Strangers - Wednesday 16 January 2008

I was a stranger and you invited me in…Matthew 25:35 NIV

The Greek word xenos which is used in this passage means stranger, foreigner or alien and is also the root of the word xenophobia, which means fear of strangers. It is the fear that anything unfamiliar to us is hostile and therefore frightening. The English as a nation are traditionally xenophobic and the fear of invasion has long been with us. And yet our government has been one of the most open when it comes to immigration. The gutter press has replied often with each wave of asylum seekers that we should close our doors to those who either flee oppression in their own countries or come here seeking to share our economic success due to the poverty experienced in their home countries. Is this a ‘goatish’ attitude?

We can all cite examples of criminal activities amongst those who come here from abroad but many of us can also think of foreigners who are hard working respectable people and devoted to whatever faith they have in a positive way. Again it is almost impossible to tell how many of these strangers are living in this country illegally, driven by desperation and opening themselves up to the dangers of exploitation by unscrupulous British citizens. To understand who they are we may have to understand what they have left behind.

When the prophet Elijah was fleeing from Ahab during a famine He lived with a widow and her son. During that time her flour bin and oil bottle never ran out and Elijah was able to snatch her son back from death when he became ill. There seems to be a promise here that when we take in strangers God will make sure that we don’t lose out by it.

But Jesus tells us that we should invite in the strange and the different and to recognise that they too are made in the image of God. Jesus himself was a foreigner, from a very different culture to our own. Would we have turned away a poor Jewish Israeli couple who knocked at our door on a dark winter night, or would we have given them space for their child to be born? In a way Jesus was first a refugee and a foreign immigrant as his parents fled to Egypt from the wrath of Herod. He asks us to welcome Him into our homes as a stranger.

Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. Hebrews 13:2 NIV