This week I received the Reedville church newsletter. Their pastor heads his column this month quoting what Benjamin Franklin apparently said as he took quill in hand to sign the Declaration of Independence: “Either we hang together, or we shall surely all hang separately!” The pastor was quoting Ben because of today’s Jeremiah reading, as if God is telling the Israelites the same thing, to “Pray for the common good—even the good of your captors, even of people not like you.” Reedville’s pastor—and most of the pastors whose newsletters I read this month—associates Jeremiah’s letter to the exiled Israelites with a reminder to parishioners to vote in the upcoming election. Not how to vote, just to vote. Hang together. But I’m a dense and contrary individual, and I don’t see this as advice on the responsibilities of living in a democracy.

On the other hand, I don’t see the standard sermon in the leper story, either—“be sure to thank God.” This passage always turns into a need-for-gratitude sermon, what Reformed Christians always understand to be the appropriate response to God. I know that. And I hope that you know that. But maybe as the certified Good One in my family, I identify with the other nine lepers rather than the returning Samaritan leper. Have you ever noticed that these other nine get a bum rap for doing what Jesus tells them to do? I mean, Jesus tells the whole band of lepers to go to the priest to be declared healed, and they do what he says to do, because going to the priest when you think you are healed is the appropriate medical and religious response. Strictly speaking, these guys weren’t healed unless and until the priest said they were healed. They must have been dying to do this ever since they had been diagnosed with leprosy. Of course they go to the priest—even the Samaritan, who technically had no religious business going to the Jewish authorities, but maybe leprosy was considered a civil case.

I don’t think the crowd surrounding Jesus that day thought, “Uh oh, someone’s mother didn’t teach any manners. What’s the magic word?” I think what shocked the good, religious crowd was that an outsider (the Samaritan) taught a lesson to the good religious folk. That isn’t the way it’s supposed to happen. Samaritans were from the absolutely wrong side of the religious track. They would have nothing to teach an observant Jew about how to be a person of God. This bias against Samaritans is so deep that my first Hebrew teacher, a Dominican nun, told of studying in the Holy Land and asking a man for help. He was reluctant to give it, but Sister Stevie was hard to resist, and he finally relented to assist her in her study. When he seemed unreasonably grateful for the opportunity to teach, she learned that he was a Samaritan, and Samaritans are still considered second class humans. To be allowed to help anyone was a declaration of salvation to him.

We get so stuck in our sense of the way things ought to be. I ought be the one who gives, so I allow no one to give to me. I ought to be the one who helps, therefore I won’t let others help me. It’s a power thing, about credibility. I’m not sure if it’s about who we think we are or if it’s about who we think the other person is—as if we can’t bear to credit with authority someone less deserving than we think we are. We are the losers when we stay stuck in “oughts.” We are impoverished when our sense “ought” won’t let us learn from someone because we don’t think that person deserves to be our teacher, when we think of someone as a modern-day Samaritan. As in, “Those people have nothing to teach me.”

My friend, Glen, was the director of the homeless shelter in Madison, Port St Vincent. Although Glen had grown up in the richest Chicago suburb, as a minister he had only served in poor, inner city ministries. Glen tells of Richard, who showed up at the Port almost immediately after he started, and who stayed around the whole 16 years Glen was there. The hand Richard had been dealt majored in mental illness, poverty, and homelessness. Wouldn’t an educated rich kid have a lot to offer someone like him? Glen says it was Richard who taught him—about seeing the Port’s clients as actual humans. It was this insight which opened Glen’s heart to God. Rather than seeing the Port clients as people to fix or objects of his gracious bounty, Richard taught Glen to see his own limitations reflected in the clients—as well as his gifts.

That’s a hard lesson in love, to let God love even our limitations. There are those who say that allowing God to love us is the real definition of salvation. That lesson in salvation is one we prefer to learn from someone we deem to be better or smarter than ourselves, an authority. Someone with some credibility. Certainly never from someone less of an authority than we are. One of my seminary classmates had to learn this lesson. Like me, she was a second-career seminarian. Her husband was not as supportive as mine, didn’t go to church much, and was baffled by his wife’s mid-life career change. But he went along with it. It didn’t make him any more noticably religious, which is probably what made it so hard for her to accept his insights. She was the religious professional in their marriage. She was the one who read the Bible every day, who prayed a lot, even in public. She was the insightful one about relationships, and was fond of using Biblish to interpret situations. She felt that in her family, she was the sole distributor of God’s wisdom. Her lesson came during a particularly rebellious teen phase by one of their kids. She became obsessed with fixing that kid. She talked through potential strategies in pastoral care classes, used conversations with the kid as verbatims in Clinical Pastoral Education, wrote Biblical theology papers about it. We organized prayer vigils with her. We were such pastor wannabes and we just wanted to do this right. The one person she had trouble consulting was the child’s father. She thought his advice was too worldly, too secular, too pop psychology. It wasn’t that it was “bad” advice, but where was God in his equation? We finally asked what he suggested. She said he told her to stop. We got it, but we had to interpret it to her, put it in language she could understand. “Fast,” we said. “Right,” she said. “God can’t act too fast!” “No,” we said. “Fast from the fussing. Give it up. Stop. Give God a chance to get a word in edgewise.”

What bugged my friend wasn’t so much that his advice was good. What bugged her was that he was an amateur. She was the religious professional. He was the Samaritan. What business did he have being right? What business, indeed. God is always in the business of redemption. Jesus healed the whole group of ten lepers, and some Biblical scholars say that “ten were healed and one received salvation.” We don’t know that. I don’t think that judging who got saved is the point of the story. What we can, know, however, is that of the crowd witnessing the event, the ones who allowed as how God could use even a Samaritan to teach them a lesson—those were the ones whose hearts opened to God’s redemption. Don’t limit God’s avenues for giving you redemption. You will be amazed that God can use even poor people, less educated persons, people who wear yellow ribbons or pink ribbons or flag pins on their lapels, even Democrats (or Republicans!)—the Samaritans in your life. God can use these Samaritans to reveal to you just how much you are loved.