Last week, friends from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints hosted an interfaith conference in Provo, UT. We heard from Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Quaker scholar-practioners doing interreligious work, but like many of my colleagues, I was eager to hear from the student presenters on day two.

At Brigham Young University, 99% of students are LDS, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. That other 1% is made up of students from other religious traditions and we had the opportunity to hear from two student groups: the Muslim Student Union and the Catholic Newman Club. The speakers reflected on their traditions and told stories about what it has been like sharing their faith with their fellow classmates. I was in awe. The joy and pride in these young people were palpable.

I had met a couple of these Catholic student two summers ago when they came to Boston for an interfaith field trip. At that time, they were strategizing for a big project—hosting Mass on campus. Last week, when we reunited, they were elated to show me videos and photos from that January liturgy. Over three hundred people had come to Mass, many of whom were LDS members supporting their classmates and open to trying something new.

On my last night in Utah, the Newman Club hosted a prayer gathering and they invited me to join them.  In that upper room, around a long table a senior led us in prayer. After each intention spoken aloud, he said, “we pray for that too”. Those five simple words," we pray for that too"—they affirmed the truth of those of us in the room and made space for more.

As I continue to process this enriching experience, the word that I keep coming back to is Belonging.  How do we create the conditions to be "knit together in love" as our LDS friends say? I think of these students and my experience of belonging to them, as they welcomed me, an outsider, into their upper room assuring that, "we pray for that too."  

Our gospel story today is another story about belonging.

Jesus has chosen to walk a specific route to Jerusalem, a path that many Jews would avoid—due to concerns of safety because of the tensions and hostilities between these two groups. He is in essence crossing a boarder, a threshold, simply by virtue of where and how he is traveling. Anytime our scriptures contain stories of Samaritans, our ears should perk up…oh wait…this is interesting. Jesus is using someone his peers would have hated, casting them in the role of exemplar.

What we can tell from the details of the story is that the ten people with leprosy, they are staying back, keeping their distance, knowing that the culture see them as “unclean”. They have been pushed to the margins of society, quite literally in this case. People with leprosy would need go through ritual cleansing to be restored to community. As I sat with this text, I imagined the moment when they began walking to the priests—the moment they came into consciousness that they had been healed. What would be the mood? In a group of people who had been shunned to know that they would be reunited with their families and friends—that people who would meet them going forward might never know that they had experienced this ostracization. I heard cheering and laughter, I saw their arms wrapped upon on each other’s shoulders. They were on the precipice of a new life. When the one, the Samaritan, turns around, however, he marks the moment. He returns to Jesus and kneels at his feet—prostrating or adoring the “master” as they call him, the God who has healed him.

I want to focus on this about face—the turning towards God. Because this person is a Samaritan, they have been doubly othered: othered for their leprosy condition and othered for their ethnic identity. It is he, however, who returns to give thanks, recognizing the source of this gift. We in the twenty-first century have lost touch these millennia removed from the time of Jesus and the disciples, so the animosity the Jews had for the Samaritans doesn’t ring clear to us when we hear these passages. In many ways Jews would have considered it worse for someone to be a Samaritan than to be a leper, so scripture intentionally uplifting Samaritans communicates something profound. Even the most reviled, most hated, most rejected group of people have spiritual worth, significance, and presence in the sacred family. Praise be to God, indeed, for having a place for us all.

In this moment of giving glory to God, the Samaritan is now doubly blessed: blessed by the cleansing and blessed by the gratitude. You might ask, why is expressing gratitude a blessing? It is simply the right thing to do. Well, gratitude is all about belonging. Its about seeing ourselves in relationship to the world and to God our creator. When we turn towards God and offer our thanks and praise, we are reminding ourselves that we belong to God, that we belong to the network of care and connection all around us. My friend Grace once explained her thinking on this: when it comes to praying, “thanks be to God” is the ultimate prayer—she argued. “I mean, what more is there to say?” I love this reorienting. The simplicity and the power of these words. It isn’t that we don’t pray or shouldn’t pray for peace, or amelioration of suffering and an end to hunger. Prayer centered in gratitude, however, opens our hearts and minds to the orientation that the wonders of creation are more profound and the gifts of the sacred are more abundant than temporal struggle. Gratitude is a mutual activity, respecting the giver and receiver as both worthy.

When Jesus asks, where are the others who have been healed—I see this less as an incitement of the other nine but as a way of framing the spiritual gifts and blessings of the Samaritan. I don’t see Jesus as someone who does things for the “thank yous”. Do you? I mean if he lived today, he would probably make donations anonymously, but he wants this for us. He wants us to feel connected, he wants us to know that we belong to him and to one another. He wants us to reside in the joy that comes from this belonging. Jesus reminds us we all are worthy, our lives all deserve the gift of sacred love, transformation, and wholeness because those gifts all come from the sacred gift of life.

One of the great spiritual teachers of our lifetime, the Benedictine monk Brother David Stendl-Rast (now 99 years old) has devoted his life to exploring, contemplating and celebrating the spiritual gift of gratefulness. In this well-loved quotation, he writes, “the root of joy is gratefulness…its not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.”

As you head into this next week, I invite you to live into the spiritual gift of the grateful Samaritan—how might we embrace the internal transformation that comes from the spiritual practice of cultivating gratefulness, and how might we foster a culture of belonging externally, inviting outsiders in and making sure everyone knows, that whatever is on their heart: we pray for that too.