"Take care of your own" is a core value drummed into me at an early age. Take care of your family and close circles. You've got a greater obligation to your friends, colleagues and connections than you do to the wider general public. That's what I learned.
I remember a debate about foreign aid when I was in high school. We need to take care of poor people in our own country before sending aid overseas, reasoned the group. A modest amount of help was OK, especially if there was some element of self-interest – allies in times of trouble, trade partners. But the consensus remained. You need to take care of your own first. It's just common sense.
I thought about that common sense one recent Sunday when we read the story of Jesus' first sermon in his hometown synagogue in Nazareth. When Jesus paused his speaking, it seems he sensed some undercurrent of disappointment. There were hints of criticism from the people he grew up with because he was not healing and curing people here in his hometown as he had done elsewhere. Why isn't he taking care of his own? Why not some healing miracles here, with his own people?
So Jesus retold two stories from the Hebrew Scriptures. One story was about the prophet Elijah feeding a widow during a great famine. The other was about the prophet Elisha healing a leper. Jesus pointed out to his hometown congregation that both prophets chose to take care of foreigners, even though there were nearby neighbors suffering equally. He said, "There were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian." That widow was from Lebanon; the leper Naaman was a general of an enemy army. These two prophets took care of foreigners and enemies when neighbors were suffering equally. That's Jesus' answer when they asked him, "Why aren't you taking care of your own like you took care of others?"
The congregation in Nazareth was so enraged at his answer that they drove Jesus out of town and threatened to kill him.
Jesus followed the prophets' tradition. He extended remarkable generosity toward those who were not from his family, tribe, faith or nation. He offered the same gifts of healing and the same generous teaching to those "others" as he did to his own.
If we are to adopt the values of Jesus, it seems that we must treat the needs of foreigners as equal to the needs of our own people. That is a challenging teaching for those of us who identify as Christians.
Maybe there is wisdom here. More and more we experience connections that transcend borders. A virus in Asia or a new variant in Africa quickly becomes a virus in our own lungs. The coronavirus will continue to find more opportunities to mutate and spread more aggressively unless vaccines reach everyone. We worked together globally to eradicate polio and smallpox because we recognized that the presence of the disease anywhere is a threat everywhere.
Poverty, hunger, sectarian violence and climate change are all diseases that transcend political borders. Jesus would have us see their problems as our problems.
Jesus' teaching tells us that we bear responsibility for healing the violence and poverty that force desperate Central American neighbors to flee toward our border. Locking them out to take care of our own is the Nazareth response, not the way of Jesus. "My people first" or "America first" is Nazareth thinking.
When Jesus taught his signature moral premise "Love your neighbor as yourself," he told a story about a traditional enemy of his own people, a Samaritan who was good. In Nazareth, a good Samaritan was inconceivable.
How many Democrats think a good Republican is inconceivable? How many Republicans think a good Democrat is inconceivable? Jesus demands that our identity, loyalty and generosity transcend these lesser identities.
We must get out of our Nazareth minds. Anything else is certainly not Christian.