One of the dynamics in this week’s gospel, in which Jesus heals a bunch of people, involves the sense of national identity. He wonders allowed when the one person who shows gratitude to God isn’t a Hebrew, but a Samaritan. Having read the parable of the Good Samaritan seven chapters ago, we shouldn’t see this as Jesus having a problem with this Samaritan. And we probably shouldn’t see it as his condemning the Hebrews who showed no obvious gratitude.

We’re invited to simply notice the difference. That the one who appreciated the situation more was the one on the outside. The one who didn’t expect to receive the grace. Because he didn’t see it as owed him.

We should also consider that it was for God that their neighbors cast them out. It was for God that their neighbors felt justified in condemning them to die in the first place. It would be hard to be grateful. Period.

I don’t suspect that Jesus is being terribly critical of them. Not like we would be. They are playing into type. The oppressed are hardly grateful to be brought back into community with their oppressors. Not as long as their oppressors remain in power.

Perhaps we consider, instead, what Jesus is lifting up in his noticing. That this “foreigner” is the one to show gratitude precisely because the injustice is so expected and normal. That “deserving” never had anything to do with any of it. And this man, being restored is also being offered community that wasn’t his to start, but is now. That, just as there is no deserving, there is no earning.

That, in Jesus, there are no just outcasts. All are neighbors.