Today’s readings tell the stories of foreigners. Periodically in the Old Testament, a foreigner is singled out, often for converting to the worship of Israel’s Lord God. Today it is the Syrian Naaman, who Elisha heals of leprosy, “I will no longer offer holocaust or sacrifice to any other god except to the LORD.” In the Gospel, Jesus is described as travelling through home lands and foreign lands. In one village, he heals 10 lepers and when “none but this foreigner returned” to thank him, Jesus extols the man’s faith, “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.”
Foreigner comes from the Latin and means “on the outside, exterior,” literally “out of the doors.” It refers to a person born in another land, land that is “outside the boundaries of a country.” Jesus’ story and those of his contemporaries are stories of living as outcasts, judged to be “outside.” Their ‘outcast’ stories are 2,000 years old yet are not always told in that context nor in the context of welcoming in those born in another land, “outside the boundaries.” It is sadly true that for much of human history much of humanity has been harshly judged as outcasts, for example, we who are women, we who are poor. Harsh judgment has especially targeted persons born in another land, outside the boundaries. Too many people, immigrants included, have been denied their voice to tell their story. Some recent storytellers who are helping us to know and to feel for the heartfelt plight of those “outside” include, Isabel Wilkerson in The Warmth Of Other Suns (2010: the “unrecognized immigration” of Blacks within the U.S.); Jason De Leon in The Land Of Open Graves (2015: the suffering and deaths of migrants attempting to cross the Sonoran Desert from Mexico to the U.S.); Jia Lynn Yang in One Mighty And Irresistible Tide (2020: the struggle of Lazarus’ “huddled masses yearning to breathe free”); Sonia Shah in The Next Great Migration (2020: migration as the nature of animals, plants, and humans that need not be feared but welcomed). Some of us have the stories of our ancestors who tell us about being born in another land, “born outside the boundaries.” Some storytellers include people who have been born ‘inside’ but treated as “born outside the boundaries;” Mary Brave Bird in Lakota Woman (1990: life on the Rosebud Indian Reservation and in the American Indian Movement detailing struggles for rights); Deborah A. Miranda in Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir (2012: the history of California’s mission Indians courageously dealing with colonial brutalities); Nick Estes in Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance (2019: continues the history of Indigenous resistance to modern day struggles for the environment and social justice). In a world of divisions in which supremacists craft us as foreigners against one another, being born in other lands, our stories tell of our communion and our struggles to hold it.
Author Frank White, in his 1987 book, The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution, wrote of the impact upon astronauts of seeing the earth from space. Each described the earth as profoundly beautiful and delicate and whole. Their “Overview” inspired them with a singular interconnected communion. None saw the man-made boundaries routinely highlighted. They saw one planet, one land. They stopped thinking in terms of inside and outside the boundaries of countries. The astronauts expressed freedom from the divisiveness of nations and their borders and freedom for our human solidarity. The astronauts experienced a shift in their identity and how they identified ‘others.’ No longer was anyone a foreigner to another. We are all human beings sharing One truly awesome land.
Prayer: Beautiful Spirit, guide us in communion.
Question: Whose story of being an outsider has shaped me and how?
October 12, 2025 Gospel Luke 17:11-19 Twenty Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time