Between Samaria and Galilee
October 12, 2025, Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 23 C)
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7 • Psalm 66:1-11 • 2 Timothy 2:8-15 • Luke 17:11-19
In nomine.
My first trip to Arkansas was in June, when I came to interview at St. Paul’s. I’d just gotten back from two weeks in France, so I was still used to the sensation of suddenly appearing in a new place and trying to get my bearings. From the airport, I was whisked up to Crystal Bridges for lunch and a tour, then back to Fayetteville to see St. Paul’s, St. Martin’s, and the city of Fayetteville more broadly. I remember looking out the window of my hotel room later in the visit and thinking, I could see myself living here.
This was, of course, precisely Evan’s goal in including all these stops in my interview weekend. He wanted me to experience not just the people I would be working with in this call, but also the place that I would be working in, and the place I would call home. And it worked: I could visualize myself not only working amongst the staff, parishioners, and students in this community but also being grounded in the physical location.
I’ve learned in conversations with many of you that I’m not alone in this type of experience of moving to Fayetteville. Several people told me variations of the same story: they were offered a position in the area and figured it was worth trying out for a year or two before moving on. Now, twenty or forty years later, they still call this place home.
What is it about place that is so important to us creatures? All the technological advances of the last thirty to fifty years have pushed us into the “head” place that sometimes makes us forget we are physical beings. Although technology can connect us instantly to people anywhere in the world and travel makes it possible for us to get to another continent overnight, we are still “stuck” in the here and now, physically embodied creatures. If we find ourselves transported too quickly, we end up with jet lag: physically and mentally confused, struggling to orient ourselves to a new place.
So imagine the experience of the people of Judah, captured and exiled to Babylon by a foreign king. Although they traveled there more slowly, they had the same disorienting experience: how did we end up here? What shall we do now? Last week we read from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, the experience of despair at the destruction of the temple and the emptiness of the city. Jeremiah interprets the exile as a punishment for the ways the tribe of Judah has failed to honor God in their worship and in their manner of life.
But this week, we hear a more encouraging note as Jeremiah writes to the exiled Judeans. He instructs them: “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease.”
Jeremiah’s message here is one of hope. He does not interpret the exile as the end of history. Rather, it is an opportunity for renewed faithfulness, a reminder that God has not abandoned his people. By putting down roots in their new home—blooming where they’re planted, if you will—they also have the opportunity to bring blessing to this new place. “But 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 want to be clear that I don’t think God was punishing me by sending me to Fayetteville! But I still take to heart Jeremiah’s call “to seek the welfare of the city” where I have been sent. For all of us – whether we have lived here for fifty years or fifty days – there is an invitation to settle in and even to take ownership in the place that we now call home.
This also requires us to acknowledge the other people that call this place home. Our Gospel reading from today gives us something to think about on this front.
Jesus is traveling south from Galilee towards Jerusalem. Luke describes him as being in “the region between Samaria and Galilee.” This is a little confusing, since Samaria borders Galilee. That’s like calling Texarkana “the region between Texas and Arkansas.” Luke’s point is theological rather than physical: this is a liminal space, one where identity and space both overlap and are distant, where boundaries can be crossed and maintained at the same time.
He encounters a group of people infected with leprosy, a skin condition that was believed to be more contagious than it actually is. Rather than the socially-expected calls to stay away, they call out to Jesus for help, calling him “Master.” Jesus gives them a simple instruction: to go and show themselves to the priests. They obey, and their act of faith is rewarded with their healing. But only one of them returns to thank Jesus, and this one is a Samaritan, not a Galilean like Jesus. Jesus commends him but denigrates the others, saying “Where are the others? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” This is a lesson for the audience: those who we are quick to label as “foreign” or “outside” are often more correct than those who are on the inside.
In this liminal theological space between Samaria and Galilee, between Jerusalem and Babylon, no one is really a permanent resident. Who is a “foreigner” depends on our point of view, and in most cases it’s probably a judgment we ought to suspend. Almost all of us came from somewhere else, whether by choice or by force. The Scriptures require us to have compassion for those who struggle with this concept of place: especially those who live in places of conflict and have been forced to leave their homes due to the threat of war or political violence; those who lose their homes due to natural disasters; those who leave their homes seeking opportunity and find themselves in new danger; those who long for but have no place to call home. We must bear witness to the reality that God’s unconditional love reaches to refugees, evacuees, immigrants, and the homeless – right here in our church and in our community, and around the world.
It’s also a longstanding Christian principle to see ourselves as foreigners: through baptism we become citizens of the heavenly kingdom, those who are in this world but not of it. But our dual citizenship does not prevent us from seeking the welfare of the city in which we find ourselves. It’s quite the opposite: it is because we are members of the kingdom of God that we seek through prayer and action to bring our current home closer to God’s reign. In fact, when we take on this citizenship in baptism we make promises about how we live our lives in the here and now: sharing in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers, proclaiming the Good News of God in Christ, and respecting the dignity and freedom of every human being. We are committed to seeking the welfare of the city, finding in its welfare our own welfare, our own blessings from God.
In our society, those blessings often come in financial form. Most of us receive financial compensation for work we perform, or a stipend to support our living so that we can engage in the work to which we have been called. What would it look like for us to be the Samaritan leper who returned to Jesus with great joy, praising God and thanking him? Our response for God’s faithfulness is sharing our first fruits, the products of our labor, with God and so that they may be a blessing to others. We offer our gifts and our selves to God, and find them transformed for our good and for the good of the whole world. This eucharistic living is an outward sign of our life in the kingdom of God, our participation in the death and resurrection of Christ, our animation by the Spirit of God dwelling within us. It is both “our bounden duty” and “a good and joyful thing.”
As people of both body and spirit, these days can feel disorienting. We find ourselves in a liminal space, and we hear the cries for mercy from those who have been forced out of their homes, are living in fear of deportation, or in a multitude of ways have no place to call home. So, as we make our own attempts to bloom where we’re planted, as we seek the welfare of the city we call home, I pray that each of us will pray, work, and give, that the seeds we are planting are the seeds of God’s kingdom.
~The Rev. Charles Martin