Loving the other
Luke 17:11-19
Who were the Samaritans and why do we hear so much about them in the gospels?
To put it very simply: they worshiped the same God, but in a different way.
But not just different—to Samaritans, Judaism had it wrong.
To Jewish people, Samaritans had it wrong.
Samaritanism observes many of the same festivals and holy days as Judaism—just in slightly different ways.
Jesus has a conversation with a Samaritan woman about their differences in John’s gospel.
- Samaritans worship on a different mountain—believing God chose Mount Gerizim as the Holy Place.
- They also maintained the use of the ancient Hebrew script, rather than the Aramaic script, which at the time, replaced the Hebrew script among Jewish people in Israel.
Samaritans still exist as a people group and they hold a religious status in Israel distinct from Judaism. The history section on their website says the official separation between the two groups was completed in the first century CE,
and, their narrative suggests Judaism separated itself from Samaritanism, not the other way around.
Why give you all this context? Mostly to get a better understanding of the hostility between these two groups.
Now we have a more holistic picture of their relationship—especially that
This split between the two people groups was happening during Jesus’s time.
When Jesus calls this man a “foreigner,” he is speaking to a very active social and religious prejudice of his day. Even the way the story is written here: One healed man tuned back and gave thanks and praise to God for his healing—and he was a Samaritan.
For Jewish Jesus and his disciples, Samaritans represent The Other.
By modern definition a Samaritan would have hardly been a foreigner in Israel—especially on the borderlands where Jesus encounters him. A person dwelling in the same country, descended from the same land, sharing the same ancestors, same history, and same God—sounds more like siblings in a fight than foreigners.
Unresolved disagreements turn into separation and disassociation—how could they continue to live alongside someone who’s got it all so wrong?
I’m willing to bet that for all of us, there are people who have got it so wrong that we would refuse any association with them.
They might be a particular kind of Christian, a particular kind of voter.
Either way, they’re nothing like us—their way of seeing the world is completely foreign.
They are, to us, the Other.
And Jesus proclaims to his Jewish audience of traveling companions, that this other
has the greatest faith of all 10 who were cured.
He is the one whose faith brought him back to give thanks.
Though the others were made clean, he is the one who is made well.
Jesus seems surprised by this Other, the way this story is written—maybe everyone was. He named what he saw in the grateful man: the true, rare faith—
of someone on the opposite side of an ideological schism.
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Many of you know about my other role as Campus Missioner for the diocese, where I spend time doing outreach at San Diego State, building a spiritual community with students.
One student I met this semester told me about her practice of lovingkindness meditation, and we’ve been meeting weekly on campus to offer this practice to the campus.
Lovingkindness meditation is the English translation of its original Pali name: Metta bhavana.
It works in stages, and each stage has the same mantra with a different focus.
There are many variations of the mantra—I actually saw someone here last Sunday with one version on their sweatshirt!
Generally it goes: may you be well, may you be happy, may you be free from suffering.
The intention of this meditation is to cultivate lovingkindness—non-judgment, radical acceptance in our hearts and in the world. (It’s a lot like centering prayer, but with a bit more specificity.)
The way metta/lovingkindness works is you begin to repeat these words over and over, aloud or silently,
cultivating lovingkindness—non-judgment, radical acceptance—moving through stages.
First starting with yourself:
May I be well, may I be happy, may I be free from suffering.
You pray blessings onto yourself until you believe you deserve it. You align yourself with God’s heart towards you until you can hold it for yourself.
Didn’t the man who wept in gratitude at the feet of Jesus receive the full gift of healing through his acknowledgement? The hardest thing about receiving a gift is how hard it is to be loved—
But he was strong enough in faith to receive this healing as a gift of love.
“Your faith has made you well,” Jesus says. Another way to translate that is: “your faith has saved you.”
Because once you have cultivated lovingkindness for yourself,
Then you expand outward—
The next stage of lovingkindness meditation is to bring to mind a person who’s close to you, and easy to love,
And offer the prayer: May you be well, may you be happy, may you be free from suffering.
After that, you expand a little further outward, to pray for a neutral person you neither like nor dislike, like a cashier or the mail carrier,
And then for someone difficult to love.
See the pattern here:
We first start with practicing love, compassion, and kindness for ourselves.
When we find we are judgmental or demanding toward ourselves, this is an opportunity to return to non-judgmental love.
Jesus wants to help us with this—this is what he embodies!
When we find we are triggered by some quality or behavior in someone else, this is also an opportunity to return to non-judgmental love for ourselves.
Anything we can’t love in The Other is something we won’t accept or love in ourselves.
Jesus wants to help us with this, too: We start with ourselves so that we can love our neighbors.
The final stage of lovingkindness extends to all beings:
May all beings everywhere be well, be happy, and be free from suffering.
May we follow Jesus Christ there.