When we find ourselves in the wrong place, taking a wrong turn or making a wrong decision, we say we have gotten “off track.” Whether physical, emotional, or spiritual, we feel disquieted outside familiar, customary territory. We crave comfort food and the well-worn paths taken with friends and family to help us get back “on track.”

In today’s gospel text Luke takes an event that would have made Jesus seem radically “off track” — visiting the home of a Roman centurion, a Gentile soldier — and yet presenting it in such a way that it would have reminded first century Jewish readers of something familiar — the prophet Elisha’s healing of Naaman (2 Kings 5:1-14). Luke gets his readers back “on track” placing Jesus’ wholly new role as prophet and healer in the tradition of Elisha and Israel’s…