Advent: Foreigners

No this isn't a blog post about how Jesus gives us Double Vision or how we are as Cold as Ice to God. Nor do I think that I am a Jukebox Hero. OK enough with the Foreigner references. Today I want to talk about something that I think we overlook in the Christmas story. Today I want to talk about how we, like Jesus, are all foreigners.

I'm going to get this out of the way at the beginning because if I don't you all will be thinking it. Here I go. Donald Trump is not Hitler as some have suggested. Yes he gets on people's nerves. And yes what he said puts a blanket statement over all Muslims. But, there was not a set of fanatical Jews bombing and shooting up the world in the 1930s. Let's keep things in perspective.

Now to what I actually want to talk about.

So it would be really easy for me to start talking about how Mary and Joseph were refugees and we need to care for refugees. But, besides that being categorically misleading, what matters is that Jesus was a foreigner not his mother and earthly father. If you want a blog post about care for refugees this may not be the one for you. There are far better passages of scripture about care for war refugees.

Before I get to Jesus as a refugee I want to take a look at the history of Israel before Jesus. Israel had a deep understanding of being a foreigner. The story of Exodus is the story of a nation of people in a foreign land of Egypt. There is the destruction and exile of the northern kingdom (Judah) in Chronicles and Kings. There is the Babylonian exile of the prophets. It is of this last exile that I want to look at more in depth.

In both the Assyrian conquest of Judah and the Babylonian conquest of Israel proper we have accounts that God allowed this to happen because the people had turned from Him. Some might say that this is not the depiction of a God who cares for His chosen people. Here I might make a reference to parents and time out, but I won't do that.

Lets actually look at scripture for an answer.

In Psalm 137 we find the cry of the exiles. They remember their hometown and cry. They ask "How can we sing YHWH's song in a foreign land?" This is a valid question. After all it would seem that their God who made them a people; their God who gave them a king; their God who brought them out of slavery has abandoned them. If you read on this is not the nicest of Psalms. It ends with an request to kill the children of Babylon who has pressed them into exile.

Some of you might remember my discussion of the hesed of God. What you might recall is that I reference the Psalm directly before. This is not by coincidence. This arrangement was intentional. Psalm 137 on it's own might be disconcerting, but it comes after a discussion of how God has never forgotten Israel. What's more is that the Psalm after is one in which David sings thanks to God because His hesed is everlasting. The grief of Psalm 137 is sandwiched by declarations that God will never forget His people.

So what about Jesus?

Jesus understood this concept of being a stranger in a foreign land. I have already talked about the humility of Jesus to become like us so I won't go into much detail again. But I will briefly summarize. Jesus was God and knew that the only way for anyone to be reconciled to God was to leave what He knew and become human. Jesus left His home with the Father and humbled Himself. Jesus became a foreigner in a strange land.

It was through this humility that we were reconciled to God. It was through this humility that we were delivered from the penalties of sin -- namely death. It was through this humility that we find someone who understands what it means to be a foreigner.

But what does that have to do with me?

That is the million dollar question. We find in scripture that we are all sinners. We were all enemies of God. We are foreigners to our creator. We have made ourselves His opponents. Let me make this very clear. It is US who are enemies of GOD not the other way around. I say this because Paul tells us that even though we were enemies with God, He died for us.

What is great about this is that we have a God who does not force us to make things right with Him. We simply can't do it. The Old Testament is one story after another about how humanity tried and failed. But the Gospel is the story of how God made a way for the whole world, even the Gentiles who were not the chosen people, to come back to him.

Yet even now we are still foreigners.

We are no longer foreigners to our creator and God, but we are foreigners here. Our citizenship is not to our host nation. Our citizenship is to a new kingdom. One that will never pass away. We eagerly wait for the return of Jesus. This is not because the earth is foreign to us. On the contrary it was created by our God. And it was created good. But we wait for the king to return. For things to be put right. For evil to be vanquished. And for our chance to dwell with the God who created us and never abandoned us.

Let me end by saying this. We certainly need to remember those foreigners who surround us every day. But more than that we need to remember that we will be foreigners until the second coming. We must also remember that God reconciles all foreigners to Him. If you feel estranged from your God, know that He will NEVER abandon you. If you do not know Him, know that He is a friend to sinners and died for His enemies.

May you remember your true citizenship. May God remind you of His dedication to the foreigner. And may you cry out in distress and know that God is near.

Amen!