The Stranger in your Gates
A sermon in The Other Six Days series
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
September 24, 2006
Deuteronomy 10:12-22; Psalm 146; Luke 10:25-37

Deuteronomy 10:12-22
So now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? Only to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the Lord your God and his decrees that I am commanding you today, for your own well-being. Although heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the Lord your God, the earth with all that is in it, yet the Lord set his heart in love on your ancestors alone and chose you, their descendants after them, out of all the peoples, as it is today. Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the Lord your God; him alone you shall worship; to him you shall hold fast, and by his name you shall swear. He is your praise; he is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome things that your own eyes have seen. Your ancestors went down to Egypt seventy persons; and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in heaven.

Psalm 146
Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul! I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God all my life long. Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish.

Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps faith forever; who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets the prisoners free; the Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down; the Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin. The Lord will reign forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations. Praise the Lord!

Luke 10:25-37
Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he said, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" He said to him, "What is written in the law? What do you read there?" He answered, "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." And he said to him, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live." But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, 'Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.' Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" He said, "The one who showed him mercy." Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."

BEGINNING

Maybe this has happened to you.   You're supposed to meet up with some friends at a party, or at church, or out somewhere and you arrive first.   And you don't know anyone there and mill about awkwardly waiting for your friends to arrive.

Or perhaps it's your first day at a new school.   You don't know anyone and you're walking down the halls, trying to find your classes, trying not to get noticed as the "new kid".

Or you're doing your study abroad and you go into town to buy a few things.   You get lost.   You can't find your way around.   You can't read the signs.   The people are all talking too fast.   You feel lost. A fish out of water.

There are many times in life when we feel like the stranger.   The outsider.   The alien one.   They are situations of discomfort and anxiety.

Imagine living your life in that state.   What must that be like?   An entire life shaped by anxiety, discomfort, and the sense that one is an 'outsider', inherently disadvantaged. Never secure in one's sense of well-being or place in the community.

THE TEXT

In Biblical Israel there was a class of individuals in the community known as gerim.   The word ger is variously translated as 'sojourner' 'alien' 'foreigner' 'resident alien' and 'stranger'.   It applied to a non-Israelite dwelling in and among the people of Israel.   And it is clear from the Biblical material that there were many of them.   They are not always clearly identified.   Were they Canaanites?   The other peoples who inhabited the land of Israel?   Were they from abroad--Egypt, Assyria, Moab, Edom?   The text doesn't seem to make distinctions.   The 'strangers' were those who were not of the people Israel who nevertheless resided in their midst.

Now, of course, the Children of Israel had received covenant promises concerning the land.   Land was part of the original promise to Abraham--he would receive land, descendants, and blessing.   The Israelites took their connection to the land very seriously.   They also took their connection to one another and to their people-hood seriously.   As we read from the passage from Deuteronomy that we heard earlier:

Although heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the Lord your God, the earth with all that is in it, yet the Lord set his heart in love on your ancestors alone and chose you, their descendants after them, out of all the peoples, as it is today.

The Israelites understood themselves as a people in special relationship with God. "The Lord set his heart in love on your ancestors alone and chose you...."   And yet, as the author of Deuteronomy is inclined to point out frequently, this special relationship does not confer special privilege.   If anything, it requires special responsibility, and a dedication to righteousness and justice.

Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

Immediately after the recitation of the special election of Israel as a covenant people comes the explicit reminder: "The Lord your God... loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing.   You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in Egypt."

It is a command to the Israelites, that though they are a people in special relationship to God they are not to oppress the strangers in their midst. Nor are they to treat them any differently than they would treat each other. An admonition that is frequently encountered in Scripture :

Leviticus 19:33 : When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien.

Leviticus 24.22 : You shall have one law for the alien and for the citizen: for I am the Lord your God.

Even the command to observe the Sabbath comes with this admonition:

Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work--you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you.

In older translations they rendered "resident alien in your towns" as " stranger in your gates".   The same strangers whom, we are told, the Lord loves, and whom he provides food and clothing.   "You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in Egypt."

THE PROBLEM

In 1883, Emma Lazarus wrote a poem entitled "The New Colossus" that in 1903 was inscribed in bronze and placed on the interior of the Statue of Liberty.   It reads:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

However, despite these noble words, we as a nation, have not always been the best at welcoming the stranger.   In our own national life we have seen plenty of examples of fear of the stranger.   In the 1850's a group called the "Know-Nothings " who were rabidly anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic threw a stone intended for the Washington Monument into the Potomac because it had been donated by the Vatican.   This party flourished in the South and in the urban centers of the North where immigration was bringing German and Irish Catholics into the United States.

And we see the same thing repeat itself in different fashion with waves of Italian and Polish immigration in the late 19 th century.   And with Jewish immigration in the early Twentieth.   And so on.   Often, this anti-immigrant attitude would be joined in by the very groups who had experienced it in the last go-around.

And this problem is by no means the United States' problem alone.   In Germany it is the Turks who are the 'stranger'.   In France, the Algerians.   In Britain, the Pakistanis.   In Israel, the Palestinians.   And so on, around the world.   There are always communities within our midst who are 'other', 'alien' and 'stranger.'

LOVING THE STRANGER

Why is it so hard to love the stranger? Why do outsiders and aliens strike such fear in us , causing us to close in rather than open up?

Reason

This difficulty is unlikely to come as the result of reason.   Much of the current talk about immigrants seems to defy reason.

You often hear that immigration is a threat to our economic livelihood.   But, I have a cousin in Upstate New York, the part of my family who are all dairy farmers, who tells me that without Guatemalan and Honduran laborers, many of these family farms would fail because they have been unable to find native-born who are willing to do the work.   Indeed, as many businesses will point out, immigrant labor is vital to our economic survival.   Much of the problems of job loss in this country are the consequences of globalization and the competition from abroad in terms of cheaper labor and infrastructure abroad.   It is not due to inexpensive labor domestically.

It does not seem that our inability to embrace the stranger has anything to do with reason.   Perhaps it owes itself more to fear.

Fear of the Stranger

There is an inherent fear of the stranger in our midst, not only these days but it seems always.   Perhaps it comes from a deep-seated fear of the 'other.'   Perhaps some evolutionary survival mechanism programs us to seek out those who are 'like' us and be wary of those who are 'other'.   I am inclined to find a biological explanation because this behavior seems so prevalent.

Indeed, there must be something fundamental about this fear because Jesus used this idea to such great effect.

Two weeks ago, we mentioned briefly the New Testament lesson that we read tonight.   The parable of the Good Samaritan.   This story is often invoked in the discussion about Jesus' command to love your neighbor and is meant to build upon that teaching.   However, it should be pointed out that the command to love your neighbor is not original to Jesus.   It, too, is found in Leviticus, Chapter 19, verse 18: "You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord."

This commandment to love your neighbor had been on the books for quite some time.   Where Jesus is being radical is in his definition of "neighbor".   For Jesus pushes right past the distinction of native-born and 'stranger' and reorganizes them into a category of 'neighbor' that is defined not by nationality, or creed, or language, but by righteousness.

Remember, the Samaritans were not a people the Jews got along with easily.   In the year 728, when the Assyrians destroyed the Northern Kingdom of Israel, the best and brightest were deported and resettled elsewhere, and eastern Assyrians were resettled in Israel.   They brought their own religious ideas but also sought to please "the God of the land" and so they intermarried with the locals and produced a mixed ethnic group and a mixed religion. These people became known as Samaritans.

Jews never considered them authentic Israelites, despite their acceptance of the Torah , and even refused their help when rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem after the Babylonian Exile. Perhaps this people, themselves the result of the conquest of a foreign empire, reminded the Jews of their own defeat.   In any event, by Jesus' day, the situation was rife with hostility.  

So, it was shocking to Jesus' listeners to tell the story of how a Jew, traveling the Jericho road, should be accosted by robbers, ignored by a Priest and a Levite (for reasons of purity about touching a corpse, likely), in the end is aided by a Samaritan.   For Jesus doesn't merely point out that the Samaritan is a 'stranger' and shows kindness therefore Jews should show kindness to 'strangers'.   He refers to the 'stranger' as a neighbor.

Jesus is telling his listeners: you and the stranger are the same. And what ought to unite you is righteousness.

For you were strangers

In reflecting upon this story, it seems to me that the reason we have such a hard time in welcoming the stranger is not because of genetic hard-wiring, or any fears about the economy , but rather because of a spiritual failing : we fail to see ourselves in the stranger.

Jesus challenges us to drop the distinctions between native born and 'stranger' and to see one another as neighbors in righteousness.   It is a lesson that the Old Testament law held up frequently: "You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt."

For you were strangers in the land of Egypt.  

That's us, folks.   We don't have to be Jewish to claim that.   We don't have to have actually had ancestors who were slaves in Egypt to appreciate that.   For we are all strangers in the land of Egypt at some point in our lives.   We are all alienated from some group, some community, some context.   There are moments in each of our lives when we feel as if we are completely outside--we are uncomfortable, awkward, and alone.   And in those moments we craved for someone to extend us a kindness, a cup of water, a welcome.   We wanted more than anything to be treated as though we were equal to those we perceived to be on the inside.

And if you are having trouble thinking of a particular instance, it bears reminding that we are all of us 'alien'.   As St. Paul said in his epistle to the Romans: For there is no distinction, 23 since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; 24 they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, (Rom. 3:22-24)

It is a theme that the author of Ephesians continues:

11 So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called "the uncircumcision" by those who are called "the circumcision" --a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands-- 12 remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.... 19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, 20 built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.

END

So, what is the proper answer to the complex issue of immigration?   It is beyond my competency as a pastor to recommend a particular political course of action from the pulpit.   I have neither the political expertise nor the moral authority to do so.

However, we can say this: as a covenant community of faith, in covenant relationship with God, there are certain obligations that we cannot ignore.

As a community of Christian faith, bound by the Covenants Old and New, we are bound to execute justice on behalf of those to whom it comes with so much difficulty: the widow, the orphan, and the stranger.   We are called to have but one law for the native born and the stranger --to treat with justice and equality all people.   And all of this comes out of a deep understanding that before the throne of God we are all strangers.   All on the outside, all sojourners in the house of God.   To the extent we seek to live out this understanding of God, we live out lives that reflect this love that turns 'citizen' and 'stranger' into 'neighbors' through righteousness.

There are plenty of 'strangers' still left in the world.   Plenty of people who are not granted equality before the law.   Plenty of people who are denied justice.   Plenty of people who are on the outside looking in.   Strangers.   Our neighbors.   We shall love our neighbors as ourselves.   We shall love the stranger, for we were strangers in the land of Egypt.

World Book, "Samaritans"