Thought for Today
Genesis 23:3 Abraham rose up from beside his dead, and said to the Hittites, 4 "I am a stranger and an alien residing among you; give me property among you for a burying place, so that I may bury my dead out of my sight."
Deuteronomy 10:19 You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
Matthew 25:35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,
John 10:5 They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers."
The word ‘stranger’ has been much on my mind this week for several reasons. One of the Lectionary passages for Sunday is Mark 7:24-30 which includes “26 Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin.” The internet tells me she was “a native or inhabitant of Phoenicia when it was part of the Roman province of Syria.” (www.merriam-webster.com) Also, as everyone surely knows, this is a presidential election year, and one of the most often discussed issues is border security.
My computer suggests synonyms might include ‘outsider’ or ‘unfamiliar person.’ Much of the political narrative uses ‘alien’ rather than ‘stranger.’ Whatever word we prefer to use, the issue of how we deal with ‘others’ is much-discussed in civil discourse right now.
The political narrative recently focuses primarily on our southern border. Having spent most of my life within a relatively short drive from that border, I know that border and its security has been an issue for a very long time. I have not heard any discussion on the ‘problem’ of Canadians ‘invading’ our northern states.
What defines or identifies a stranger, an alien? The U.S.A. has never been a country of ethnic, racial or even linguistic homogeneity. From its earliest inception, our nation has been one of immigrants. Even those who identify themselves as Indigenous Peoples are descendants of immigrants. Homo Sapiens are not indigenous to the Western Hemisphere. “The earliest widely accepted evidence of people in the Americas is less than 15,000 years old. Genetic studies strongly support the idea that those people were the ancestors of living Native Americans, arriving in North America from Asia.” (www.bing.com)
How are Christians to deal with the issue of ‘strangers’? The Bible is and should be our ‘go-to’ source for such questions. We are told that Abraham, the ‘father’ of the Jewish people was not born in Israel. Abraham immigrated to the Promised Land from Haran; he immigrated to Haran from Ur. Haran was in what today is eastern Turkey. Ur was a Sumerian city on the Euphrates, in what is today southern Iraq. The Hebrew people, our earliest ancestors-in-the-faith immigrated from Canaan to Egypt and then from Egypt to the Promised Land.
All inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere are either immigrants or descended from immigrants. All Christians, irrespective of where we dwell are immigrants or descended from immigrants. That fact should be where our consideration of the issue of ‘strangers’ begins.
It is not coincidental that Jesus told the Parable of the King and included those words above from Matthew 25. It is not coincidental that Jesus told the Parable of the Good Samaritan. And that detail about the mother of that daughter with the unclean spirit was included in Mark deliberately. I understand all those passages and all of the other parts of the Bible dealing with strangers and aliens as clues which are relatively easy to interpret.
My faith tells me that I must first consider every issue from the basic position outlined in what I call the Law of Love. Jesus said, Luke 10:27 "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."
All I have to do, all any of us have to do, is to figure out how all this applies to the ‘strangers among us,’ to the ‘undocumented workers’ or ‘illegal aliens.’ A good friend once told me that the real clue to life is “to listen, listen, love, love.” That is a good start.
Stay safe, first react with love, trust God,
Pastor Ray