The Place of the Foreigner

Luke in this week’s gospel reading (Luke 17:11-19) narrates one of Jesus’ miracles of abundance. Jesus’ abundance, however, is largely unreciprocated. The one that returns to give thanks is a Samaritan, a “foreigner,” but it seems that Jesus’ response is more than a mere observation of fact. Jesus’ words seem to have an edge of condemnation and dismissal. Why does Jesus seem surprised that a “foreigner” would comprehend the enormity of his healing but nine insiders would misunderstand?

In the Hebrew scripture reading from Jeremiah this week, Jeremiah exhorts his Israelite compatriots to embrace lives as foreigners in Babylon. He tells them to seek the welfare of the city and help contribute to its thriving. Build homes here, for the homes to which you hope to return are no longer. Seek the welfare of the city of your exile, for it is now your city. And yet, at the very same time, Jeremiah evokes God’s promises to God’s people, declaring that their return to Israel is assured by God.

These are the incredible tensions of living as a foreigner in another’s land. When I reflect on my time in the Solomon Islands and when I first arrived in Australia it was something that I faced. It was hard not to always look back to what I continued to call home. I was in a foreign land as far as I knew - here for the long haul. After 20 plus years in Australia it is still hard to not to look to where my family of origin is as home, especially when the All Blacks are playing.

For a nation of immigrants, we tend to hear “foreigner” deployed as an epithet too often. We decry the presence of foreigners in our midst while actually failing to recognise and neglect our own exilic ancestry. In recent years we have decried those trying to seek safety on our shores and instead locked them up in prisons offshore. Some of our Politicians condemn, put down and spread untrue stories about foreigners. It would seem that Jesus was also pointing out that many of us have attitudes towards foreigners that are not of God.

Jesus goes on to tell us that decrying the presence of foreigners in our midst will lead to theological blindness. The foreigner can approach the word of God in a particularly insightful way, a path of insight that may now be lost to many of us. After all, the foreigner understands the sting of oppression. She understands the usually unavailing nostalgia that accompanies exile. She understands the rootlessness that characterizes the foreigner’s life. These are all experiences that shaped the story of Israel and its Messiah. Without them, the narrative of God’s action in this world is incomplete.

Jesus’ death and resurrection reveal to us the power of God to overcome all human conditions. That means we can hold onto hope, even when our differences are decades old, and our behaviour toward one another is nothing like Christ, and we are embarrassed to be known more for being in conflict than for the good we do.

We can be bold to speak the truth about the fact that God loves every aspect and person that is part of God’s creation. We can celebrate the truth that Christ came that the world might be saved— not just us, not just them, the foreigner, but all of us. And we can be truth bearers who refuse to join the battles but rather encircle all with the love and light of Jesus Christ so that all can know that love and be free.