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Biography
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"This Foreigner" The Scripture reading is from Luke, chapter 17, verses 11-19: On the way to Jerusalem, Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” For many Christians, this is a familiar story. We tell it to children, and we teach it in Sunday school, and often the lesson is about how important it is to always say “thank you” to God. And that’s a good and true lesson. But even the most familiar stories can sometimes do back flips on you when you least expect it. That’s what happened to me with this story. I’ve read it dozens of times. I’ve listened to dozens of sermons. But recently I heard something new. It was these words from the text: “Weren’t ten lepers made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Suddenly, those words of Jesus struck me as completely preposterous. He’s not talking to the healed man! He’s talking about him, calling him “this foreigner.” In a loud voice! And who in their right mind does that, especially when they are traveling through a region, near a border that is filled with these “foreigners”? Every summer, my family and I drive from Georgia, where we live, to upstate New York to take our boys to camp, Camp Dudley in the Adirondacks. It’s a long drive from the deep south of our country to the far north. But I always know we’re finally in the homestretch when the road signs begin to change from English-only to English and French. That’s because we’re getting close to the border of Canada, and the province of Quebec, where French is the dominant language. Now the people of Quebec learn English, but they are fiercely proud of their minority culture. If you go to Quebec, they like you to at least try to speak French before you automatically launch into English. It’s a sign of respect, and that’s what good neighbors in a border region do: they respect one another’s customs. So in upstate New York, there are bilingual street signs, and lots of shoppers and tourists from Quebec, and it’s normal to hear both French and English in any public place. The story tells us that he was on his way to Jerusalem, and had to go through the region between Samaria and Galilee. I think Luke, the author of this text is drawing us a picture. And maybe it looks like this: before he gets to the cross, Jesus has to pass through a border country, a region that marks the boundary between Galilee, where he was raised, and Samaria, where he was raised never to go. He has to pass through the borderlands that mark us and them. Maybe he wouldn’t go there if he didn’t have to get from point A to point B, and the disciples certainly wouldn’t either, but if you want to go to Jerusalem, you have to go through the borderlands. I don’t know how the people mixed in this border region between Samaria and Galilee. I’m guessing it was a lot more complicated than upstate New York and Quebec. It had to be. In those days, Jews from Jesus’ area and Samaritans hated each other. They had for years. They didn’t mix and they didn’t socialize and they mistrusted each other on sight. They also expected the worst from each other, each group certain that “those foreigners” were out to get them. You know: all their men drink, all their women cheat, and their kids grow up to be terrorists! Which is why the story about the Good Samaritan must have been such a shocker, in its time: a good Samaritan? My neighbor is a Samaritan? That story’s in Luke, too, but you know how these things go: the disciples never get it right on the first round. The foreigner was a Samaritan; that’s what Luke tells us. And then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. That’s a strange little detail. As if you’d never expect a Samaritan to do something decent, like say thank you. Or as if this was just what you’d expect, that a Samaritan couldn’t follow basic instructions and go show himself to the priests. Or as if you could hardly decide which is worse: to be a leper or a healed Samaritan. This foreigner. You know, this is the only time that phrase is used in the New Testament. But it’s everywhere in the Hebrew Bible! Foreigners are always popping up in stories, at key moments, to challenge our thinking about the lines between “us” and “them,” and where exactly we ought to draw those lines. Namaan, the Syrian. Ruth, the Moabite. Hagar and Jethro and Rahab and Cyrus. They’ve all been “this foreigner” in other stories, and they’ve exploded our images of what real faith looks like and who gets included when we talk about the people of God. Is Jesus nudging us here with this sharp elbow of a word? Foreigner. I don’t know. But he sure makes it stand out, as if maybe he wants us to look at the words we really use, day to day. As if maybe he wants us to see that we, too, could use a trip to the borderlands, the region between the place where we were brought up and the place we were brought up never to go. The story ends with a familiar refrain. Jesus says, “Get up and go on your way, your faith has made you well.” Did you hear that? Your faith. Not my faith. Not my way. Your faith, and your way—you, the one that I just called foreigner! Because whatever faith and whatever path that is, you have met God on the way. You, my friend, saw what the others didn’t: that you were healed, and that God must be praised. The other lepers? They showed themselves to their priests, and let the priests pronounce them healed. You saw it for yourself. And then you shared your gratitude with us. Oh, such faith in God. We find it everywhere, don’t we? Even in the borders, and maybe especially there. Conversation with Anna Carter Florence Daniel Pawlus: Anna, thank you for being with us today. It’s great to have you back on the program. Anna Carter Florence: Oh, thank you. I’m so glad to be here. Pawlus: I was really struck by your message. A couple of things: I wonder if we could start with this term “foreigner,” and us versus them. It seems so incredibly relevant to what’s happening in the country today. My question to you is, as a teacher, how are you talking about this with your students, to be able to address maybe some of the issues that come along with foreigner in terms of immigration or in terms of us versus them, Islamophobia and things that have been happening right now so they can move forward and be able to preach as they go out in the world? Florence: That’s a great question, Daniel. And you know, that’s really what struck me this time when I read this text. As you know, whatever is going on in the world comes with you when you read a text. Sherre Hirsch: And I like that it changes over time. Florence: And it changes over time. Absolutely. Hirsch: That’s what’s so great about the Bible, that you can re-read it and see something new and re-read it again. Florence: So for me, in the culture that we’re living in now, when I’m not telling this text to children in Sunday school and wanting to be part of the “thank you” police, it feels so different. This word foreigner just struck me as really absurd. And when I blocked out the scene when I imagine the scene—and Jesus saying to the people around him, “No one’s come back except this foreigner?”—that struck me as deliberate. Then it was a short road from there to saying to the man get up in your faith, it has made you well. We really don’t know how he meant it, but it really hit me. So what I’m encouraging my students to do is just be on the lookout for those things, on the lookout for those details that grab you, and trust that in some way, as we would say, the Holy Spirit or God is working in that to show you something in the text that maybe you hadn’t seen before that we need to talk about. Hirsch: I think what’s really nice about what you said is that Jesus was recognizing the other and actually complimenting it. That’s the difference. That’s that extra step. Because often we recognize or we see the other, but then we don’t value it and acknowledge it out loud. What would you say to someone who wants to retain their identity—I mean I’m a proud Jew and I loved that you referred to Ruth in your talk because we were all once foreigners in a land—but also that wants to find the beauty in other religions? How do you encourage us to do that? Florence: One of the things I love about the way Jesus is in the stories of the New Testament is that he’s constantly paying attention. What that teaches me is to be constantly on the lookout, as you said, and he’s always drawing… Hirsch: But how do you look? What are you looking for? Florence: The things that other people miss. I think that having to look and pay attention is a practice you have to cultivate. Hirsch: It’s almost like a meditation. Florence: It is a meditation. And to be constantly willing to see the face of God in someone else or how God might be moving in that person’s life is an act of gratitude and, I think, an act of worship. So those are everywhere that we look. We make our students at the seminary do that. I’ve just started doing this: making them sit down for five minutes a day at least and look quietly at something that God made, and then another five minutes in silence, looking at another human being. Hirsch: Look how uncomfortable we get if we just had to look at each other for more that 30 seconds! People get the giggles. I did that as a practice in the synagogue once and it took them a long time to cultivate it because they were all “Hee, hee, hee, hee!” Just uncomfortable. We’re uncomfortable looking into the windows of another person. Florence: I think if you want to preach, which is what I’m teaching my students, there’s no substitute for that. The most important quality you have is to pay attention with reverence to the world. So to try to look at the world, certainly not the way God sees it because we can’t ever put ourselves in those shoes, but to look for the things that other people miss, that we might miss if we were rushing and busy. Pawlus: Is that easier to do when we’re traveling do you think, Anna? You called this out not only in the Scripture, but in your personal experience. We’ve talked with other folks recently and it seems like we’re somehow more aware or when we’re thrust into places that are uncomfortable maybe just forces us to be more aware. There are great spiritual insights that come to people in those spaces. Florence: Well, I love that that’s a detail in this story that he’s not in his home territory. As we know, it was not a place where he would comfortably go in his day. So yes, I think whenever we are out of our own context, we see differently. Hirsch: And we’re awakened. Florence: We are awakened. Hirsh: Give us an example from your own life when you were out and about in traveling or in regular life that you thought, here’s something from another religion or another person that I really want to hold dear. Florence: Well, yesterday on my way here I got into a cab at Midway and rode to downtown where I was staying. I got into a conversation with the cab driver. Hirsh: Like the wise men of our time. Florence: Yes, yes. He said he was from Jordan and was a Jordanian American and a Muslim. He thought I was Jewish, and I said, well, thank you for the compliment! So we began to talk and I asked him, what would you say to the leaders of our time now? If you could tell them, what would you say to President Obama? What would you say to the leaders of the nations in the Middle East? As we talked I was just very moved by the things that he said, as well, and also really challenged. But it was a conversation I would have missed if I hadn’t been willing to step out of my own context. Hirsh: And comfort zone. Florence: When we left and I reached out to shake his hand, he said, “Oh, we don’t do that where I am from.” I said, “Tell me what you do.” He said, “We put a hand over the heart and we say thank you.” Hirsh: I love that. Pawlus: That’s a wonderful story. Florence: So I said, “Well, thank you [with her hand over her heart].” I will carry that and I will remember that for someone from his background not to reach out to shake a hand. Pawlus: Anna. I want to make sure that we take away the last message or parts of your message, and that was your faith has made you well. I think what you’re saying in that it’s more about having a faith and finding your way than necessarily what that faith may happen to me. There are many faiths and ways to connect with God. But is that the essence of what you’re trying to get across? Pawlus: Thanks so much for being with us. Hirsch: And thank you. We’ve got to do the thank you! Florence: Thank you! |
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