 Timothy 2:8-13
Luke 17:11-19
 
All of our readings today have faithfulness and trust as the basis of each piece of scripture, including the Psalm. I don’t write very much about the psalms, but todays Psalm revels God’s saving grace, God’s saving power for His people, Israel.
 
The reading from 2 Kings is about the trust of a foreigner who, after some convincing by Naaman’s own servants, decides to plunge himself in the river seven times as the prophet told him to do. He was enraged that the Jordan river was to be the healing source for him and that the prophet himself was not going to be present.
 
By Elisha’s absence from the healing, Naaman began to understand that he was healed by the God o the land of Israel. After Elisha refused the gift form Naaman, Naaman asked for some of the ground to take home so he could worship the ground of the God of Israel, that there was no other God but the Lord.
 
It was common throughout the region that the people would have many different Gods, statues, images that they worshiped and that is what Naaman believed in also until his healing. He put his trust in Elisha to go to the river to be healed and ended up trusting and believing in the Lord.
 
Again, Paul is writing to Timothy in our second reading and we hear some critical points he makes about believing and trusting in Jesus. The line that says that “if we have died with Him, we shall also live with Him, if we persevere, we shall reign with Him.” These words should reverberate into our very core of our soul. These words are the basis of our faith and trust in the Lord.
 
When we believe without seeing for ourselves, we show that we have faith in Jesus, just like He has said, blessed are they who have not seen and believe.
 
Our gospel today is the story of the 10 lepers who met Jesus on the road as He was going to Jerusalem. He was traveling through Samaria, that region of land where the Jews hated the inhabitants and the 10 lepers stood off in the distance asking the “Master” to have pity on them.
 
This is a story we hear I am sure we have heard throughout our time at mass, and it would be just too easy to make the connection with the reading from the Old Testament where we heard that Naaman was cured of his leprosy. But that is not the connection we should be looking at. Instead, we hear that while all 10 were cured, there is only one who returned to acknowledge that he was cured.
 
He fell at the feet of Jesus to thank him and glorified God for his healing. Here the story takes a turn that mad the Jews angry with Jesus. The one who returned to give thanks was a Samaritan, who were normally non-believers and did not worship the Lord of Israel. This man was different, first because he gave thanks for his healing, but maybe more importantly, as a foreigner, he had faith that he would be healed by the Lord through Jesus.
 
This story goes hand in hand with the story of the mustard seed we heard last week. It is a mater of faith, and how much faith we have to put our trust in the Lord to be the master of our lives. When we allow the Lord to be master of our lives, then all kinds of glorious things will take place in our lives.
 
How strong is your faith?