I was a stranger

Two weeks ago, Prime Minister Keir Starmer gave a speech at a press conference on an Immigration White Paper. This speech was startling in the rhetoric it employed. Echoing the Conservative slogan of ‘take back control’, Starmer derided the previous Conservative government for their softness on migration. As well as the repeated mantra of control, Starmer’s speech spoke of ‘the national interest’ and expressed a desire to return to a ‘common sense’ approach, and in the most-quoted turn of phrase, spoke of the risk of Britain becoming an ‘island of strangers.’

The speech sought to put people into two perfectly distinct categories: a box full of ‘them’, and a box full of ‘us’. The full of ‘them’ was labelled with words like ‘squalid’, ‘chaos’, ‘abuse’, ‘strangers’, ‘cheap labour’ and carried a warning: ‘pulling the country apart’. The box full of ‘us’ was labelled with words like ‘fairness’, ‘control’, ‘homegrown’, and ‘rules’. The speech was designed to ensure that everyone who heard or read it knew exactly which box they fit into: if one of ‘us’, you are welcome. If you are one of ‘them’, you are not.

But our readings from scripture today could not be clearer in their message. These are not Christian categories. The categories of ‘them’ and ‘us’ have no meaning in God’s loving and just plan for the world. Let’s revisit our reading from Acts. Paul wakes from a dream, a vision that there is work for him to do in Macedonia, now northern Greece.  He and Luke set sail to bring the Good News to this new place. These two wanderers arrive in a small boat. These two arrive on the Greek coast in a small boat, and make their way to a Roman city, to Philippi, to a place of occupation and imperial power. 

There, this strange calling that appeared in a vision continues to drive them – drive them out of the city, out of the place where common sense dictated their work should be done, away from the civic meeting places of men and power, and to a place where they sense prayer is active. They meet with women there, exclusively women, and one of them is another person from elsewhere. This is Lydia, a wealthy woman from Thyatira, in modern day Turkey. Her heart is opened to their message, and she and her household are baptised. The Lord then prompts her to open something else: to urge Paul and Luke to stay with her, to open her house to these strangers and pilgrims. She asks this as an honour, a badge showing her faithfulness to the message. This is not common sense. This is not taking back control. It’s certainly not acting in the national interest. It’s an opening of the door to possibility, to the unsettling, chaotic presence of the Holy Spirit. It’s a recognition by Lydia that though she has everything, yet she lacks one thing, the one thing these men can provide. 

There is no ‘them’ and ‘us’ in the Lord. There is no distinction between the settled and the migrant. We have all come from elsewhere, and we are all always on our way back there. Despite the recurring themes of distinction between Jew and Gentile, there is strong Biblical precedent for this idea. Psalm 39 speaks of the journey of life, with its pains and anxieties. In verse 12, the psalmist addresses God, saying ‘I am your passing guest, an alien like all my forebears’, or in the more familiar language of the Authorised Version, ‘I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.’ The Pentateuch, containing itself the epic story of the migration of the people of Israel, again and again also urges care for the alien, the outsider, the stranger. These sojourning Israelites, themselves scraping by as migratory farmers, nevertheless find space at tables, water and shelter for others from elsewhere. And opening their doors leads to transformation. Job, Ruth, Rahab, Naaman, all these were outsiders. They were ‘them’, whose lives became utterly entwined with the ‘us’ of the Hebrew Bible. 

And in the gospel of Luke, when Jesus is asked what the reasonable limits of human compassion are, he replies with a story of two travellers: one going from Jerusalem to Jericho, one Samaritan. One is set upon by robbers, the other shows compassion, but it is for the one of despised status, one of the ‘them’, to teach the Jesus's hearers what love of neighbour looks like. This is love that is not ‘homegrown’. This is love that does not play by the rules.

If we believe that our true home is in God, that we have come from God and that we will return to God, then we must recognise that nothing we have in this life belongs to us. Nothing, no wealth or land or power. And so we have the chance to be the Lydias of this age, reaching beyond the wealth and security of this church, this city, this country. We can be the Pauls of this age, trusting that wherever we come from and wherever we are going, there is God’s work to be done. We can open our homes and raise our voices saying ‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, there is no longer them and us; for all of us are one in Christ Jesus.’

In our current exhibition, there is a photograph by an artist called Po Yan Lee, herself a refugee from Hong Kong. Three figures emerge from shining mist, under a winter tree and a silver sun. They are in silhouette, and it is impossible to know just from the picture whether they are approaching the viewer or moving away, or standing still. Their postures are relaxed, happy – not touching, but gently intimate like the figures in the Rublev icon of the Trinity. A path stretches between them and the viewer. It is an invitation, to walk the path of a pilgrim, but also to receive those who may be coming towards us. In our Gospel reading today, Jesus says ‘Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.’ God, too, asks for admission to our homes, to the carefully patrolled borders of our hearts. Jesus himself dwelt among us, tabernacled among us as the prologue to John puts it, pitched his tent among us. May we be ready to welcome him. Amen.