The Stranger that Is Among You

“The Stranger that is among you.”

Matthew 25:35, 36 – Grace – Sunday 24 June 2018

For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me. (35, 36 ESV) . . . Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” (40)

In the ESV, the heading on this portion of Matthew’s gospel is titled “The Final Judgment.” It is the most direct and clear warning Jesus gives about who will spend eternity in His presence and who won’t. None of the issues that our age has allowed to define who is Christian and who isn’t are found in the text. Theological purity, the role of women in the church, sexuality, abortion, marriage, etc. are not mentioned. That doesn’t mean those issues don’t deserve attention – just that they can’t be allowed to define us. 

On the final night of His life, in a room where He has just washed twelve sets of dirty feet – including those of the one who would betray Him, Jesus says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. BY this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34, 35 ESV)

On more than one occasion we are reminded that the entire Law and Prophets can be summarized and fulfilled in two fundamental behaviors: love God, and love neighbor. In what may be among the most powerful of the parables Jesus tells – we know our “neighbor” is the whole world. (Luke 10)

In the story Jesus tells that might be the most convicting of the convicting stories, the rich man – whose name we aren’t even told – spends eternity separated from God because he routinely ignored the poor, sore covered, dog-licked, crumb eating, emaciated beggar – whose name we do know – Lazarus at his front gate every day. (Luke 7)

Sojourners

The Bible is a narrative in which we bump into hundreds of “strangers at the gates” of our lives in a variety of contexts. I guess you would have to say it all started with Adam and Eve – who sojourn into a world infected with sin and death. After their son Cain kills his brother, he becomes a wanderer of sorts. The same might be said for Noah and his family – and after the Tower of Babel, being “strangers” seems to be the only option.

What if God had decided to ignore humankind since we were so “different” from Him?

But He didn’t ignore us. He called Abram and Sarai and sent them on the journey of a life time. Read their story, it starts in Genesis 12. By the time we know them as Abraham and Sarah and the parents of Isaac – they have crossed more international boundaries than I can count and have had to interact with all sorts of governing officials – not all of whom were particularly good people.

Later Jacob and his sons will go to Egypt – interestingly enough because of a famine in their land to seek food in Egypt. While that story plays itself out across generations, a man named Moses will kill both an Egyptian and a Hebrew, and out of fear for his life, flee to the land of Midian. In what may be among the most ironic of ironic twists of plots, Moses will go back to Egypt and lead the descendants of Jacob across boundary after boundary – headed to a new, safer, more peaceful “land of milk and honey.” 

The truth is, if you read the Hebrew Bible with some degree of care – you no doubt walk away with the impression that the God we love and worship has always been “an Exodus-kind of God.” He is constantly seen moving people around on the one hand; but insisting that His people care for the sojourner on the other.

When Moses is reviewing the Law just prior to his death, he addresses this issue from God’s perspective head on: “He (God) executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” (Deut. 10:18, 19  ESV)

What interests me, in some ways, about these words, is that they were said to Israel in a time in the history of God’s relationship with humankind that the idea of separation was pretty important. But, the moral code of the law combined with an ethic focused on loving God and loving neighbor simply makes it impossible for even Israel, the chosen of God, not to care about the sojourners. Their story includes the fact that they too were once sojourners! 

In Leviticus, the most “law of the law” kinds of book, we are told, “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”  (19:33-35  ESV)

It shouldn’t go unnoticed that James, in the epistle that bears his name, says, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”  (James 1:27  ESV) Apparently the gospel walks beyond, not away from, what the Law demanded of Israel.

It appears to me that it is a dangerous thing to use “the Law” as an excuse for why we are giving up on the character of God. 

Jesus and Sojourners

As the Law encouraged Israel to remember – Jesus likely remembered that He too once was a sojourner. His parents took Him to Egypt – a foreign nation, an unclean nation for that matter to Jews, because of the genocide like behavior of Herod the Great. When they finally come back, they end up living in Nazareth – not exactly the quality city of the world of the first century – but safer from the political turmoil of the day

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Has it ever dawned on us that the very people who were so drawn to Jesus were people whose lives were lived in the authentic risk of danger, daily. The well-to-do, politically connected, religiously powerful people crucified Him. The poor people, the outcasts, the oppressed, the hungry, - they found in Jesus a kind of motivation to live in the presence of God’s protection in ways they could not have imagined – were it not for the very character of Jesus.

Of course – the simple truth is – often overlooked – is that as a human, Jesus came here an alien. “He emptied Himself of equality with God to take on the form of a bondservant because he was made in human likeness.” (Phil. 2:5-11) That old hymn I grew up singing at church – “out of the ivory palaces, into a world of woe, only his great, eternal love, made my savior go.” 

What if our redeemer God refused to be a sojourner among us? What if His attitude toward people different than him was what so many in our current religious culture seems to be?

But . . . “it’s the Law”

If Paul isn’t spinning in his grave, it’s only because we really don’t stay in our graves if we belong to Jesus. The abuse of his comments about government in Romans 13 is simply stunning. But, more than a few self-perceived Christian spokesmen are saying of the issues at the border with children right now – “but it’s the law of the land, it has to be enforced.”

Well. That’s nice. The “law of the land” in the world in which the author of Romans 13 lived insisted that “only Caesar is Lord.” Do you really think Paul obeyed that Law?

In our land, abortion is “legal.” But Christians tend to insist on breaking that Law. Same-sex marriage is now legal, but some of the same people defending the border incident with “it’s the law of the land” are celebrating that the Supreme Court ruled that a bakery can insist they don’t recognize that Law.

Honestly – if “the law of the land” is the issue – then we should make plans not to celebrate the Fourth of July and instead go to London to celebrate the Queen’s birthday.

I know this is complex and I know it isn’t as simple as one side saying “build the wall and close the border” and the other side saying “let one and all in – ask no questions.”

But what I know with even more conviction is that when I became a follower of Jesus, I gave him my full allegiance. Period. I’m not saying I have always lived up to that – but I am saying that’s the standard. 

As a group of believers, we have sent several thousands of dollars to help refugees in Syria and the Middle East. I love that we have done that. We have spent several thousands of dollars helping a pregnant teen and her family; and lots of dollars on places like One Roof, Bridging the Gap, and other similar ministries.

Sojourners are all around us. We can’t let politics get in the way of reflecting that when all is said and done, our allegiance is to Jesus, the pioneer of our faith. He came to rescue sojourners like us – and calls us to follow His lead.

Some of you know that I am a huge fan of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Over the last twenty or so years, I have read multiple biographies of his life and lots of his writings. His little book Life Together is one that I read a couple of times every year, give as gifts to people, and make a required reading in one of my classes at Point. 

I tell you that to say this. In the world of Nazi Germany leading up the WWII, the church in Germany stilled its tongue in the name of “the economy is better” or “Germany is great again.” In response to the oppressive accords at the Versailles Conference, it is easy to understand how people might have closed their eyes to other abuses in the name of getting beyond abuses imposed on them.

But, the sad story of history is that “the official church” kept quiet when it should have been a prophetic voice for justice, decency, and the idea that all humans – in their case, even Jews – were made in the image of God.

In 2004, I had the high privilege to have coffee in mid-afternoon with Professor Otto Betz and his wife in their home in Tuebingen, Germany. Professor Betz was about the same age as Bonhoeffer, but kept quiet, perhaps because otherwise he would lose his job in the university.

With big tears running down his cheeks, he said, “We knew what they were doing (the Nazis) – but wouldn’t speak up because of fear.”  I can’t remember a more moving moment in terms of realizing the cost of being a follower of Jesus.

I don’t want to say that we are on the verge of Nazism taking over our culture. But I do want to say the church can ill afford the luxury of cowering in fear because “the economy is better” or “we want to make America great again.” 

God has called us to a prophetic voice, not a political one. May we have the courage to use it.