Scripture Reflections for the Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Year C, Lectionary 144
Hate feeling lost on Sundays at church? Searching for a better explanation of the Bible than what you hear from your pastor's sermon? Check out the following collection of audio, video, and text commentaries from various Christian experts for a better understanding of today's scripture that deal with: Community • Cross • Elisha • Entitlement • Exclude • Faith • Gentile • Gift • Gospel • Grateful • Healing • Hope • Humility • Inclusion • Journey • Leper • Naaman • Patience • Preach • Pride • Recognize • Resurrection • Salvation • Samaritan • Sight • Sin • Suffering • Thankful • Unity • Weakness • Welcome • Worship •
“So he reminds Timothy that when you're suffering, when you're facing tribulation, when you are undergoing trials, just remember if you've been baptized you will reign with him. If you are patient you will live with him in the resurrection.”
“Jesus saw them. This is a small but mighty significant detail. You see, Jewish law and human nature conspire to make the leper invisible. People are inclined to ignore outcasts, the sick, the dying because perhaps, who knows, suffering and death make us uncomfortable or we don't want to deal with it”
“It is regrettable that the more familiar we become with the blessings of God the more we take them for granted”
“this gospel calls us to ask big and hard questions about who is at the margins, what they need and how we make social justice real both in reparations and recognition”
“we're all hungry. We're all in need of cleansing and healing, we're all in need of being fed by Christ. So I hope you're here to cry out to the Lord in need but I hope you're here, too, to do as the 10th leper. To give God the one thing that God doesn't have yet: your own gratitude.”
“The Lord hears their cry for assistance. Through his mission and ministry he erases any stigma, stereotypes, prejudices, oppressions resulting from skin disorders, skin color differences, foreigner status and therefore unwelcome statuses”
“so whereas Elijah only healed one leper in the Old Testament, what does Jesus, the new Elisha, do? He heals ten lepers all at once and they don't have to go down to the Jordan River and wash seven times. He does it instantaneously. All they have to do is obey his word and start heading toward the temple and they're all cleansed”
“why can't all ten of them come back to Jesus? Why couldn't it have been done in community? But what if Jesus saying 'go, your faith has saved you' but what if the mission is 'go, bring back the other nine' because it's not just about the one person. It's about an entire community, the entire world.”
“The Jesus we meet in Luke's gospel constantly challenges existing boundaries. Jesus is the embodiment of God's hospitality. He welcomes the outsider and that surely is an important lesson for anyone who would be his disciple.”
“The lesson I take from this is that God's healing is unconditional. That the other nine are not any less cleansed than the grateful one but that it still matters how we accept God's gift with humility, thanksgiving and recognition of God's power to save even the ungrateful”
“our reading from sacred scripture calls us to focus on the many times that God has sent us blessings from heaven. We're also called to focus on how we receive and react to those gifts. Have we either shown gratitude or ingratitude to God for his blessing?”
