LIVING AS STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND

Gordon E. Ellis
October 10, 2004

LIVING AS STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND

One of my fantasies is to someday LIVE for a period of time in Mexico or Ecuador, like our friends, Bill and Patty Coleman are doing in Cuernavaca, Mexico. I want to live and work with the POOR. SO, whenever I GO to one of these countries on one of our Mission Trips, I always try to imagine WHAT it would be like to LIVE there, where the people and places and customs are STRANGE and different. And I IMAGINE that it would be both EXCITING and very LONELY.

When I go there, I often IMAGINE myself wandering the streets, where the signs are written in a language that’s not my own. I IMAGINE myself stopping at a corner to look left and right, and not knowing WHICH way to TURN. I IMAGINE people laughing at JOKES that I don’t understand, or DOING things that seem perplexing because their customs are just so FOREIGN to me. Yes, I IMAGINE that it would be like being a STRANGER in a strange LAND. MAYBE some day, I’ll take a SABBATICAL and go there for maybe 2 or 3 months, just to TRY it out – to SEE if I could DO it.

But I SUSPECT that THIS is a LOT like what LIFE must be like when you’re in EXILE, when you’re FAR from home. And friends: the great BULK of the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scripture, was produced – or so we THINK -- just before, or during, or just after the people of Israel were in exile. And exile is CERTAINLY the context for TODAY’S Scripture Lesson from the prophet Jeremiah. Behind EVERY word in Jeremiah is the SOMBER fact that God’s people have been CRUELLY uprooted, plucked from their homeland, and transported to Babylon, present-day Iraq. And they are living as STRANGERS in a strange land. And it’s NOT fun.

SO, the question is: WHAT should they DO? Should they be DEFIANT? Clench their FISTS? Hunker down? Build walls? Monitor the music their children SING? REFUSE to learn the LANGUAGE of the Babylonians? Try their hardest to KEEP themselves UNTAINTED by Babylonian ways and customs? Well, all THAT is hard to DO when you’re LIVING in a strange land. After all, THIS is the ONLY world they HAVE. They’re IN it, and in COUNTLESS ways, IT’S in THEM. A woman I know PROMISED herself that she would use absolutely NO products that were produced by unfair LABOR practices in the Third World. No CLOTHES from Central American SWEAT shops owned by North American absentee corporations. No FOOD grown by poorly paid migrant workers. SHE was CONVICTED! BUT, she found it to be so HARD that she finally GAVE UP! In an INTERLOCKED, GLOBAL economy, goods are produced in a variety of places, and the ORIGINS are VERY often DIFFICULT to TRACE. Corporate CLAIMS about fairness are OFTEN discovered to be merely a public relations gimmick. And corporations often DEFEND their actions as bringing much GOOD to very POOR countries. And it got SO CONFUSING for her, that she could just NEVER be SURE! And SO, in despair one day, she FINALLY cried out, We ALL have DIRTY hands! I just CAN’T DO it! Well, THAT’S how the EXILES in Babylon must have felt.

In my LAST church, I had a family who had emigrated from Vietnam. And I once asked them about the most DIFFICULT aspect of being immigrants. I asked the mother: What is the greatest challenge that your family has FACED since you EMIGRATED here from Vietnam? She looked SAD and replied: It’s LOSING my CHILDREN. We’ve TRIED to teach them the language and customs of the OLD country, but they REFUSE to LEARN it. They adopt the SLANG, the DRESS and the CUSTOMS of the THIS culture, and sadly, we soon realized that we’d LOST them. Well, it’s a tricky issue, ISN’T it? And I think it’s something that WE face as CHRISTIANS, living in this very SECULAR, and maybe even PAGAN, society in which we LIVE. And TODAY, as we sit in the MIDDLE of this Apple Harvest Festival, with MANY of us having had a VERY hard time GETTING here, that question just SMACKS us in the face, doesn’t it? Today is just SO symbolic of such a question that I HAD to TALK about it.

We WANT and NEED to keep our IDENTITY as Christians, and YET, we ALSO need to ADAPT, at least to SOME degree, to the culture in which we LIVE. SO, WHAT are we to DO? Well, THAT’S the struggle the Jeremiah is talking about in our Scripture Lesson today, and I think it’s IMPORTANT that we HEAR what he has to SAY. Now, Jeremiah does NOT hear God telling Israel just to BLEND IN with the Babylonians and to TOTALLY adapt to where they LIVE. HE’S not saying that at ALL! Exile is NEVER presented in the Bible as something POSITIVE, or something GOOD. On the other hand, Jeremiah ALSO does NOT hear God telling Israel to howl in despair either, or to build high walls and hunker down BEHIND them. No, there HAS to be a BALANCE. But it’s VERY tricky, because one little compromise HERE, and one little compromise THERE, and before long, we’ve blended into the wallpaper, so to speak, and NO one can tell the DIFFERENCE anymore between a CHRISTIAN and anybody ELSE. And sad to say: I think that’s where too MANY Christians ARE in our society TODAY. We’ve just BLENDED into the wallpaper, instead of CLAIMING our Christian IDENTITY.

You know: I find it FASCINATING to watch the JEWS that I know. I used to be in a DIALOGUE group of Christians and Jews. And after awhile, I began to understand that Jews in AMERICA today realize that, in a SENSE, they are in EXILE. On the ONE hand, America has been VERY good to the Jewish people who LIVE here. And YET, in subtle ways, America has ALSO been quite DETRIMENTAL to the Jews who live here. Often it’s just LITTLE matters, or what WE might consider to be LITTLE matters like: Shall we go to a Christmas party or not? It’s not RELIGIOUS as such, but STILL, the symbols of another religion will BE there. SO, should we GO? And HOW do we keep from getting CAUGHT UP in Christmas? And Jews have FOUND that, in order to retain their faith, and keep their children in the faith, at EVERY turn they have to ASK themselves: Should we PARTICIPATE in this or NOT? And thatt’s a GOOD question to ASK. And we Christians need to be ASKING it TOO. Otherwise, we TOO get caught up in the values of the SOCIETY, which RARELY coincide with GOD’S values.

You know: MANY of us grew up thinking of the United States as a CHRISTIAN country. It seemed like being Christian was just the NORM. It was natural. It was the AMERICAN thing to DO. But THOSE days are GONE! When you came to church TODAY, I’ll BET you that YOU were in a MINORITY within your neighborhood, and you are CERTAINLY in a minority DOWNTOWN here. No, being Christian is no longer the NORM in our society. SO, WHAT are we to DO with this dilemma? HOW are we going to live as CHRISTIAN in an UNCHRISTIAN society? Well, says Jeremiah, you make the BEST of it. You ACKNOWLEDGE that you are in EXILE, and that to SOME degree, you are a stranger in a strange land. And you REALIZE that something is at STAKE in the way you spend your TIME, in the way you LIVE as a family, in the WAY you spend your MONEY, in the way you ACT on your JOB, in the CAUSES you promote, and on and on and on. And I KNOW that the church COULD do a MUCH better JOB at equipping all of us to MAKE these important decisions and choices. And we WILL try to DO just that.

BUT, we ALSO have to DO what Jeremiah SAYS. We have to plant a garden. We have to PRAY for the PEACE of this TOWN and this NATION in which we LIVE, even though not everyone IN this town or this country worships the God whom WE worship. We have to REALIZE that THIS is the world to which God has called us. AND therefore, we have to TRY to LIVE as BEST we CAN in this world as it IS, with all of its ambiguity, and ALL of its challenges. Yes, that’s what EXILES need to DO. THAT’S how WE are to LIVE as Christians in THIS society, as STRANGERS in a STRANGE land. And it’s NOT EASY living as a CHRISTIAN in a SECULAR society. And it’s going to get WORSE before it gets BETTER. SO, EACH and every ONE of us HAS to examine ourselves and our lifestyles. Each and every ONE of us HAS to consider in WHAT ways we will COMPROMISE our FAITH by the way we LIVE, and in WHAT ways we will NOT compromise our faith. AND, each and every ONE of us HAS to ask ourselves: ARE we DOING that which we OUGHT to be doing in regard to the nurturing ourselves and our CHILDREN and our grandchildren in the Christian faith or NOT? And WHERE we are FAILING in that, we HAVE to do BETTER. Yes, THESE are the kind of questions that EXILES HAVE to ask themselves. And friends, IF we DARE to call ourselves Christian, then we ARE exiles. It can be NO other way, because GOD’S values are VERY different from the values of THIS world. May God grant EACH of us the GRACE that we NEED to live as FAITHFUL disciples in THIS time and THIS place, RIGHT where we are. Amen.

(I am indebted to Dr. William Willimon for some of the thoughts in this sermon.)