Dear Friends:

In our Gospel reading for today, we find Jesus walking through an unidentified region between Samaria and Galilee. There is, of course, a back story to this—the people of Samaria and Galilee were staunch enemies. Once members of the same religious family, they grew apart when Northern Israel was conquered by the Assyrians, and over time, adopted different practices that alienated them from one another. The place “in between” their two territories was neither one nor the other, neither here nor there, a place where one might find oneself unsure of who belonged and who didn't, where the accustomed rules might not apply—where one would not fully know one's place.

As Jesus enters a village in this land of in-between, ten people with leprosy confront him. Perhaps we cannot relate easily to the scourge of leprosy, but we can imagine other isolating afflictions—fierce temper, blaming and shaming, relentless pride. What keeps us on the fringes, afraid to be ourselves, afraid of others?

From a distance, these ten with leprosy call out to Jesus a prayer that many of us also have cried: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” Who knows how long they have been imprisoned by their condition, trapped in the in-between. Who knows how long they have wished and hoped and lost all hope and yet dared to hope again when there comes a moment that hoping and wishing become words, and words open the way for action, and suddenly they discover a startling reality—healing is closer than they dreamed.

Jesus tells these ten to leave their old story, their familiar positions, and to go where they have never dared to go before, back to their wider community—to the neighbors, shop owners, beggars and priests who need to see what hope-becoming-words-becoming-action looks like. On the way, “in between,” they are healed. Not before they go, but as they go, they are made clean.

This has had me wondering. Where are my “in between” places these days? How about you? What ideas, beliefs, and attitudes are you walking away from and toward? How does Samaria—all that seems foreign, unknown, less desired—confront the familiarity of your Galilee?

Now, more than ever, we who are people of faith are finding ourselves between who we have been and who we are becoming, what we have known for sure and what we are just beginning to learn, our confirmed perceptions and our startling discoveries. Jesus was not afraid to explore the unidentified regions in between. Are we willing to watch him? Follow him?

As we live in the wake of a world-altering pandemic that has laid bare the wounds of human injustice and environmental degradation on a global scale, are we willing to learn the way to our own healing?

In Christ,

Amelie+