Welcome the Stranger

Leviticus 19:33-34, Inclusive Bible

Do not mistreat the foreigners who reside in your land. The foreigner who lives among you must be treated like one of your own. Love them as you love yourself, for you too were a foreigner in the land of Egypt. I am YHWH.

Zechariah 7:9-14, Inclusive Bible

“Didn’t I tell them, ‘Thus says YHWH Omnipotent: Administer true justice; show kindness and mercy to one another; do not oppress the widowed or the orphaned, the resident alien or the poor, and do not plot evil against one another’? But they refused to listen; they turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears in order not to hear. They were adamant in their refusal to accept the Law and its teachings which YHWH Omnipotent sent by the spirit through the prophets of old. Since they did not listen when I called, I would not listen when they called. I scattered them out among all the nations unknown to them, leaving their land deserted behind them, so that no one came and went. So, their pleasant land turned into a desert.”

Throughout the Hebrew text, we find passage after passage that admonishes the Israelite people to welcome the stranger, foreigner, or alien among them; to threat them like their own, often followed by a reminder that they were once foreigners in the land of Egypt and barely made it out of there with their culture intact. In the United States, we generally ignore the Hebrew texts warnings about treating the stranger, foreigner, or alien unfairly. We, too, have forgotten that we came from somewhere else, many of our ancestors fleeing various types of persecution from governments of tyranny.

Why do we have such short memory spans? And why do we ignore these passages of scripture that are so compelling about how we SHOULD treat one another?

I guess what I find astounding is that we haven’t learned yet, whether from scripture or just from daily living, that how we treat each other actually matters.

I had this amazing experience this week that brought this message home to me so clearly. Our doorbell rang in the middle of the day, which usually indicates a delivery. I stopped working to go check the front porch because I don’t like to leave stuff out there, which can invite mischief to your front door. When I opened the door, though, it wasn’t a delivery, but rather a gentleman that I did not recognize. He immediately introduced himself and explained the reason for his intrusion. He and his wife were doing a six-week observation at the hospital, both of them doctors from India, and he was looking for a place to stay. We ended up having a wonderful conversation. I invited him in so that I could get his contact information and I told him I would call if I discovered anything close by that might work for him.

At dinner, I talked it over with my wife, and we agreed to call them back and offer them a room. I couldn’t believe we were going to do this, but it felt so right. I knew that I needed to do this. So, I called them back right then and we set up a time for them to come the next day.

We both got up early and started cleaning the house (we wanted to make a good impression) and managed to get everything done in preparation for their arrival. I felt good about our efforts and was looking forward to seeing him again. Sadly, I received a text message from him that he had found lodging with someone else that really was a better fit—more room and a cultural connection.

Up until this event, I had been floundering on which of several passages I wanted to focus on this week. The two passages I chose were among those I was wrestling with.

I am convinced that how we treat the stranger, foreigner, or alien seeking any kind of refuge in our country really does matter. There is something so foundational to that kind of hospitality that it is inescapable as a spiritual practice. Coming face to face with someone who doesn’t look like us or someone who doesn’t have the same customs as us can move us to expand our vision of the world. We are suddenly thrust into uncharted territory where learning about how other people think, worship, and live can open us more fully to our creator. We are being shown the various expressions of God every time we step outside our comfort zone and have conversations with people with a variety of heritages.

In scripture, these mandates are often tied to the land in which the Israelites occupy. They are often told that there are consequences for not treating others fairly. God threatens the Israelites with expulsion from the land if they do not honor the stranger, foreigner, or alien residing among them. This feels like harsh treatment coming from God, and maybe it is, but I suspect that the prophets who made these pronouncements in the name of God were trying to convey a broader message of hospitality as a spiritual practice and that without this foundational piece anchoring their faith, they are likely to become the very thing they hate. The oppressed become the oppressor.

If we look at what is happening in Israel at the moment, and we remember all the previous moments where the Israeli army decided to remove Palestinians from their land, it has never gone well for them. In the United States, it has been unpopular to speak out against the actions of the Israeli army for its antagonistic actions toward Palestine, and those who do get labeled Anti-Semitic. As someone who studies Jewish texts and who understands the covenantal relationship between God and Abraham and the Christian grafting onto that covenant that we claim as followers of Jesus, I can state with certainty that I am not Anti-Semitic. I can also state with certainty that the ongoing aggression toward Palestine is not in keeping with God’s command to his favored people.

The oppressed have become the oppressors.

Recognizing that the relationship between Israel and Palestine is a complicated issue, I do not want to simplify it so much that we miss the complexity of God’s covenant with Abraham juxtaposed against the backdrop of a modern-day conflict between two nations competing for the same land and resources. There is nothing simple about this conflict or the right of either Israel or Palestine to possess the land.

Still, we cannot ignore the multitude of times that the Israelite people are told to welcome the stranger, foreigner, or alien resident among them. We cannot ignore the many times the Israelite people are reminded that they were once in the land of Egypt, foreigners in a foreign land, and that they had to be liberated from that land if they expected to survive. They were worth saving. Are not others worth saving also?

When we treat our neighbors with contempt; when we intentionally draw battle lines where we should be eliminating borders, we keep the good out along with the bad. There really isn’t any way to guard against the bad actions of the few. Sometimes we are in the path of those actions, and it doesn’t go so well. We can try to protect ourselves from this level of interaction, but there will always be someone, somewhere, who can slip through our defenses.

Instead, God is calling us to live wide-open. We have talked many times about how living from a place of vulnerability is the most courageous thing we can do. It is true. Often people retaliate as a way to keep from being on the receiving end of retaliation. This creates a tit-for-tat kind of situation that never ends. What would happen, though, if we decided to put down all of our weapons, our armor, everything that we think protects us from the outside world and tried to listen—to just be present to the moment? Would it change how we see each other? Would we be more open to the ways we are alike rather than only looking at the ways we are different?

The Spiritual Practice of Hospitality teaches me that acknowledging the stranger, foreigner, and alien is the first step to seeing just how create God is. Once we acknowledge God’s creativity, then we can begin to grasp the necessity for diversity of culture, religions, and political ideologies. If we can see that diversity matters, then we are more apt to accept that God’s creation is more magnificent than we first realized; that God’s dwelling place must be equally diverse, equally filled with possibility. That is the God I serve, a God who pushes me to grow, change, and be transformed by the world around me.

It takes all of us learning from each other, engaging in mutual cooperation, to even begin to unravel the secrets of the universe. It is through our encounters with one another that we catch a glimpse of who God is and how God works in the world. When we remember that all of this belongs to God in the first place, I am more willing to concede that we must create space for one another; that we must share in all our resources so that we can all thrive in this world.

Bridging the Gap

Genesis 28:10-19

10 Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran. 11 He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place. 12 And he dreamed that there was a stairway set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13 And the Lord stood beside him and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring, 14 and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. 15 Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” 16 Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!” 17 And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”

18 So Jacob rose early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. 19 He called that place Bethel, but the name of the city was Luz at first.

There are a number of incidents in the Hebrew Texts where dreams are featured as the main theme of a story. In this particular text, we find Jacob fleeing from his family because he had just swindled his brother out of his birthright. He is running from Esau, fearing for his very life when he is forced to stop for the night. In one Jewish commentary, the author indicated that God caused the sun to set earlier than normal so that Jacob would stop in that exact location. He also stated that the location was important because it was the site where Abraham had taken Isaac to be sacrificed.

I will confess, I do not read Hebrew and cannot compete with the exegetical skills of a Rabbi, however, I don’t see those facts in the text. What I do see is that Jacob ran until it got dark and then he stopped for the night. From a psychological perspective, I can imagine that Jacob’s fear that his brother, Esau, might find him, is what caused him to have strange dreams. Our minds are constantly trying to deconstruct our day to make sense of all that data we’ve taken in.

What is fascinating about this dream is that it was a deeply religious or spiritual dream and Jacob wasn’t really a religious or spiritual guy at this point. In fact, what we find with each generation of the Hebrew legacy are men who have to be shown again and again who God is and why worship of God is important. This dream reveals to Jacob the fundamental connection between heaven and earth and that there is a natural flow between the two; one does not exist without the other.

As I was working with the passage, I was trying to remember a single moment in my life where the presence of God was so unmistakable. After twenty minutes of deep thought, it was hard to just pick one. But I quickly hit the pause button to ask an important question: “Was it really the presence of God, or was it all in my head?”

I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know which is true, but I would like to believe that it was the unmistakable presence of God. If this is true, though, I also have to ask, “Why do some people have experiences that they determine are the unmistakable presence of God, and other people never have those experiences, sometimes to the point that they no longer believe in God?”

I don’t know. I really don’t. This is why I say all that time that I don’t REALLY know who God is or how God works in the world. For years as a child, I tried to do some crazy mental gymnastics to justify my belief in a God who constantly intervenes in the lives of people – a God who heals, who rescues, who protects – because I was taught this. The Bible is full of stories where God behaves in these ways. But there are too many other people who have never had these kinds of experiences. People die everyday even though they have spent hours praying for healing. Children are swept away in flood waters even though thousands of people are praying that they will be rescued. Folks from all walks of life have to endure all kinds of persecution from haters, sometimes to the point of death, even though they believed in their hearts that God would somehow protect them.

These are difficult theological conundrums to wrestle with. How do we continue to believe in a loving God when there is so much hatred in the world? Are heaven and earth really connected, or is this what we like to tell ourselves when we can’t sleep at night?

When I read scripture, I am constantly looking for hope and compassion. Whether this was a real dream or not, there is something profound about the connection between our reality and the reality of a transcendent being. The ladder that connects earth to heaven does have any special powers, but it does represent the flow of energy from one place to the next. The ladder doesn’t facilitate heart-felt conversations, lovefests, or even peace-keeping marches. It simply illustrates God’s desire to be in relation with us.

I used to think that having a relationship with God meant that God was going to fix it all. I was taught this in church. People of faith, true faith, were somehow loved more and protected more by God. When bad things happened to good people, it was always explained away as a lack of faith. Jacob didn’t lack faith; he really didn’t have any kind of faith at all. He was on the run from his brother because he was a cheat and a liar. And yet, God chose to reveal something magnificent to Jacob. The connection between heaven and earth signifies God’s connection with all living beings. It is a reminder that we, too, are creatures, created in the image and likeness of God, placed on earth to have human experiences.

We have this moment, and this moment only. What we choose to do with our moments is entirely up to us. If we choose to make the most of our moments, we will engage in acts of kindness, compassion, and love for our fellow beings; we will look for ways to bridge the gaps that keep us divided.

This profound moment in Jacob’s life is when he begins to understand his purpose here on earth. Jacob’s path, though, would continue to unfold over time, it wasn’t revealed to him all at once. The same is true for us. Every person we meet on earth has something to teach us – good, bad, or indifferent. It is our job to learn from each encounter—to connect heaven and earth—and bridge the gap. To heal and mend the divisions in our world, we must embrace a vision where all things are connected and it really is up to us to make a difference one person at a time.

God’s Word – A Conversation About Scripture

In 2019, Karen Armstrong published her book The Lost Art of Scripture: Rescuing the Sacred Texts. I started reading the introduction and I immediately knew this was the going to answer some of my questions regarding the whole of scripture, not just the scriptures we find in the Bible. There were two things that stood out to me immediately. First, Armstrong makes an argument that all the religions of the world use different names of the Divine or Transcendent, and second, in all of these religious traditions, including Christianity, the concept of the Divine was seen as, “ineffable, indescribable, and unknowable—and yet was within them: a constant source of life, energy, and inspiration. Religion—and scripture—were, therefore, art forms that helped them to live in relation to this transcendent reality and somehow embody it.”

I am about to embark on a new spiritual journey with my Spiritual Director (the individual that helps me sort through my own theology, spiritual practices, and how I live those out). What has prompted this change in direction is the concept of embodying the transcendent. What we read in the Bible and in other scriptures points to greater spiritual truths that we all must wrestle with in our own lives. Ultimately, we are called to live in a particular way that speaks to the God-ness in each of us. How we incorporate these concepts into our daily living speaks to how we see and know God on a deeper level.

As a pastor, I want to continually grow in my faith. I want to understand major themes in scripture from every angle, including my own lived experience. But sometimes life gets in the way of doing the work. Spiritual practices help to bring our focus back to those things that are most important in our lives. Living from a place where God is at the center of it all requires me to do things differently. I have to be willing to be still and quiet more frequently. I have to be willing to listen for God's still speaking voice, and to not be content with how things have been, but to continual look for ways to grow, change, and be transformed into a more robust image of God.

Reading scripture is difficult even for the most devoted in the church, but to embody scripture can feel like an impossibility. If, however, we see all scripture as pointing us toward lives of compassion, then the reading of scripture becomes a part of how we see God working in the world to bring about Shalom.

I have been challenged to engage in a weekly practice of “forest bathing.” Yeah, I didn’t really know what that was either. Forest Bathing is a Japanese spiritual practice that involves sitting, walking, or standing in nature—preferably a forest—just to observe the natural world. The idea is to be mindful of all that is happening around you, the feel of the wind, the insects and other wildlife present, how the trees are moving, what kinds of things to do you smell, and so much more. By engaging your senses out in the natural world, you are allowing the very essence of God to permeate your whole being. This is one way to embody the divine.

This week we will look at the Bible from the perspective of the written word that tells us something about the Divine, and how these words are inspired by their very human interactions with the natural world, which told them a lot about God and how God works in the world. When we look at scripture, we are looking at the inner workings of what God created; how we think and feel about life and all the various circumstances we find ourselves in. By reading scripture, we also get a different sense of the world around us. While we may not be able to imagine what life was like during the time the Israelites were wandering in the desert or building the temple in Jerusalem, we can imagine our own beginnings. We can see how life has changed and transformed for us over the last 200+ years in the United States.

In the United Church of Christ, we say that God is still speaking. What is God saying to you in this moment? What kinds of things do we need to be aware of in our world? Are we moving in the right direction? Do we have a sense of the divine or transcendent in our lives? If not, how can we better connect with the source of all life?

These are just a few of the questions we can ask ourselves when talking about what scripture means for us today and what spiritual practices will draw us closer to understanding God and how God works in the world.