Whose Face Do You See?

Transcript

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[0:00] So we're going to start with a little overview today. We covered chapters three and four in Welcoming the Stranger this week, and I'm mostly going to focus on chapter four. I'm going to give a summary of it, and then we'll go back and we'll dig into the scripture for today. So these chapters framed the church's response to immigration as a theological issue rooted in the character of God.

[0:31] The very character of God is dependent, or these issues are rooted in God's actual character. So loving your neighbor and going that one step further, and loving the individual, that is in God's actual character.

[0:57] So if you are not loving your neighbor, and if you are not loving the least of these, that goes against God's character. Throughout scripture, we see that God reveals himself as a defender of the vulnerable, including the foreigner. Deuteronomy 10 declares that God executes justice for the fatherless, and the widow, and loves the sojourner.

[1:24] And then he commands his people to do the same. This shows that welcoming the stranger flows from God's own nature, and it's not just our ethical preference, and it's not just something that we do because we fall on one side of the political spectrum or another.

[1:45] Another theme in this chapter is the idea of covenantalism. The covenantalism is a very powerful memory. God repeatedly instructs Israel to love the foreigner because of their own history of displacement and redemption.

[2:03] So we see that in Deuteronomy 10, we also see it in Exodus 22, and in Leviticus 19. You should love the foreigner because you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. This memory is formative. It shapes Israel's identity. As the people were redeemed by grace. So we see it shaping God's identity and character, and now we see it shaping God's people's identity and character.

[2:30] So this parallels the church's identity also. We were once alienated from God, but now we've been reconciled through Christ. So maybe we are not Israelites by birth or by lineage, but we are members of the church who were once a foreigner in God's kingdom, but now we have been reconciled through Christ. Our welcome of others reflects our understanding of the grace that was given to us. So when we give grace to others, we are simply doing as Jesus asked us, but we are also simply doing as Jesus did unto us.

[3:15] The Incarnation further deepens this theology. God does not remain distant from human vulnerability, but instead he enters it fully in the person of Jesus Christ. Matthew 2 shows that Jesus himself was displaced as a refugee in Egypt. In Christ, God identifies with the stranger, and this identification becomes explicit in Jesus' teaching. I was once a stranger and you welcomed me. And we're going to dig into that a little further today. So theologically, this passage reveals a Christology in which service to the marginalized is treated as service to Christ himself.

[4:03] Chapter 4 also engages the biblical concept of justice, of mishpat, which goes beyond legal obedience to include right relationships grounded in God's righteousness. Scripture consistently links justice for the foreigner with true faithfulness to God. We see it in Jeremiah 22 and Zechariah 7. While Romans 13 affirms the role of governing authorities, passages like Proverbs 31, 8 and 9 call God's people to advocate for those who lack power and voice. So then, welcoming the stranger to God is a way to do justice for the stranger. And the word stranger is participation in God's restorative justice. It's not merely an act of personal charity.

[4:56] And then finally, in these chapters, we see the Imago Dei is underlined in the entire chapter. Genesis 1, 26 and 27 shows us that every human being is created in the image of God, granting inherent dignity regardless of nationality or legal status. This theological truth is echoed in the command to show hospitality. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers. That's Hebrews 13, 2. The church's treatment of immigration is a visible testimony to whether it truly believes that all people bear God's image and are worthy of love.

[5:41] Today, we're going to backtrack a little and go to Matthew 25. I was once a stranger and you welcomed me. So let's go ahead and read Matthew 25, 31 through 46. But when the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit upon his glorious throne. All nations will be gathered in his presence, and he will separate the people as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep at his right hand and the goats at his left.

[6:20] Then the king will say to those on his right, Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you fed me. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger and you invited me into your home. I was naked and you gave me clothing. I was sick and you cared for me. I was in prison and you visited me. Then these righteous ones will reply, Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing? When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you? And the king will say, I tell you the truth, When you did it to one of the least of my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me.

[7:22] Then the king will turn to those on the left and say, Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his demons. For I was hungry and you didn't feed me. I was thirsty and you didn't give me a drink. I was a stranger and you didn't invite me into your home. I was naked and you didn't give me clothing. I was sick and in prison and you didn't visit me. Then they will reply, Lord, when did we ever see you hungry or thirsty? Or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and not help you? And he will answer, I tell you the truth, When you have refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me. And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous will go on into eternal life. Let's pray.

[8:25] God, we ask for your blessing over this word. We ask that you open our hearts and minds to receive what you would have us hear from you today. These things we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. I was a stranger and you welcomed me.

[8:46] It really doesn't feel very welcoming. I mean, we left that passage on a really down note. It doesn't feel at all welcoming. In fact, it starts with a discussion on separation, and it ends in eternal hell. And in the vision of judgment, Jesus describes one people will be separated from another, and he compares them to the sheep and the goats.

[9:18] Using symbolism that appears repeatedly through scripture, the sheep are those who are blessed and obedient to God's will. In this case, God's will of radical generosity and care for others, feeding them, feeding the hungry, and providing a drink for the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, and visiting the sick and those in prison. Jesus makes it clear that he himself has been welcomed when the poor, the sick, and the outcast have been cared for.

[9:53] So psychologically and sociologically speaking, the boundaries of our world usually progress from our own self, slowly out farther into society and into the world. We start with our self, then maybe our family, then our friends, then our immediate neighbors, then our neighborhood, to our community, to our state, to our nation.

[10:21] So some of us include other circles within this mental Venn diagram. First the self, then maybe your Genesis group, then the Foothill family at large, then maybe the churches around our neighborhood, or friends that we meet that are Christians that we work with or go to school with.

[10:46] Maybe we'll extend out to the Pacific Southwest Conference. We do that at places like Unite with the teenagers where they meet other covenant worshipers. And then from there, we might go to the community, the covenant denomination.

[11:06] And from there, then we might go out to the big C church overall. It's a common occurrence in our culture to see a sharp separation between ourselves and others. This is nothing new. We are at a place in the big C church where we have othered other Christians. Other Christians are those who vote differently from us, or those who have a different denomination, and we're not really quite sure about what those people believe, and so on and so forth. And we've othered people in the big C church.

[11:52] This is nothing new. We create others. We create others everywhere in our worlds. I asked the kids who annoyed them. And again, don't mention any names, but if you have someone who annoys you, I want you to put your hand on your head.

[12:15] Yeah. It's not just the children. It's all of us. There is someone who annoys us. And we have probably at some point or another put those people into an other category. They are other from us. Throughout scripture, in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, there are dozens of laws and reminders to treat the strangers and aliens among us with hospitality and compassion.

[12:47] Closer to home, there's Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan, which he told in answer to the question, Who is my neighbor? His short answer was, Not who you'd expect. Your neighbor is that person who annoys you. Your neighbor is also that person who makes life uncomfortable or inconvenient.

[13:13] Your neighbor is someone you'd look down on, whether you want to admit it aloud or not. We all look down on people from time to time, and Christ calls us to the opposite. That is our neighbor, the person that we'd rather not, we'd just rather not, the person that we put into the other category.

[13:39] We are called to love our neighbors as ourselves by being reminded that the neighborhood encompasses those we traditionally think of as rivals and enemies. We are called to care for those who seek our help. Again and again, we are called to break down the barriers, that separate us in response to the vision of the kingdom of heaven, a unified humanity and a unified creation, bound together in love to God and each other.

[14:13] In our sermon text today, we are commanded to welcome the stranger. And not just welcome the stranger if you want, it's welcome the stranger or else. There are dire consequences if we fail. Yet we seem to have more than enough difficulty even welcoming our neighbor, the neighbors that we haven't othered, the neighbors that don't annoy or inconvenience us, much less the stranger among us. It seems our world today is more broken and divided than ever, both in the United States and other places in the world, and even among those who live in the United States, there's so much contempt and denigration directed at those we have deemed different from us. If we can't love our neighbors, how can we respond to the stranger and alien among us?

[15:16] The ancient Hebrews were commanded to provide for the orphaned and the alien among them, which was an act of absolute remarkable generosity if you consider what a small people group they were. And they were often subject to displacement themselves.

[15:37] As Americans, we're blessed to, as a whole large group, to be largely immune as an entire people to displacement. Does that mean we can have no understanding for our humanitarian response to this? It's a question of whether or not we can turn a blind eye to those who have been torn from their families and homes, and who have experienced warfare and bloodshed.

[16:04] And just as an aside, we can't, we also can't turn a blind eye to those that we have forced through displacement and warfare and bloodshed. But that is not the focus of today's discussion. So we are called to transform our vision of the least of these from nuisances who place demands on our limited resources of money, but also of compassion. You wouldn't think that a God-given gift like compassion could be limited. And with God, it's not, but with us, it is. So again and again, we're called to remember that Jesus was not and is not the one everyone is. He was not the one everyone expected.

[16:52] He was not born into the ruling classes from a powerful family, from a cosmopolitan city in the center of the empire. He was not the warrior king who would restore the political fortunes of Israel. For those of us who cling to Jesus' teachings today, we're reminded that Jesus not just was, but currently is.

[17:21] This gospel is called the living word and why it still speaks to us. As it was, is now, and evermore shall be. We read about who Jesus was, and many of us try to appeal to the Jesus who will be, but we often forget about the Jesus who is right now.

[17:45] Can we understand that Jesus is among us right now? The face of Jesus still is the face of our neighbor. The face of Jesus is right now the face of the poor. The face of Jesus is right now the sick, the prisoner, the addict, the down on their luck, the child, the widow, and the immigrant and refugee.

[18:18] In Jesus' parable, the goats, those who did not respond with open-heartedness to those who were vulnerable, protest that they did not turn away Jesus, because surely if Jesus had come to them, they would have known.

[18:37] Surely, I'm going to make an example of your son. Yoshi up here said that his person who annoyed him couldn't be the face of Jesus because he sinned. So surely, each of you, thinking back to the person who annoys you, surely you know that they cannot be the person of Jesus because you would know, right? Everyone in this room has been in this room for years. We're all Christians. We all know who Jesus is, and we would know who Jesus wasn't, right?

[19:20] They pretend to be Christians, and they protest that they did not turn Jesus away because they did not recognize who Jesus was at the moments when compassion was called for. But Jesus stands in solidarity with the least of these, those who cling to the margins of society, those who were easily spurned or shunned, those who are just looking to get by day by day. These are not others. These are our neighbors. These are not just our neighbors. These are the faces of Jesus.

[19:55] It's not whom we'd expect. As seasoned Christians, we'd like to assume that we would know who the people we should serve are. But what about the people who really irritate you? Or what about the people that deep down inside, you don't believe to be deserving? Guess what? That's the face of Jesus, too.

[20:20] Repeatedly, we have to be reminded that the Jesus we claim to follow is not the Jesus we'd expect. Jesus was not really that well-groomed, a handsome man who smiles at us from all those paintings that we see, or sculptures or movies.

[20:42] Jesus is, however, the one who calls to us to open our hands and our hearts, to love and to love God. To love as we have been loved, to give as well as we receive, Jesus calls us to serve him, to see his face and those we could turn away.

[20:58] What does it really mean for you to love as we have been loved, to serve others as those serving Jesus? It's really easy to be hospitable to the people we already know and love. And I'm going to take my mom as an example. My mom's love language is hospitality.

[21:21] I've heard it said, I don't, I've never actually read the book The Five Love Languages, and I know, I don't think that's, I don't think that's one of them. But, but, I would say my mom's love language is hospitality. I've heard it said that Latinos are known for feeding people. And I've heard it said that Asians are known for feeding people. And I've heard it said that this culture is known for feeding people, and that culture is known for feeding people.

[21:50] And all of that, but my mom is really known for feeding people. She really loves to feed people. And she insists it's because she's Polish. But having heard that Latinos and Asians and these people and those people are all known for feeding people, I think it's just her in general.

[22:11] But I can see where she came to that conclusion, because every one of her ancestors that I knew personally fed people. But my mom doesn't just feed people. She takes their presence in her house as an absolute honor. And she goes out of her way to make them as comfortable as possible. She lives in a smallish apartment.

[22:35] It's two bedrooms, which for just one person is not that small. But she has one guest room with a bunk bed. And then she has her own rooms. My brothers and their families both came to visit for Christmas this year, as did I. And one of my brothers stayed at my aunt's house with his family. And that's another aside. She's also really good at hospitality.

[23:01] But my other brother and I were expected to stay with my mom. She's 30 years older than me. And she offered to give me her bed, which, sorry, I don't know why that made me tear up, but it did. She offered to give me her bed. She's 30 years older than me, and her mobility is not great. And she was like, oh, well, you'll sleep here, and I'll sleep on the floor if that's okay. Otherwise, I can sleep in the living room. And why would I kick you out of your own room? But that's who she is. She also made these little baskets for us with towels and toiletries and little comfort items. And she cooked like she cooked. And she tried very hard to clean up after us. We're grown adults, and I promise that when we were growing up in her household, she would not have gotten, she would not have let us get away with having her clean up after us. I don't know where this change came from.

[24:03] But she, now that we are adults and we come to stay with her, she treats us just like the guests would. She had when we were growing up. So she, it became this game of trickery and strategery, strategy, I watch SNL, sorry.

[24:26] Sometimes I make fun of that word in my head, and now I just said it by accident. Sometimes it becomes a game of trickery and strategy for us to get the dishes done before she'd notice. Like, one of us would distract her with an art project or something, and the other of us would be in the kitchen doing the dishes as fast as possible. But inevitably, when she'd notice, she would say, stop, that's my job. It's, I, she was not like that when we were growing up. I promise you. But that's how her hospitality takes over. She treated us like royalty instead of her own kids. And I know better than to argue, because this is how she treats all of her house guests. Everyone. Whether they come over for five minutes unexpected, or whether she's been planning their stay for months, this is how she treats them.

[25:20] And this is how she's welcomed me whenever I have come home, since I moved away when I, well, just before I turned 18. When I think of hospitality, I think of my mom pouring her all into how she treats her house guests, with just as much love as she does for us. As she can manifest. She pours that into caring for her guests. Now, I want you to take that level of hospitality and apply it to Jesus, because I know every one of you would. If Jesus walked in here right now, every one of you, I know, would pour your all into loving him, and worshiping him, and serving him.

[26:06] Now I want you to take that level of hospitality, and pour it into your invited human guests. And now, I want you to take that level of hospitality, and pour it into those who just showed up on a whim, who were not invited.

[26:27] And now take that level of hospitality, and pour it into those you would never think to invite. Those that you would rather not have invited. Those that you would rather not have over at all. There was a poem written by Claudia Burney. I'm actually not sure who that is. I found it online, and it struck me.

[26:50] So I'm going to read it to you, and this is how we'll end the sermon. I just want you to think of the people that Jesus represents in this poem. And I want you to think of what it would take for us to show them the kind of radical hospitality that my mom shows her house guests.

[27:11] Jesus lives next door. He's an eight-year-old girl and her three-year-old brother. The Son of Man looks like those starving Ethiopian children. Jesus only gets breakfast and lunch at school when he makes it.

[27:32] His mother is a crack addict. Nobody knows where his daddy is. Poor King of Kings. Jesus is two houses down and has six children, and now he's irresponsibly pregnant with the seventh. How does he expect his husband to feed all those babies on that salary?

[27:57] That means hardworking taxpayers' money has to go for Christ's food stamps. The Lord is a crazy man. Paranoid schizophrenic. If he doesn't take his medication, he walks up and down the street cussing and spitting on everybody he passes.

[28:19] Jesus is homeless. Nobody knows where his family is, if he's even got one. He digs out of the trash cans for food. Somebody ought to get him off the street. Jesus is nothing but a nuisance. I'm starting to see the Son of God everywhere I go. He's always crying or begging or looking pitiful. Why doesn't he pull himself up by his bootstraps? This is America. Makes me mad. He's ruining our neighborhood. Somebody ought to do something about him.

[28:59] Somebody. Let's pray. God, we pray that you would open up the door for us. Open our hearts to the least of these. Open our arms and our hands to care for those whom you love. God, help us to practice hospitality without restriction to people without restriction. These things we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.