Transcript below
Michael Nailor
Harrisburg Cathedral
October 12, 2025
Proper 23, Year C
Luke 17:11-19
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.”
Grace, peace, and forgiveness to us all through our Lord, Jesus
Christ!
Two random and unrelated conversations this week led me to
sharing this message with you. I want to talk with you about how it feels
to be a stranger in a strange land in these days and to see if we can draw
any lessons from this week’s scriptures about it.
My first conversation was with a friend who has been working for a
church for at least the ten years that I have known her. She and her
husband, a truck driver, are of Puerto Rican heritage. They both are kind
and hard-working people. She casually mentioned that her husband has
been accosted by ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, three
times in the last four months and required to prove that he was a U. S.
citizen. As I asked her more about it, I could hear the hurt, fear, and
anxiety in her voice about what it’s like to be a Latino family in the
United States these days.
The second conversation was with a graduate student from China
who helps the Philadelphia Cathedral each week with our food
distribution program. A large majority of the people that we serve speak
only Chinese languages – so we need and appreciate her help in
translation. I asked her what her future plans were. She is finishing an
advanced degree at the University of Pennsylvania. She told me of the
difficulty of finding a job in this country. Any company who wants to
employee her for her unique skills and background would have to pay
$100,000 to the U S government and enter her in an immigration lottery
to employ her. Needless to say, there are not many companies willing to
take that risk on her. Again, as she talked, I heard a mixture of hurt,
fear, and anxiety. Will she be able to use her advanced degree here – or
will she be deported once her current student visa expires?
I got to wondering what it must feel like to be an immigrant, a noncitizen,
a recent arrival – or a US citizen who looks like they could fit in
one of those categories. Secular society and even some Christ-followers
have taken the word “stranger” and turned it into a dirty word. Antistranger
sentiment has been stirred up in our society – but this was not
always the case. President Dwight Eisenhower said, “We are, one and
all, immigrants, or the descendants of immigrants.” Gerald Ford noted, “I
am convinced that the vast majority of Americans today want these
people to have another opportunity here in this country.” President
Reagan stated, “If we ever close the door to new Americans, our
leadership in the world will soon be lost.” When did our vision of justice
and mercy begin to contract and shrivel?
Christopher Hayes in his recent book, The Widening of God’s Mercy,
reminds us: “We find in the Bible the history of a contentious itinerant
from the boondocks, born in questionable moral circumstances,
proclaimed by dirty shepherds, who goes around with random fishermen,
heals untouchables, and forgives unforgiveable people. It’s not surprising
that in the midst of that story, there are moments when someone stands
up and says, ‘Hey, look, if this is who we are and what we stand for, then
maybe the grace that we know extends to us also extends beyond us, to
those people.’ It’s not the only thing in the Bible, but it’s one of the best
things about the Bible.” God’s lovingkindness. God’s love. God’s mercy
extends and widens to embrace all. So how come many of our fellow
Christ followers have so much trouble putting this idea to work in today’s
world?
Consider this simple logic. God says in Leviticus 19, “When
immigrants live in your land with you, you must not cheat them. Any
immigrant who lives with you must be treated as if they were one of your
citizens. You must love them as you love yourself, because you were
immigrants in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God.” (Lev. 19:33-
34). This exact argument that we must have empathy for the aliens in our
land because we ourselves have been aliens is repeated at least four
times in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. I think God just might be
serious about this one!
When in a foreign land, what does our God suggest that the stranger
should do. Let’s turn to our Hebrew scripture from Jeremiah: “The God
of Israel, proclaims to all the exiles I have carried off from Jerusalem to
Babylon: Build houses and settle down; cultivate gardens and eat what
they produce. Get married and have children; then help your sons find
wives and your daughters find husbands in order they too may have
children. Increase in number there so that you don’t dwindle away.
Promote the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile. Pray to
the Lord for it, because your future depends on its welfare.” God sends
people on journeys to foreign lands and God’s will while there are there
is that they be treated well and that they treat people with whom they
live in a positive, respectful manner.
We are continually reminded in the Hebrew scriptures that God has
made a life for strangers in strange lands: In Psalm 66 we read: “his
works for human beings are awesome:/He turned the sea into dry land so
they could cross the river on foot. Right there we rejoiced in him! //God
preserved us among the living; he didn’t let our feet slip a bit.”
Jesus, of course, as a student of the Torah, is keenly aware of the
role that strangers play in the working out of God’s will. We can turn for
evidence to the stories of the Samaritan women at the well, the
Canaanite woman who argued that “even the dogs under the table eat
the children’s crumbs,” and the parable of the Good Samaritan, to name
just a few.
In today’s Gospel, we find ourselves with Jesus on the borderland
between Samaria and Galilee, a place where strangers are bound to
wander. A band of ten men united by their contagious skin diseases
cannot find a safe place to live in either land. After they are cleansed, it
is revealed that at least one of these men is a Samaritan and instead of
following others to the Israelite priests as Jesus instructs – this stranger
realizes that he is cured and, not needing the priests’ validation – he
returns to Jesus praising God and thanking Jesus. “Weren’t ten cleansed?
Where are the other nine? No one returned to praise God except this
foreigner?” The Samaritan had acted rightly in Jesus’s eyes for he says,
“Get up and go. Your faith has healed you.” I get the feeling that the
“healing” of this fellow goes deeper than the cleansing of the other nine.
Now this man can be included in a community that is far healthier than a
community based on a common disease – he is welcomed to a community
of God’s love that “doesn’t let our feet slip a bit.”
What is the impact of our rejection of the stranger? Tensions of
instability, uncertainty and not belonging are long-standing. But there
are several recent factors that seem to be making life more difficult or
more uncertain for strangers in our land.
- Tighter immigration enforcement, travel bans, visa
restrictions. These policies make things like studying, working,
family reunification, or traveling back home more complex. - Delays and backlogs in immigration, visa and asylum cases.
Uncertainty means people can be in a holding pattern for
years. - Heightened anxiety around public perception (anti-immigrant
rhetoric in politics, media) and how that affects daily life —
sometimes people feel they need to be more careful about
what they say, where they go, what they share.
While secular society will deal with strangers in its own way, we as
Christ-followers — as folks who have listened to and heeded the Hebrew
scriptures and the Christian scriptures — are called to another path. A
Matthew 25 path: “When did we ever see you, Jesus, as a stranger and
welcomed you? Then the King will reply, “When you have done it to one
of the least of these siblings of mine, you have done it for me.”