God's Via Positiva #5 | Say Amen to The Stranger

0:00 Each year in the season of Lent, we Christians walk the path with Jesus, beginning with his early ministry, seeking to follow him through teaching, through healing, through death to new life. And this Lent here at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, we've been inviting you to ask of our scriptures and the teachings of our faith to what, my friends, will we say amen? Now, we take up this question acknowledging this is no easy task for us humans. There is so much we want to say no to around us. And indeed, we have needed to call on that muscle of no in these days. We see you, friends, faithfully grappling with the manifold and real sources of fear in our world now. fear for ourselves and our neighbor as we witness those in power who seem to create new category of stranger each new day. Someone who we do not recognize, someone whose story is foreign to us, perhaps someone whose name we cannot yet pronounce.

1:15 But friends, this is precisely why we invite you into the exploration of this series with us. And I like to hear in the question we're posing that God is asking something of us. Asking that question, what will you say amen to? Yes, but also holding up some expectation of action. Some work for our hearts that is bolder, different than just what we believe or what our opinion is. But instead, what will we do with that belief? What will be possible because of our amen? When we call out amen to encourage each other, we remind each other of who and whose we are together in God's sight. And our amen does not always come at the same time. It might not be in unison or in the same tempo, but your amen joins mine in the same room.

2:15 We are in the same worship together. Thank you. sometimes our amen is weakly heard spoken in our hearts only sometimes we want to stand and shout for what God has done for us so when someone at this pulpit says can I get an amen or we hear you clapping spontaneously for the music of this beautiful choir that's us tuning together to the bubbling up of the spirit and what she is saying to her people in this place. So as we listen today to how Jesus calls on us to say amen to the stranger, I know that who the stranger might be for you is different from who the stranger might be for your pew buddy next to you, or even for me. And in fact, in children's church right now, our young Presbyterians are asking this question too. What does it even mean to be a stranger? Maybe it's someone you don't know, someone you've never met, but there's some kind of distance between you, and into that distance there might have crept some judgment or blame or some reason why you hold this person at arm's length could be someone you love but you no longer recognize because you so deeply disagree.

3:47 Might be someone who is hard for you to welcome with open arms. So as we listen to the word of God through our gospels today, I invite you to call this person to mind. Imagine them next to you in your pew. Not just the abstract category of stranger, but what human person, what collection of decisions and life experiences is the stranger in your life? Who would you be surprised, as the disciples are, to know that they are not really a stranger, but instead the beloved of God, the embodiment of Christ.

4:35 So let us listen now for a reading in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25, beginning with the 31st verse. when the son of man comes in his glory and all the angels with him then he will sit on the throne of his glory all the nations will be gathered before him and he will separate people one from another as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left, and then the king will say to those at his right hand, come, you who are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me food. I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger, and you welcomed me. I was naked, and you gave me clothing.

5:37 I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me. Then the righteous will answer him, Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you? And the king will answer them, truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters, siblings of mine, you did it to me. This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

6:27 This Sunday, we are with Jesus and the disciples on the Mount of Olives. This is the last teaching Jesus gives to the disciples in the Gospel of Matthew, telling them how they shall live and be to each other after his death. And in this list of instructions of how to live in righteous love, welcoming the stranger is given the same status as other functional needs of our bodies, other fundamental human rights. It's as essential as the clothes on our backs and the food in our bellies. and the category of stranger Jesus refers to in this passage is understood alongside other categories of social refugee set out in Deuteronomy the widow and the orphan people known to exist on the other end of the social hierarchy of power and again and again in our sacred text it matters how we welcome someone across hierarchy across barrier of language, culture, or homeland.

7:34 In Genesis 18, it is indeed from three strangers that Abraham and Sarah learn of the miracle that they will be blessed with a son. It is from God in the body of a stranger that we hear the words in response to their doubt, is anything too wonderful for the Lord? Jesus embodied ways to love our neighbor that disrupt the categories we know. Speaking to the woman at the well, defending the woman who would have been stoned, inviting the tax collector to share a meal. And today's text foreshadows the stranger who will visit the disciples on the road to Emmaus, who becomes known to them as Christ only after they come close enough to share a meal. indeed in our scriptures the presence of Christ is known to us in those we might otherwise be taught to fear sometimes it is only through communion with ones we would call other that we meet the resurrection in the presence of Christ now none of these texts ask us to ignore our human differences or counsel us to fear or eliminate them to become the same to each other.

8:55 But we are recognized in the challenge of knowing each other across label, across the unknown distances between us. And we're given story after story of why our amen, our yes, our welcome must be heard by the stranger in our midst in order for us all to know Christ.

9:19 So why, preacher, you might be wondering at this point, why does the division of our world hold such a heart-deep hold on us? And did you forget that this scripture begins with a long allegory of separation, of casting goats from sheep? And I'll admit, there are parts of this scripture that are hard for me to hear, especially without digging into them. And this week, some of my colleagues saw my scripture selection and they said, are you really, you're really going to dig into the whole goats and sheep business? You're really going to go there? It doesn't feel good to think about God separating us. Our people are stressed. We already feel divided. We're wondering where is God's judgment in our world now?

10:11 But we're doing it. We're looking at it. Because in a scripture that tells us to welcome the stranger, we need to reconcile what this division teaches us. How can a loving God bless only some of creation? The God who looked at the whole of creation and called it good.

10:36 Could it be that this passage, instead of serving as a tool to separate, actually underscores how much we do have in common in creation? for before all this separating we are told that all the nations are gathered not before the golden statue of an earthly king not to bow down in deference to the one with the most wealth or power not separated one language from another but unified and Jesus describes ruling and judgment from a throne of glory this is no earthly throne for the son of man it is not gained by human power but surrounded by angels and ruling over a kingdom where those who hunger the sick the stranger are cared for and seen and those who are divided by this heavenly king, they are not divided by who they are, but by what they did for each other.

11:45 For there is more to God's vision for us than the separation we inflict on each other. Jesus knows we are not so good at this, we humans. We want to be among the loved and chosen by the shepherd, brought over to the side of safety when the separating comes. But inheriting the kingdom Jesus describes does not build a safety dependent on our separation from each other. the kingdom on earth comes from actions that see and meet the very essential needs that we all share to be fed to be clothed to be known just as it sounds harsh to our ears to hear of God separating judging dividing us so let it sound dissonant to our ear when we hear of each other or the powers and principalities of our world channeling our fear into false separation let our amens to the stranger cast doubt on the false divisions of language, of citizenship, of political belief.

13:06 On the cover of your bulletin this morning, there is a picture of the inscription on a piece of public art in Germany, golden letters that are carved into a 53-foot tall concrete obelisk that features a verse from our reading today in four different languages. It's in Turkish, in Arabic, in German, and in English. It says, I was a stranger and you took me in. On all four sides, viewable from all directions. And it was designed for the main public square in the German city of Koso.

13:48 The Nigerian-American artist Ole Ogwibe created this concrete obelisk in 2016 as a response to the rise of increasingly nationalist border policies in Germany. And it mimics the monuments we might expect to see in the public square. Monuments to war or to charismatic leaders. Monuments to victory through force. Instead of the open arms of stranger become citizen, become friend. now this obelisk was initially installed in the main square of this town but there was so much opposition to it that the city council members actually decided that the message of I was a stranger and you took me in was better served away from the controversy of full view so they dismantled it and they moved it. And following a years-long fight with bureaucracy, it took up a new home in a much smaller square in the town where it would find less controversy, where it would make fewer people uncomfortable.

15:05 So great was their fear of angering this rising political wave against the refugee, the immigrant, the stranger. That they took it down before it could even become a part of the conversation. Friends, when we push the stranger out of the center square, when our amen to the stranger gets stuck in our throats, we have estranged ourselves. We have estranged that essential part of us that shares God's spirit across all creation. we have taken into human hands the work that this scripture tells us is for no earthly king Do I believe a loving God will thresh us like grain or separate those who were hateful into fiery purgatory?

16:17 No, I do not. But I do believe that a loving God will hold us gently to say, this, my child, is what I hoped for you. Do you see what you have lost in treating your siblings as strangers? Do you see what could be possible by loving others, by loving yourself? as I do. I have the joy of supporting our community group online for elder members that we call sages. In a recent meeting, Rebecca and Eleanor, who lead this group, had a discussion about kindness and what's different about receiving kindness at this stage of life in this transition from caregiver to care receiver that many of our elders are navigating. We talked about the difference between a generosity that is rooted in a transactional sense and one that's rooted in love, that sees the need we have in common and wants to meet that need through love.

17:39 One member said, it is a spiritual task to learn to accept love and help, for we expand in our hearts when we are the recipient. But how do we get out of our own way? How do we learn to trust that we are worthy of God's grace? it hits me each week when Reverend Werner stands at our confessional font and says, you are deeply loved and you are enough. And I've heard from a few of you that it hits you somewhere deeply too to hear this, that perhaps this is the first time in your life you've come to believe this is true. Maybe it wasn't until the 50th or the 100th time that you believed it.

18:31 But when we believe that to be true about ourselves, that God deeply loves us, every part of who we are, our mistakes, the things that bring us shame, the suffering of our lives, the ways we wish we had done more for our children, done better than our parents, when we can acknowledge that God does not estrange any part of who we are, it gets a little bit easier to extend that love to the people who you do not yet know. Because there is no stranger to God. the God who knew us before we had names, while we were knit together in our mother's wombs, as our scripture says, who could be a stranger to this God who creates in love? The times I have been welcomed as a stranger have changed my life and taught me how to love myself differently.

19:35 They have made it more possible for me to go out into the world and offer that love to others. When I was a brand new teacher, 22 years old and a northern white woman in rural Mississippi, my fellow teachers who were African American women who had been teaching longer than I'd been alive, welcomed me as a colleague and eventually a friend.

20:02 When I was a chaplaincy intern on a psychiatric care ward, my patients got to know me and shared parts of their stories with me, teaching me about setting aside the distances we think we see between us. I was welcomed every time I sought to speak imperfect Spanish with the families of students I taught in Minneapolis. And when my Muslim students observed Ramadan or celebrated Eid as they are today, they shared generously with me about what it meant for them. I was not judged for what I did not know or told I could not understand. God came on earth to take on flesh, to be near to us humans, prone to division as we are, to show us that the harder way, even the quietest amen, brings us to greater love.

21:06 And if we do not take this teaching down from the Mount of Olives, to the garden, to the cross, to the empty tomb, then we will not offer our bread and a little bit of our story to the stranger on the road to Emmaus, and we will not know them as Christ. So, let us be known to each other.