Imagine hating someone so much that you no longer even consider them human. Maybe it’s not that hard to imagine in today’s world. Maybe it’s been happening for a long time.

By the time of Jesus, the negative attitudes between Jews and Samaritans had already had a long history. We see it in the Book of Sirach, sometimes called Ecclesiasticus, written about 200 years before Christ, which says:

“My whole being loathes two nations; the third is not even a people: those who live in Seir and Philistia, and the foolish people who dwell in Shechem.”

It was the Samaritans who lived in Shechem. The first two were political enemies of Israel, but the Samaritans were considered worse. They were descendants of Jews who intermarried with Gentiles during the exile, and they had the audacity to establish their own temple on Mount Gerizim instead of worshiping in the Holy City of Jerusalem. So they are described as “not being a people” (less human) because of their mixed “race,” and called “foolish” because they were not even worshiping on the right mountain.

Jesus came to heal human division, and Luke, who is described as a physician in Colossians 4:14, tends to focus on the healing of one of the biggest divisions of their time by emphasizing Jesus opening door for Samaritans. In Luke 10, Jesus scandalizes the Jewish theologians with the parable of the Good Samaritan. Remember that, for the Pharisees, there were no good Samaritans. Yet it is the Samaritan who recognizes the unity of humanity created in the image of God, and it is the Samaritan who stops to care for the victim on the road.

And here in chapter 17, Luke is at it again, showing the concern of Jesus for the dignity of every person created in the image of God, including a Samaritan.

A person with leprosy would not be allowed to enter the temple, and it would be the priest who would declare them unclean and cast them out, because leprosy was seen as a sign of God’s punishment. They were no longer worthy to be in God’s presence. So here, Jesus sends the lepers to the temple to see the very priests who had cast them out. By the time they reached the temple, they would be healed so that they could again be admitted to worship and feel united with God.

But being admitted back into the temple was not that simple. Not only did you have to be healed of leprosy, but you also had to be sufficiently punished for your sinfulness, including paying the priest and offering sacrifices, as described in detail in Leviticus 14.

So, Jesus sends them off to the temple risking not being let in. But the foreigner has another strike against him: not only is he a leper, he is also a Samaritan, a “foolish, less human.” Even if he were healed of leprosy, he would not be admitted to the temple anyway because he was a Samaritan. That is why, realizing he is healed, he does not go to the temple. But here is an important insights: it would have made sense that he would have returned home and gone back to the temple on Mount Gerizim to give thanks, but instead he returns and gives thanks to God at the feet of Jesus. To that, Jesus says, “Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God? Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.”

Luke is showing an important revelation here: that Jesus is THE temple. Only he can do what other temples only attempted to do, heal, restore, and get people in close proximity with God. What Jesus is showing us here is that he came to bring a healing beyond the merely physical. Healing, to its full extent, which we call salvation, is the transformation of the human person and the recovery of one’s identity as a person created in the image of God. Our response to salvation is an act of thanksgiving, which is what the Samaritan did: he worshiped God at the new temple, the feet of Jesus. And what came from that is a restoration of identity.

Our worship of God is Eucharist, Thanksgiving. We are here at the feet of Jesus. We are here to affirm the greatness of God’s love for us. We are here to affirm one another in our identity as persons created in the image of God. This is what makes the Church the sacrament of union with God and the unity of humanity.

We are here to grow in confidence that this union is not only possible but absolutely necessary, because division threatens us every day in many ways and we are not shy to expose it.

You see it in the brutal honesty with which the Bible preserved those hateful words against the Samaritans. It is not sugar-coated or edited out: “foolish,” “not even people,” “dogs.” They are there as reminders of how difficult it is to move beyond defining who we are by who we are against.

Anyone who is not like me, does not look like me, or does not think like me easily becomes a Samaritan. We often do this in two major ways: by appealing to racial identity and by appealing to national identity. Both of these stand in the way of healing and both are prevalent.

I recently spoke about race in another homily, so I won’t go into detail, except to note that breakthroughs in genetics have taught us that race, as a category of different types of humans, does not exist. Genetic variations that lead to visible physical differences are minute and are affected by geography more than anything. Yet racial oppression and violence continue.

How about national identity? When my national identity becomes the way I define myself in comparison to others, that can lead to nationalism which is assuming the superiority of one’s own nation over the inferiority of others.

The Old Testament story of Naaman in the first reading is really a story of nationalism standing in the way of healing. What we heard today is only four verses of a story that takes up all of chapter 5 in the Second Book of Kings.

Naaman is the commander of the army of the king of Aram, and he has been infected with leprosy. In battle he captures an Israelite girl and brings her back to Aram, making her his servant. She’s very young; she doesn’t know anything about nationalism. She’s like most children they don’t start out seeing divisions among people; they have to be taught that.

This girl tells Naaman’s wife innocently, “There is a prophet in my country called Elisha, and he could heal my master.” The king of Aram wants his commander healthy and strong, so he allows Naaman to go to Israel, sending him with a letter on his behalf to the king of Israel. But the king of Israel is suspicious and rejects the letter; he will not trust a foreigner.

Instead of thinking this could be an opportunity to make peace between two nations through the healing of a military commander, he assumes it must be a trick.

Naaman eventually finds Elisha himself, and Elisha tells him to wash seven times in the River Jordan to be cured of leprosy. But Naaman won’t do it, because he too suffers from nationalism. He says, “Are not the rivers of Damascus, the Abana and the Pharpar, better than all the waters of Israel? I don’t even want to dip my toe into the waters of Israel, this inferior nation.”

But his servants convince him to do it and that is what we heard today. He goes down and plunges himself into the Jordan seven times, and his flesh becomes like that of a little child.

Like the Gospel story of the Samaritan, this is a story of healing beyond physical illness. It is healing from prejudice. He is cured of his nationalism. He is healed of the spirit of division. His response is thanksgiving and worship: “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel. I will no longer offer holocaust or sacrifice to any other god except the Lord.”

The Church stands as a sacrament of healing and unity when we make it evident that she is the Church of all. As Pope Francis said in his final year as pontiff: “Todos, todos, todos” — all are welcome in the Church.

Unity in the Church comes from our communion, centered in the Eucharist, the authentic human communion intended by God, which transcends national and racial identity.

The Second Vatican Council observed:

“Today, the human race is passing through a new stage of its history. Profound and rapid changes are spreading throughout the world. Although the world has a very vivid sense of its unity and of how one person depends on another in needful solidarity, the world is torn into opposing camps by conflicting forces. Political, social, economic, racial, and ideological disputes continue bitterly, and with them, the peril of war.”

But we are reminded that where sin increases, grace overflows all the more (Romans 5:20). We believe that we are led by the Spirit of the Lord, a spirit of power and love and self-control (2 Timothy 1:8), who fills the earth. Motivated by our faith, we labor to discern the authentic signs of God’s presence and purpose in the events, needs, and desires we share with the people of our time.

That means that while we might have an inclination toward certain ideals of our particular nations, we adhere above all to the ideals of the Gospel. I can, for example, desire the proper enforcement of immigration laws, while still advocating for the dignity of those who, for many reasons, did not follow them, and have the self-control not to fall into the “us vs. them” mentality.

Family, the Kingdom of God, the power of God, takes effect whenever one person who knows that he or she is created in the image of God affirms another person who bears that same image. The power of God moves among us whenever we overcome the prejudices, stereotypes, and resentments that divide us. The power of God moves among us whenever we love one another as Jesus has loved us.

That is the Good News that all of us need to hear. Not only is it possible, but each one of us, by the faith we have received, possesses the power of the Spirit to make it a reality.

That is why we come to the Eucharist and worship at his feet, in thanksgiving for giving us the soundness of mind to see each other as God sees us; to receive the grace of continual healing for any division that might still cling to our hearts; and, in one voice, to ask God to help each of us use it, in our own humble way, for the unity of humanity.