JJ 24 #22: That’s Strange

Have I told you about my pet peeve about Matthew 25?

I know it’s not you, but it’s probably someone else you know. My peeve with it comes when people think that Matthew has Jesus outline three parables. So they refer to the parable of the virgins, the parable of the talents and the parable of the judgement. Yeah. They do. No, not you, someone else.

It’s a pet peeve of mine because as I read it, I read two parables and a reasonably clear (to me, anyway) outline of what the Final Judgement will be like.

I have another peeve about how that outline of the Sheep and Goats has been interpreted, but you don’t need me to get all my peeves expressed in the same blog. Not even I have that amount of time available.

The outline of the Final Judgement continues to make a significant impact on my life. For a while, my idea of Christianity was mostly about doing whatever I needed to do in terms of attending school or work and then getting into the Christian bits when I was at church with other Christians. I wasn’t really that bothered about others, especially seeing as though they were sinners and were more than likely not going to pay attention to what I had to say or, worse still, might have an antagonistic response to it. I couldn’t deal with the confrontation from those sinners, so it was best to avoid that and wait to be in the holy huddle and crack on with saying how much I loved Jesus with others who could warble.

The Final Judgement outlined in Matthew 25 eventually slapped me up the head, shook me by the lapels of the church suit I was wearing, and doused me with a bucket of sober reality to what being a Christian implicitly involved and how I would be judged in the end.

That “avoid those sinners” strategy did not align with the mission of Jesus. That “keep ourselves to ourselves in our wonderful holy huddle” did not cohere with the purpose of Jesus on the earth. That outline of the Final Judgement is impressive because those on either side had no idea who Jesus was talking about. “When did we do that?” says one side. “When did we not do that?” says the other side.

I could go on about the whole outline of the Final Judgement, but as you can tell by the title of this blog entry, I am zooming in on one of the groups that Jesus outlined.

Strangers. Aliens. Foreigners. Those that don’t belong here because they come from elsewhere. Those who are not part of us who have been here all this time. Those other folks.

A friend of mine shared a story of how an individual from one country had to relocate to another country and then was plunged into being a breadwinner at a very early age and having to handle those responsibilities alone in a foreign land. It was sad to hear of the struggle that individual had to go through – the sense of being alone – that sense of their foreign identity being a barrier to them interacting, engaging and feeling embraced.

When I hear Jesus say that He was a stranger and we let Him into our homes. I don’t get the impression that Jesus said, “I came from (insert country), but you let me feel I come from your country.” I get the impression Jesus is saying, “I was strange here, and you helped me feel at home.” That says a lot about hospitality. That says a lot about how we treat people who are strange, foreign, and alien, with practices and customs unusual to us. It’s not a word about compromise and accepting all behaviour and traits that are not our own. It is about making someone feel welcome – taking the edge off the stranger factor that can be alienating and sometimes divisive.

That aspect of taking the stranger in is something that displaced people can relate to. A lot of effort has been made in countries like the USA and Britain to ensure inclusivity and welcoming diversity. There’s been a sense in which some have bent over backwards to promote values, giving the impression that all are welcome and people’s views are tolerated. At the same time that those efforts are being made, the actual work of hospitality is often seen as being superficial. Foreigners and strangers will have to work things out for themselves because the natives will not truly welcome them. They’ll forever be seen with suspicion, fear, and hostility. This makes that sense of displacement all the harder to bear and reinforces a resolve to remain distant, closed off and insular.

This isn’t just something experienced by people from different countries and cultures when they come into a setting. It is about the experience of being a stranger. You know you don’t belong for whatever reason, making you a stranger. New people at the school can get that vibe. New people at work can get that impression. New people in the neighbourhood can have that feeling.

The ability to feel welcomed, at home, and embraced without having to conform to every aspect of the home culture – these concepts make the experience of being a stranger and being let in so valuable. They can give the feeling that the displaced now have a place.

This is what the gospel of the Kingdom does to an amazing degree. We who were enemies of God and rebels against the Creator have access to being members of His family by the precious shed blood of Jesus. We, who had no affiliation to the covenants and arrangements of God and His chosen people, now get to say we are a royal priesthood, a holy nation – part of the chosen because the strangers have been welcomed home by the Father and the Son by the Spirit. We are welcomed home, we are celebrated, we are integrated and our identity is now assumed into the new reality we find ourselves in because of the love of God seen through the acts of the Son in the power of the Spirit. This should be the experience of those who repent, receive, and, as a result, immerse themselves into this new life in Christ because of the gospel of the Kingdom. It should be a logical development from this reality that the behaviour of those who experience this should have the knack of extending that hospitality to others who might have that sense of being a stranger.

Indeed, our association with God now makes us strangers to what we once thought was home. We don’t belong anymore. We’re strangers and pilgrims. The system, the world, its operations and manifestations through different things are now not what we’re properly accustomed to. It’s all alien to us because we’ve immersed ourselves into the new and living way. Our reference point is not found on earth; it’s located in heaven. Strange though that makes us, it doesn’t make us a stranger to the concept of welcoming the foreigner into our homes and showing them heavenly hospitality.

As someone with a fair deal of experience of being a stranger in various contexts, I’m grateful for the way of Christ that makes a stranger feel at home. I’m grateful for my practical experiences with people who let me into their homes and lives and genuinely made me feel at home: no pretences, no false faces, no hidden agendas, no superficialities. The love of God that made the stranger a part of the divine family was something I clearly experienced in the company of these rare expressions of humanity. I’m grateful for these people. I’m grateful for these experiences because they reinforce the reality that in the Final Judgement, some won’t have a clue who Jesus is talking about, but He’ll know exactly what they did to the least of His brothers.

It’s that aspect – and it is one aspect of the host of issues the King outlines in that judgement – that challenges me to consider the issue of heavenly hospitality and how it can make a big difference to allowing the stranger feel at home.

For His Name’s Sake

C. L. J. Dryden

Shalom