Acting like Foreigners

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?"

I'm certainly no foreigner. I'm a native. I was baptized as an infant, brought up in the church, had Bible stories read to me by my Father, and rarely missed worship on Sunday until heading off for college.

I had my away time, but it's not like I every forgot my native tongue. For a time I was quite content without going to church on Sunday, but I never renounced my citizenship. In time, I became active at church again. At some point in my mid 30s, I even felt a "call" to attend seminary and become a pastor. And for the entire time, from birth to this moment, I've been Presbyterian.

Natives have a different perspective than do foreigners. We know things they don't, but they notice things we miss. And in the story of Jesus healing 10 lepers, being a native seems to be a negative. The foreigner returns to give thanks and praise God, but the other 9, presumably natives, continued on to get their certificates of cleanliness from the priests. (That's required somewhere in the rules of Leviticus.) Either that or they just went home.

You have to think those natives were happy, even grateful, with how things turned out. But Jesus had sent them to the priests and the rules required the priest to certify them as clean and they ought to do as the rules said. Besides, Jesus was likely to have moved on by the time they could have returned to say thank you.

And just look at the way that foreigner came back yelling and screaming and throwing himself on the ground. Natives have a little better sense of decorum. We know how to keep this faith thing presentable and respectable, "decently and in order" as we Presbyterians like to say. No yelling or flopping on the ground.

I've occasionally spoken with religious foreigners who've told me how intimidating it can be to attend a worship service populated mostly by natives, people who know all that stuff they don't know.  We do have a facility with the language that foreigners don't, but we may not really know all that much. (It's not unlike how people applying to become US citizens learn a lot more about American civics and government that most natives ever knew.)

But we natives don't dare act like foreigners. Pastors can be the worst. We don't dare act like we don't know what's going on, like we don't have it figured out. I rarely hear church members being open about their doubts and faith struggles, but I almost never hear it from pastors. That makes it difficult to make comparisons, but I dare say I have as many doubts and as many days when I question the wisdom of even believing in God as the next person. But I'm a native and a leader of natives. I'm not supposed to act that way.

If things get bad enough in my life, I can cry out for help, just as the native lepers did in the story. But once things get back to normal, I part company with the foreigners and act like a native again. I don't know if that's what happened with the lepers, but it makes sense to me.

I read this recently in Rachel Held Evan's latest book. "I often wonder if the role of the clergy in this age is not to dispense information or guard the prestige of their authority, but rather to go first, to volunteer the truth about their sins, their dreams, their failures, and their fears in order to free others to do the same. Such an approach may repel the masses looking for easy answers from flawless leaders, but I think it might make more disciples of Jesus, and I think it might make healthier, happier pastors."

I wonder if we don't need to start acting more like foreigners.

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