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Hello my friends,
So much has happened this last week. It seems to be the case every week, unfortunately. It is all really heavy. One of the heaviest ongoing realities we are witnessing is the mistreatment and injustice being carried out against people in the name of immigration enforcement. So, today I wanted to process that reality with you through the lens of Luke 17:11–19 and hopefully develop a faithful response to what we are seeing in the world together.
Recommended Resources
-Mosaics Podcast This podcast is locally produced right here in Idaho by those who serve the immigrant community directly. They feature many personal stories of immigrants who now call Idaho their home. Listening to their stories is so eye opening and powerful.
-The Business of Migrant Detention The history podcast Through Line is doing a very informative series on immigration and the history that has brought us to this point. I always come away from listening to their work with deeper understanding and context. This is their latest episode in their immigration series and they are all work listening to.
-Resident Aliens: A Provocative Christian Assessment of Culture and Ministry for People Who Know that Something is Wrong by William H. Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas This book is considered a must read theological work by many. I read it myself in seminary and found it deeply challenging and insightful. Both Willimon and Hauerwas are brilliant theologians and this work from them is still a helpful companion in many of the issues we are trying to navigate today. If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend it.
They Are Us. We Are Them.
Luke 17:11–19 tells us the story of ten lepers crying out to Jesus for mercy. He sends them to the priests, and as they go, they are healed. But as we read on, we find that only one returns to give thanks. Unlike the others, he is a Samaritan, a foreigner.
Let’s read it together:
“Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” When he saw them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed. One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”
For centuries, we’ve read this as a story about gratitude, which is an important component. But if we listen closely, there’s far more happening here. In the ancient Mediterranean world, the disease we call “leprosy” (referred to as "tzaraat") was not what modern medicine understands it to be today. Tzaraat was a broader term that encompassed a wide range of skin conditions as well as blemishes on clothing and homes. It was seen as a category of social and ritual impurity, a sign of God's displeasure, and a visible manifestation of death encroaching upon life. People with tzaraat were required to live outside the community and wear special clothing to signify their impurity.
So when Jesus heals the lepers, He is not merely curing skin, He is confronting the powers that isolate, exclude, and destroy. His healing declares that death and its minions, like fear, stigma, and dehumanization, have no final claim on the human body, mind, and soul.
And yet, the only one who recognizes this in full, the only one who returns with gratitude is a foreigner. The Greek word Luke uses here is allogenēs, which literally means, “one of another race.” He is not only from a different race and from a different religion, which already makes him an outsider in many ways in that context, but adding the stigma leprosy to the mix, his marginalization from others and society at large would have been even more severe. So, the foreigner is the one who perceives what others miss: that Jesus’ mercy dismantles the boundaries that prevent belonging because they know what it is like not to belong. Because of this, Jesus sees the foreigner as the model of faith in this passage.
In our time, we are facing our own test of faith. The same boundary drawing forces of death are still at work, often disguised as law, policy, and national security. Those who are considered the foreigner among us are paying the heaviest price.
A Moral and Spiritual Travesty
For example, recent reports from Chicago tell of U.S. Border Patrol raids sweeping through neighborhoods, arresting families and even children under the banner of immigration enforcement. One Venezuelan woman described agents breaking down her door, pointing guns at her and her four-year-old son, and making sexualized remarks about Venezuelan women. When she returned to her apartment, because her and many others were wrongfully detained, it was boarded up and all her possessions were gone.
Other videos have gone viral online from Chicago showing people getting ripped from their car and a pastor getting maced and even shot with pepper balls for simply praying peacefully in protest.
This is not simply policy gone awry. It is a constitutional, moral, and spiritual travesty.
These things are being carried out by an administration that claims to stand for Christianity and represent its values. To carry out such abuse, cruelty, and trampling of personal freedoms under the banner of “Christian values” is to take Christ’s name in vain. The cross, which bears witness to mercy, justice, and sacrifice, simply becomes a prop for oppression when Christians endorse or remain silent in the face of such cruelty.
If followers of Jesus do not speak up about these things, the world will assume this brutality is part of our faith. And perhaps most sobering of all, it will not be wrong to think so, unless we repent and oppose such actions being carried out in the name of our faith.
The Image of God and the Violence of Labels
Before legal status ever enters the conversation for followers of Jesus, theological categories must. Every human being bears the image of God, an image that cannot be revoked, forfeited, or erased by infractions or paperwork.
In Matthew 25, Jesus explicitly identifies with the foreigner and those imprisoned. He never mentions their legal status or reasons for being in jail, but emphasizes the call for his followers to not just serve them, but to treat them as they would treat him.
So when the state or society reduces people to categories like illegal, alien, or criminal, especially in the name of “Christianity,” it commits a theological violence. It erases the divine image in human beings and replaces it with suspicion and fear. It turns a person into an object for ridicule, disdain, and even retribution. Much like lepers were treated in the ancient world.
I have seen this in my ministry over the last several years. Whenever I speak or write about the need to treat all human beings with compassion and dignity, many will respond with something like, “So, you don’t believe we should have laws or boarders?” As if it is a choice between having laws and borders or treating human beings with dignity and respect. As if the enforcement of the law and borders must be inherently cruel and void of compassion. This should deeply disturb us all.
Christians bound to the cross must reject this. Legal status cannot determine worth. The gospel forbids any hierarchy of compassion, like one for “citizens” and another for “foreigners.”
On this, scripture is unambiguous:
“The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself.” — Leviticus 19:33–34
“Do not oppress a foreigner, for you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners.” — Exodus 23:9
“Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless, or the widow.” — Deuteronomy 27:19
And Jesus Himself identifies with the stranger:
“I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” — Matthew 25:35
The biblical witness leaves no room for cruelty cloaked in legality. “Do not oppress.” “Treat them as native.” “Love them as yourself.” These are not suggestions. They are commands.
“Illegal Is Illegal” and the Misuse of Romans 13
As you may have also noticed in your own conversations, whenever someone speaks against the abuse of immigrants, a familiar refrain often surfaces: “Illegal is illegal.”
But legality and morality are not the same thing. Many of the most righteous acts in Scripture were technically illegal. The Hebrew midwives disobeyed Pharaoh’s decree to kill infants. Daniel prayed in defiance of the king’s law. Joseph protected Mary, who by law should have been stoned for being pregnant out of wedlock. Jesus healed on the Sabbath and was ultimately executed as a criminal by the empire’s law enforcement.
This is not even to mention the clear prophetic tradition of speaking truth to power and rebuking unjust laws that spans from Moses before Pharaoh, Elijah confronting Ahab, Isaiah confronting unjust legislation against the poor and the immigrant, Nathan confronting King David, to John the Baptist and Jesus rebuking King Herod.
It should also go without saying that some of the worst things humanity has done to each other have been "legal." Things like inquisitions, witch trials, slavery, authoritarianism, the holocaust, segregation, and stoning women who are pregnant out of wedlock.
To simply say "illegal is illegal" is deeply flawed and leads to dangerous consequences.
Obeying human law never excuses us from God’s higher law of love.
Romans 13:1 always comes up in this conversation as well, which is used as a catch all justification for "obeying the governing authorities" without question, for "God has established them."
The phrase "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities" uses the Greek verb unotádow (hupotasso), which literally means "to arrange oneself under," "to align with," or "to yield to." It carries the idea of voluntary cooperation, respect, or acknowledgment of order. It does not mean unquestioning submission or obedience as many want to suggest. Otherwise Paul would have used such language, which he didn't. Paul reserves such language for our relationship to God and God's law of love.
Paul wrote Romans 13 to a persecuted church living under the Roman Empire, a regime that executed Jesus and thousands of Christians. His command to "submit to governing authorities" was not a blanket endorsement of every government action, but an instruction to live peaceably and honorably while maintaining allegiance to Christ alone. In fact, Paul himself repeatedly defied authorities when they acted unjustly (Acts 16, Acts 22-25), and so did Peter, who explicitly said, "We must obey God rather than men." (Acts 5:29).
Romans 13 must always be read alongside Romans 12, where Paul calls believers to "hate what is evil, cling to what is good," and to "overcome evil with good." Governments are not infallible "agents of God" simply by virtue of holding power, they are accountable to God's standard of justice. They are to be responsible to not break the law themselves either, especially in the enforcement of it. When authorities act unjustly, the prophetic and apostolic witness has always been to resist evil, not baptize it.
The same Paul who wrote Romans 13 also wrote, "Love is the fulfillment of the law." When we use his words to excuse harm, dehumanization, or silence in the face of cruelty, we've abandoned the gospel's heart. The gospel of Jesus does not justify injustice, it exposes it.
It is worth noting how selectively this verse is applied. Many who cite it to justify harsh enforcement towards immigrants ignored it during mask mandates, public health orders, when certain politicians were found guilty in a court of law, and the 2020 election certification. The inconsistency reveals that Romans 13 is often used not as Scripture, but as a political weapon.
The selective and partisan use of passages like Romans 13:1 tells you everything you need to know about how unserious and dangerously it is being used. Any Christian movement that demands its fellow citizens be held accountable to the strictest of Biblical and governmental laws while simultaneously not holding itself or its preferred politicians accountable to that same standard is embodying the height of both political and religious hypocrisy.
Jesus’ harshest rebukes were for those who twisted God’s law into a tool of oppression: “You have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy, and faithfulness.” (Matthew 23:23)
We must not repeat their sin.
The Foreigner and the Gospel
The foreigner returns to Jesus in Luke 17 because he recognizes what the others cannot: that grace transcends boundaries. In Luke’s broader story, Samaritans are often rejected, distrusted, or despised. Just one chapter earlier, Jesus’ disciples wanted to call down fire on a Samaritan village that refused to receive Him. But Jesus rebuked them. Later, in Luke 10, Jesus tells a parable where it is the Samaritan who embodies neighborly love to a man injured on the side of the road.
Luke’s Gospel turns prejudice on its head. The despised foreigner becomes the vessel of God's revelation.
This should not surprise us. The Hebrew Scriptures are full of God’s people learning mercy as being the foreigner themselves and living through exile. The narrative arch of the Bible begins with God’s people migrating (Abraham), then being enslaved foreigners (Egypt), then being liberated and migrating again (Moses). Then becoming an empire themselves (Judges/Kings) where they were constantly reminded by God to not oppress the foreigner because they too were once foreigners. Then to becoming exiles (Babylon) and then foreigners again under an occupying force (Rome).
Jeremiah told the Israelites in Babylon to “seek the welfare of the city” where they were strangers, even as they longed for home (Jeremiah 29:7). Their foreignness became a school of compassion. The Bible is written by foreigners, migrants, and exiles. Even the expansion of the gospel to include “gentiles” by the likes of Paul is a testament that God’s constant refrain is to love the foreigner as ourselves. They are us and we are them.
The experience of exile, of being foreign, is one of Scripture’s greatest teachers. It reminds us that God’s promises know no borders, that grace cannot be confined to nationality or tribe. The foreigner reminds us who we are and to whom we belong. Jesus crossed the boarders of heaven and earth, of custom and ritual, and of life and death out of love for the whole world. For us. Jesus saved us by grace, not ruthless enforcement of God’s law, of which we have all fallen short.
To despise the foreigner, then, is to not only despise ourselves but the very story of salvation.
Following Jesus in an Age of Cruelty
We are living in a time where our patriotism and even our Christianity is being measured by how ruthless, callous, and inhumane we can be rather than by how merciful, compassionate, and just we can be. But the gospel calls us to something higher.
When people say, “We have to take care of our own first,” we must remember that Jesus never divided the world into “us” and “them.” He shattered those divisions. He healed ten men, but the Samaritan, the foreigner was the only one who saw clearly, the only one who truly worshiped. Because he was included, loved, and cared for in a world that saw him as an outsider, as unclean, and as a threat.
Christians are not called to defend borders of exclusion but to bear witness to a kingdom where strangers become family.
To those who feel heartsick at what we are seeing unfolding, know this: you are not alone, and you are not crazy. The grief you feel is holy. It is the sound of your heart still beating in rhythm with God’s.
Faithfulness in this moment means refusing to surrender love to fear. It means standing with the vulnerable, speaking truth to power, and keeping our allegiance to Christ alone.
What You Can Do
- Learn the truth and share it.
Fear thrives on ignorance. Read from credible sources like Reuters, PBS, or the Associated Press. It is legal to seek asylum under U.S. and international law. Most who arrive here are fleeing violence or famine, not “breaking in.”
- Support those doing the work of mercy.
Partner with groups like We Choose Welcome, Women of Welcome, World Relief, Church World Service, or Global Refuge. Your giving and advocacy can make real impact.
- Build relationships where you live.
Get to know immigrants and refugees in your community. Listen to their stories. Let friendship replace stereotype.
- Guard the integrity of your faith.
Refuse to let Christianity be weaponized to justify cruelty. Silence is complicity. Speak truthfully and humbly, even when it costs you.
- Pray and let your prayer move you to action.
Pray for families separated, for those detained, and for officers, lawmakers, and for your own heart. Then rise from prayer ready to love boldly.
When the Samaritan returned to Jesus, he fell at His feet in gratitude. And Jesus said, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”
That is the invitation before us, to rise, to resist the powers of death, and to live as people made well by mercy.
In every stranger we meet, in every migrant or refugee, in every soul the world calls “foreign,” it is Jesus walking among us, waiting to see if His followers will recognize Him.
Closing with lament
O God,
I am undone by the weight of it all.
The cruelty. The lies. The faces of those who suffer while the powerful satisfy themselves on their pain.
Every headline feels like another blow to the ribs,
and I can no longer tell if I am angry, grieving, or numb.
I work, I scroll, I watch, I study, I listen
and I cannot turn away.
Children wailing in the dust,
the vulnerable being abused,
the earth cracking beneath greed,
neighbors despising neighbors,
and those who bear your name
using it to bless the violence.
Where are you, O God of mercy?
Why do you seem so silent
while truth is strangled and justice mocked?
Have you grown weary of our prayers,
or are we simply too overwhelmed by it all to hear your reply?
I confess, Lord,
I feel powerless.
My words fall flat, my strength fails,
and my hope flickers like a candle
in the wind of this world’s madness.
But still,
even in this despair,
I will not stop calling your name.
I will not stop joining the work of those
who insist on loving their neighbors.
You who brought life out of dust,
You who split the seas,
You who were crucified by cruelty itself, rise again. Move among us.
Dismantle the empires of hatred and arrogance.
Lift the lowly. Heal the wounded.
Break open our hearts until they pour out compassion again.
Teach us to hope as those who refuse to look away.
Give us courage to love when the world worships power.
And when all strength is spent,
hold us in the dark
until your light returns.
Amen.
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