The Lord loves the
righteous; the Lord cares for the stranger...
The Lord loves the
righteous; the Lord cares for the strange...
The
"r" had been left off.
"The stranger" had become "the strange."
I left the sermon I had prepared in the
sacristy and used that typo to talk about what it might mean to be the church
of the strange. We had been talking quite a bit about what hospitality and
welcome meant, how to treat the stranger when she or he walked in the door; how
to present ourselves as friends rather than strangers.
But our unspoken assumption was that
even though the next person through the door might be a stranger, they were
most likely to be people like us, or people who could easily become like
us. This was the suburbs, after
all. But what if the next person through
the door was not only a stranger, but also just plain strange? Strangers like us could relatively easily
become friends, but the strange tend to stay strange, don't they?
Maybe yes. Maybe no.
Jesus, we are told in this morning's
Gospel reading, has gone to the region around Tyre. It appears as though he's trying to take a
break, "escape notice," as the text says. Perhaps that's why he goes to a region which
is predominantly gentile, non-jew. He
needs a break from his ministry and his people.
Sometimes it is helpful to be among strangers!
Or not.
His reputation obviously has spread beyond his own people and in such a
way that it has become disconnected from his identification with them at
all. A gentile woman approaches him with
no seeming hesitancy at all. "Heal
my daugter," she pleads, and she doesn't seem to have any doubt that Jesus
can and will do just that.
This seems to Jesus to be beyond his
mission, however. This woman is a stranger; beyond that, she is strange. If nothing else she is strange in the sense
that she is dismissable. He need not
feel any responsibility toward her. He
need not feel guilty if he sends her away.
But the woman will
not be dismissed. She refuses to be
strange. Or, better yet, she embraces
her strangeness and throws it right back in his face. And Jesus learns more deeply the depth of
God's welcome and compassion. It is only
the woman's need that matters, not the accident of her birth.
The woman reminds me
of Jacob in the Book of Genesis. Jacob,
you may remember, wrestles with an unknown man (perhaps an angel, perhaps even
God) and says, "I will not let go until you bless me." The Bible does not think that relationship
with God is easy, not even for Jesus.
Persistence is one of the key human requirements for relationship with
God.
The next healing is
almost a parable for Jesus based on what he has just experienced, as well as
for us. The message is Ephphatha, "Be opened." It is a kind of opening that Jesus has
undergone, and one that we must undergo in the face of a stranger, especially
one who is strange.
So I end by asking
the question on the front cover of the leaflet. What difference does a welcome
make? Obviously, the answer is, All the
difference in the world. In the Gospel
story it meant that non-Jews became the same kind of "children" as
Jews. That turned the world upside down.
It still does. So many of us are not
supposed to be here together, especially on a Sunday morning. In our culture we are defined as strangers
and some of us are considered downright strange. And we sometimes are, both
strangers and strange! But we believe
that to follow Jesus we belong together.
I wonder if at your
tables eating later, you could share stories about times you felt a stranger
(or strange) and yet were welcomed. How
did that feel? What was the effect of it?
What difference did a welcome make?
Let me suggest one
answer: to welcome someone is to do justice to them or to make justice with
them.
No comments:
Post a Comment