Today’s Gospel is more complicated than it seems. This story is often preached as a invitation to gratitude. I don’t have a problem with gratitude! I feel grateful for many things on a daily basis. Gratitude is theologically appropriate and psychologically beneficial. But! It’s not at all clear to me that the nine who are healed in this story, but don’t return to Jesus, are ungrateful.

Let me offer some quick but essential context. These ten men have some kind of skin disease; it might or might not be the disease that we call leprosy, today. Way, way back in early Bible times, people understood that skin diseases can be contagious, can spread between people, even though they didn’t understand why. There weren’t doctors or public health officials, so the leaders they did have – religious leaders – had to be both of those things. The thirteenth chapter of the Book of Leviticus, the third book of the Bible, describes in somewhat unpleasant detail exactly what the priests should look for, when examining a skin ailment. If someone had a serious skin infection of some kind, they had to live on the edge of the community, avoiding contact with others; and the priest would check them every week to see if the infection was healing. If their skin cleared up, they could return to their home and family and normal life – but they had to get the all-clear from the priests to do that. This is public health before public health; it sounds cruel, but it’s better than letting leprosy run rampant through a village. 

This religious handling of illness and health is the reason our Gospel text describes this healing as being made clean. This isn’t just physical restoration, but social and spiritual cleansing.

So! These ten men seem to have formed their own little micro-community, since they’re not allowed to come close to other people; notice they keep their distance from Jesus. They hear that this famous teacher and healer is passing through, so they come to meet him. They call out for him to have mercy, and Jesus tells them, Go, show yourselves to the priests. 

It seems to me like it’s a significant act of faith that they turn around and set out, even though Jesus hasn’t obviously done anything yet. But as they go, their bodies are restored; they are made clean. 

Nine of them – we presume – continue on to present themselves to the priests. Which is the right and necessary thing for them to do! It’s the only way for their physical healing to be fulfilled by being restored to community and normalcy. There’s no reason for Jesus to be so snarky about them, here. 

I wonder if Jesus didn’t expect any of the ten to return. And when one of them does rush back – praising God loudly, throwing himself at Jesus’ feet, generally making a scene – he has to do something with that disruption. So he makes it into a little teaching moment about gratitude… even though the other nine, wherever they are, are probably also plenty grateful and expressing that in a religiously appropriate way. 

If the point isn’t gratitude – or isn’t only gratitude – what else is going on here? Both Luke’s Jesus and Luke himself make a point of the fact that the one who turned back is an outsider – a Samaritan. Which makes perfect sense, actually! Samaritans lived – and still live – in the region that used to be the northern Kingdom of Israel. They see themselves as descended from Moses, and sharing the same history and God as the Jewish people; but they believe that a mountain in their region is the holiest site on earth, not the Great Temple in Jerusalem. Tensions between Samaritans and Jews were high, after attacks on each other’s holy places in the decades before Jesus’ birth. So, this Samaritan was never going to go show himself to the Jewish priests. That wasn’t his faith, and he would not be welcome. 

Jesus wants his disciples, and the crowd that gathers whenever he stops to teach and preach and heal, to notice that the tenth man is grateful – but also to notice that he’s a foreigner. The Greek word is allogenes, literally “from somewhere else.” To put it in the simplest terms possible, Jesus wants his audience to take away two thoughts: Hey, I should thank God when good things happen, and, Hey, sometimes foreigners aren’t so bad. They can be just like us – or even better! 

Jesus’ calling his hearers’ attention to the righteousness of this foreigner is aligned with one of the great themes of the Bible. The Old Testament, the Scriptures from before the time of Jesus, are very clear that God’s people are to treat the stranger, the alien, the immigrant with respect and care, because they have been strangers and aliens – in Egypt in their early history, in exile in Babylon much later. The New Testament in turn is incredibly clear that God does not have a favorite kind of people; that followers of Christ are all one, irrespective of language, race, class, nationality, gender; that we’re called to love our neighbors, and that love is what makes someone a neighbor, not proximity or affinity. 

It’s easy to take for granted that we all know and understand this. But our lessons today point towards our faithful obligation towards the other, whether defined by ethnicity, language, national origin or immigration status. And even when we know where our church stands, it can be helpful to talk about why – especially when some of those others, those neighbors, are in danger. 

Last month was Treaty Day for southern Wisconsin. The UW Madison website explains, “In a treaty signed on September 15, 1832, the Ho-Chunk nation ceded Teejop (Four Lakes) [and much of southern Wisconsin] to the United States [government]… [That treaty is] what allows non-Ho-Chunk people to reside in Madison today… 

It was signed under duress…, and required [the Ho-Chunk] to leave Teejop. The treaty began more than forty years of attempted ethnic cleansing when soldiers and many settlers repeatedly used violence and threats to [try to] force the Ho-Chunk from Wisconsin.”

I don’t know of anyone in our congregation who claims indigenous identity or tribal affiliation. That means that through the lens of Treaty Day, we are ALL people from somewhere else. 

And yet we’re seeing open hostility from a whole lot of other from-somewhere-else type folks, towards more recent arrivals – or those perceived as such. That hostility, in the highest levels of our government, is making some of our great American cities feel like war zones – not because of the residents, but because of the masked and armed outsiders thronging the streets, raiding apartment buildings and workplaces, seizing civilians with little or belated accountability to the rule of law, threatening those who protest or resist with escalating violence.  

Every week, when we pray for all nations and peoples, I pray for all migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. Sometimes loudly, sometimes quietly, but always. There are so many reasons people leave one place and come to another – for study, for safety, for freedom, for work and opportunity. (Significant chunks of our economy depend on immigrant workers.) It’s often a mix of factors that drive a person or household to pull up stakes and set out for somewhere else. But it’s always hard, and risky, and it’s probably always at least a little sad. Deserving of compassion.

Latino New Testament scholar Eric Barreto writes, “The experience of the foreigner is unenviable. On the one hand, the foreigner’s new home is never quite home. Many will dream of returning to the land of their birth, but… for most, returning home is a dream; it is pure nostalgia that can easily rot into resentment, decline into despair. Their new home is their true home, [but] it may never feel that way.” 

Barreto continues by pointing out the centrality of the foreigner – and the experience of being in a place where you don’t belong – to God’s people in Scripture and history. He argues that to devalue and decry the presence of foreigners among us today, our more recently from-somewhere-else neighbors, is to turn away from part of our core faith story, to settle for an incomplete Gospel. He concludes, “The foreigner is a vital presence among us. The foreigner is a reminder of the pain of displacement many of us have felt. The foreigner is a reminder that God’s promises know no boundaries or borders, that God’s grace will not abide by the arbitrary lines we draw between ourselves and others.”

I have to confess to a failure of empathy here. I find it somewhat hard to understand those who feel resentful or threatened by the presence of more-recently-from-somewhere-else folks among us, because to me it mostly seems like a blessing. My parents are coming up for Thanksgiving week, as they often do, and as always, our planning for the week involves quite a bit of conversation – and some difficult choices – about where to EAT. The amazing Lebanese place over in Middleton? The new Mexican breakfast place down off Fish Hatchery? The South Indian place across from PetSmart with the excellent dosas? Taigu Noodle, down the road, run by the amazing Hong Gao, who leads the Chinese choir that practices here on Saturdays?  

Look, there’s a lot more to the complexity and ambiguity of the immigrant experience, and to being a truly diverse and affirming city, than having lots of interesting restaurants. Food is superficial; but it is also a real and meaningful way to notice how much we are enriched by our diversity. 

Last week I saw a snippet of video of ICE activity on the east side of Madison. In the comments under the video, several people were saying, Come to my town – naming other towns and cities in Wisconsin, implying that they’d like to see their immigrant neighbors tossed into unmarked vans and driven away.

One commenter said, Come to Beaver Dam. Beaver Dam is a small city is about 50 minutes northeast of here; its population is about 12% Latino. My friend Mike Tess is the pastor of the Episcopal Church there. Mike is a gringo like me, but he has a deep commitment to learning Spanish so that he can be in relationship with folks in his community, and potentially welcome them into his church. (He wants to take a group from our diocese to Mexico for a language immersion course next summer – let me know if you’re interested!) Imagine being a Latino person living in Beaver Dam, interacting with white community members, as you must, and not knowing: Is this somebody like my friend Mike, a person of warmth and curiosity? Or is this somebody like that person in the comments, who wants you gone, and doesn’t much care what becomes of you? 

The prophet Jeremiah writes to his fellow Judeans in exile in Babylon, “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” I learned this text as, In its peace you shall find your peace. The Hebrew word there is shalom, a beautiful, dense word that means peace and welfare and flourishing, all wrapped together. 

Seek the peace of the city where you dwell as exiles, for in its peace you shall find your peace. This is a favorite passage, for me. I hear it as an invitation to citizenship in the fullest sense; to loving our neighbors by participating in civic life in ways that extend shalom to all. 

And I hear it as addressed to me, to us, even though Jeremiah is speaking here to exiles, to people-from-somewhere-else, about how to live in a place where they don’t belong. Because in the Christianity that has formed me, our true belonging, our deepest loyalties, are not to any city, state, or nation, but to God. 

We’re a few weeks out from Christ the King Sunday – a holy day created in the aftermath of World War I, to remind Christians to set aside nationalistic pride and ethnic antagonisms, remember that we are all first and foremost citizens of the kingdom of God, and live as gracious strangers, wherever we find ourselves. It’s an understanding of Christianity that’s almost diametrically opposed to the mindset of white Christian nationalism, espoused by some of our fellow Americans – some of my fellow pastors! – who see close alignment among Christian identity, Whiteness, and strong identification as American, for a certain definition of America. I find it a difficult ideology to understand, because the way of Jesus as we encounter it in the Gospels has nothing to do with either whiteness or America – and urges us to see ourselves as part of a body that transcends race and place. 

We belong here; we belong to, and with, one another. At the same time, we’re all strangers, all people from somewhere else, not only in the literal sense of our varied immigrant histories but in the theological and ecclesiological sense of belonging to something – to Someone – that rightly relativizes and releases other identities and loyalties. 

Seek the peace of the city where you dwell. 

Love your neighbors; pay attention to what’s happening to them, especially when they’re in need or at risk. 

Seek the peace of the city where you dwell. 

See in those recently from-somewhere-else a reminder that God’s grace will not abide by the arbitrary lines we draw between ourselves and others.

Seek the peace of the city where you dwell. 

Let the Bible’s commitment to welcome for the stranger discipline us to hospitality and to courage. 

Seek the peace of the city where you dwell,

For in its peace we shall find our peace. 

Amen.