Turning Toward Healing

Sermon Proper 23, Year C, Track 2:
"Turning Toward Healing"
Texts: 2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c; Psalm 111; 2 Timothy 2:8-15; Luke 17:11-19

The stories we’ve just heard are healing stories –
but not in the way we often imagine healing.
They aren’t about miracles that fix people so life can go back to normal.
They’re about encounters with grace that change what “normal” even means.
They are about humility, gratitude,
and the strange ways God’s wholeness breaks in where pride and power falter.

Naaman is a man of rank -- a general, successful, admired.
He’s used to commanding others, not being told what to do.
But when a servant girl -- a captive from another land --
tells his wife there’s a prophet in Israel who can heal him,
the whole story begins to turn.

Already, the hierarchy is upside down:
wisdom comes from below, from the powerless.
Naaman travels to Israel carrying gold, silver, and fine garments --
as though healing were a transaction.

But the prophet Elisha doesn’t even come to the door.
He sends word: “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and you shall be clean.”
No ceremony, no performance, no prestige --
just muddy water and obedience.

Naaman is furious. This is not how a man of status expects to be healed.
He wants something impressive.

But grace doesn’t need to be impressive.
It only needs to be received.
When he finally steps into the water –
when his pride gives way to trust --
his skin becomes like that of a child.

But more than his body is healed.
Something in his soul softens.
He returns not boasting, but proclaiming:
“Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.”
The healing he receives is inseparable from the humility he learns.

Centuries later, ten lepers cry out from the margins:
“Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”
They stand at a distance -- as they must --
their bodies and their belonging both disfigured and scarred.

Jesus doesn’t touch them or speak a formula.
He simply tells them, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.”
And as they go, they are made clean.

It’s only one, though -- a Samaritan, again the outsider -- who turns back.
He falls at Jesus’ feet, praising God.
And Jesus says, “Were not ten made clean?
But the other nine--where are they? … Your faith has made you well.”

In Greek, that word “made you well”
can also mean saved you, made you whole.
All ten are cured, but only one is made whole.
The difference is gratitude.

Healing doesn’t end with the disappearance of symptoms;
it ends with the awakening of thanksgiving.

Both stories show that healing isn’t magic, and it isn’t merit.
It’s participation.
It’s entering the flow of grace already at work in the world.

Naaman joins that flow when he lowers himself into the river.
The Samaritan joins it when he turns back in gratitude.
Both are acts of humility and faith,
and both open a door to deeper wholeness.

We often want healing to be control: fix me, fix them, fix this.
But divine healing is invitation:
come into alignment with the life that is already rising within you.
It’s not about becoming someone else;
it’s about remembering who you are.

Notice, too, that both healings are social.
Leprosy isolated people.
Naaman’s illness stripped away the illusion of control
that power and pride had given him,
and his healing restored him to relationship --
with God, with others, and with his own heart.

Healing restores relationship -- to God, to self, to community.
When Jesus says, “Go, show yourselves to the priests,”
he’s sending them back into the human circle.
Healing is never private.
It ripples outward.
It creates communion.

Our world is full of dis-ease -- not only in our bodies,
but in our body politic: divisions, fears, contempt.
We long for a cure,
but what God offers is something deeper -- reconciliation.

God’s healing doesn’t erase difference;
it weaves it into wholeness.
That’s the meaning of the Eucharist we share:
broken pieces made one body.

Paul, writing from prison to Timothy, reminds him:
“Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead…
The word of God is not chained.”
 
The same pattern runs through each of our readings.
Healing is resurrection in miniature -- life unchained.
Naaman comes up from the water like a new creation.
The leper kneels at Jesus’ feet, alive again in community.
Paul, even in captivity, proclaims freedom.

Salvation, in this sense, is not a personal ticket to heaven
but the continual healing of all creation.

Wherever mercy loosens pride,
wherever gratitude replaces entitlement,
wherever love reweaves what has been torn,
there Christ is at work --
still cleansing, still restoring.

Maybe that’s why gratitude is the heartbeat of faith.
The Samaritan doesn’t go back to the priest;
he goes back to the source.
He recognizes that the power flowing through Jesus
is God’s own compassion made flesh.
And his response is worship.
Not duty, but delight.

Gratitude is not the polite “thank you” after the gift --
it’s the recognition that all of life is gift.
When we see that, we ourselves are healed.

In a sense, every Eucharist is this moment.
We come as beggars and foreigners,
carrying our afflictions, our need, our dis-ease.
We are met not with spectacle but with simplicity --
bread and wine, water and word.
And in receiving them,
in turning our hearts toward gratitude,
we too are made whole.

Where do you need to enter the river today?
Where do you need to turn back in gratitude?
The invitation is the same:
lay down the armor, step into grace,
let the current of mercy carry you.
Healing will come -- perhaps not as cure, but as communion.
And when you rise, may your skin, your heart,
your life shine with the quiet radiance of those who know
they have been touched by God.

Amen.