28th Sunday in Ordinary Time
2 Kings 5:14-17; Luke 17:11-19
We’ve gathered to celebrate 90 years of sacred encuentro among members of the Dominican Sisters Conference. Look around the room: we come from different congregational, generational, geographic, linguistic, ethnic, national, and ministerial cultures. Praise God for that diversity. In times such as these, when the word diversity costs institutions their public funding, Bishop Roy Campbell, Auxiliary Bishop of Washington, D.C., and president of the National Black Catholic Congress, reminds us that DEI, spells dei and means “of God.”1 Our Creator delights in diversity and desires equity amongst peoples. Jesus practiced a ministry of inclusion as we see in today’s Gospel, healing people with leprosy so they could be reincorporated into community. Our Dominican tradition values diversity of perspectives in our quest for the fullness of truth. We practice equity in distributing common goods according to each one’s needs. Every voice is included in our democratic self-governance. Today we face the challenge of moving “from we to one,” and in that movement we hear God’s call to become truly intercultural.
Our readings today offer parables of inclusion and interculturality. Jesus’ most transformative encounters happened across cultural differences. In today’s Gospel, the Samaritan leper surprises Jesus by returning to give thanks to God. Even Jesus was surprised by how God works through unexpected encounters to reconcile divisions and break down barriers.
The first reading tells of the unanticipated meeting between Naaman, commander of the Aramean army, Israel’s enemy, and Elisha, Israel’s prophet. The Aramean army had laid siege to cities in Samaria, creating famine conditions to starve the inhabitants and raiding villages to take captives. Naaman saw the people of Israel as less than, their lives expendable and deportable. Yet, when he hears about a prophet who might be able to heal his leprosy, he is desperate enough to seek him out.
Naaman overcame his prejudice and risked entering enemy territory, where he could be ambushed or rejected and humiliated. Why would anyone in Israel choose to help their oppressor? When Naaman reaches Elisha, the prophet may well have asked God, “You want me to help him? This man is killing my people!” Elisha won’t even go out to meet him. Instead, he sends a messenger telling the commander to wash in the Jordan—not what Naaman was expecting. He is so unimpressed that he becomes defensive. He knows how miracles should be worked: “the prophet should come out and call upon his God and wave his hand over the spot.” Elisha’s ways seem strange to him—unsophisticated—so he becomes angry and threatens to walk out. On the defensive, his sense of cultural superiority kicks in. “The rivers in Damascus have cleaner waters than the Jordan!” Luckily for Naaman, his advisors know how to disarm his defenses and invite him into a learning stance. “If the prophet told you to do something extraordinary, you would do it. Why not try this?” So, Naaman plunges seven times into the Jordan, and he was made clean.
Naaman’s defensiveness may resemble dynamics within our own communities when we’re relating across cultural differences. Some of us from the dominant culture believe that we know best how things ought to be done. We say, “My way is the right way, and my anger is justified when sister doesn’t meet my expectations.” By contrast, Naaman’s cleansing reveals that, when we cling to control or believe in our superiority, we foreclose the possibility of entering into right relationship with each other and our neighbors.
When Naaman comes to respect Elisha’s cultural knowledge, he encounters the saving power of God. Elisha’s confidence in his own wisdom elicits that respect and wins over his enemy. Elisha, too, is surprised by what God is doing. At first, Naaman asserted his dominance over Elisha, yet he ends up professing himself the prophet’s servant. Respect for different ways of knowing is essential for living interculturally.
So, too, is reciprocity. When Naaman returns to Elisha, he tries to give the prophet expensive gifts of gold and silver coins and fancy garments. He offers commodities in exchange for the healing as if they were engaged in a commercial transaction. In other words, he tries to commodify Elisha’s prophetic gift and God’s healing power. But Elisha refuses. Naaman need not repay God; that would dishonor the gift. The response God desires is Naaman’s coming to believe. Naaman requests soil from the land of Israel to carry home so that he may henceforth worship no other god but Adonai. The soil grounds him in a new covenantal relationship with the God of Israel. The gratuitous gift elicits a profession of faith.
Naaman is converted from arrogance and superiority to respect and reciprocity, not only for Elisha but also for the land. At Elisha’s prompting, Naaman turns toward Earth to experience the sacredness of water and soil. The army commander must be reconciled to the land that he has harmed through his war-making. He undergoes an ecological conversion, discovering his elemental connection to creation. Scripture says no more about Naaman after his visit to Elisha—maybe he went home and beat his swords into ploughshares!
This encounter between Naaman, Elisha, and God resonates with our reality as Dominican sisters and associates seeking to become an authentically intercultural community that values respect, different gifts and ways of knowing, and the wisdom gained from lived experience. The transformative power of encounter has been part of our Dominican family story since the beginning going back to Dominic and the Innkeeper, to Catherine and the leper. We know that no one culture has the whole truth. Only through dialogue do we discover what is real and true. In a world that wants to divide us from one another, our communal life and mission point toward an alternative future.
Our commitment to interculturality is how we preach hope in times such as these. Theologian Walter Brueggemann teaches that hope speaks the language of grief and amazement.2 We are familiar with grief. We lament the destruction of cultures, the domination of peoples, and the devastation of Earth that has caused deep harm to Black and indigenous life, migrant families, and the poor. In these times of despair, we mourn the victims. We can't meet these challenges on our own, but God empowers us to see what we have failed to see and to remain open to unexpected grace. Our hope is in a God who is radically free to create something new, beyond all expectations. “The word of God is not chained” (2 Tim. 2:9). What if, in moving
“from we to one,” we are being transformed into a diverse, equitable, inclusive, and intercultural community—a sign of hope for the life of the world. How amazing that would be!
1“Bishop Roy Campbell: ‘DEI means God’,” Pax Christi USA, 26 Sept. 2025
https://paxchristiusa.org/2025/09/26/bishop-roy-campbell-dei-means-god/.
2 Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 40th Anniversary Edition (Fortress Press, 2018).
Annie, This reflection was inspired and inspiring.. thank you for the vivid presentation of humanity and virtues it put before us from biblical times, lived centuries later by our Dominican models, and so needed now , Your preaching was /is a gift.
Gracias, peace, Kay Mahady