We Need the Stranger More Than Ever

 Sermon preached on Sunday, November 10, 2024 at Church of the Redeemer, Addison, NY:  Ruth 1:18

It’s the Sunday after a consequential election, and I have been thinking ever since then of what it means to love and serve our God, to follow the Way of Jesus, in this time and place?

I’ll try to answer that question first using the story of Ruth and Naomi.  They were faced with a crisis.  All the men had died on them, which means in their day they were in a very precarious situation.  They had no protectors, no providers, no real identity.

Naomi responds with practicality.  The best thing for her foreign daughters-in-law was for them to return to their original families and start over, as Naomi had determined to do for herself.  She knew there was nothing she could do for them.  Orpah, sadly, agrees, but Ruth has a different reaction.  In some of the most beautiful words of Scripture she says

Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.

The Bible is full of quietly decisive moments and this is one of them, because Ruth’s decision will alter the course of her life such that she will eventually marry once she returns to Naomi’s homeland of Judah, and from that marriage will be born the grandfather of King David.  Without Ruth’s decision, there would have been no David.

Now you would think that the Bible would make as little of this as possible since Ruth is not a Jew. She is a Moabite, a foreigner, an alien.  But now, the Bible is willing to admit that the stranger is somehow necessary for the community’s ultimate strength.

So what do we learn from this story that helps us in this present moment?

First there is the simple determination to stay together.  In times of crisis, it is easy to let ourselves drift apart and a strong part of the current climate is the need so many of us feel to separate ourselves from one another, to divide ourselves along some perceived ethnicity or culture or earned place in society or our own (not God’s) definition of citizenship.  We must resist that, inspired by those brave and decisive words from Ruth, “Where you go, I will go; your people will be my people and your God my God.”

Related to this comes the second thing to glean from this story.  We need the stranger.  Who among us does not have the blood of a stranger running through our veins?  How we treat the stranger, the alien, will become a defining issue in the days ahead, of that I am certain.

Jesus could not be clearer about this:  the stranger is your neighbor.  The vulnerable, the one in need, for whatever reason, is the one we are called to serve, and not just serve, but to know on a deep level that the one we serve is our equal.

This message was counter-cultural in Jesus’ day, as it is in ours.  We must be prepared to be counter-cultural.

In practical terms what does this mean for us, here at the Redeemer?

At the Diocesan Convention, Bishop Kara asked us to examine some things about ourselves. Some of the questions she asked us to ponder are things like, “How do people around you know what you stand for?  Who is welcome?  How are you prepared to welcome the stranger? How does the stranger know she or he will be welcomed here?”

Those questions are critical ones for churches whose future is uncertain. And now they take on an even important role in an environment where the stranger is suspect, considered dangerous and worth nothing to our continued flourishing as a people.

Again, to try to be as practical as possible, one way this is going to play out for us is in the food pantry.  We, of course, are working on logistical stuff:  getting the rectory ready, arranging for whatever we need to have food available.  But there are some deeper questions for us to ponder.

In my experience ministries like this can develop the sense that “we” are doing something for “them.”  How can we work against this? How can we operate as if “we” is doing something for “us?”

I’ll leave those as opened-ended questions.

What has happened isn’t going to make it any easier for us to be church.  But there is also an opportunity to be clear about who we are, why we think we are here, what we see as our place in the community, and how we provide a welcoming and safe place for those in our communities that are—with very good reason—frightened about what is to come.