Sometimes people of differing cultures fail to understand one another. Sometimes people with differing backgrounds cannot grasp what others are all about. So they end up hurting one another, when, really, they need one another. If you do not understand your neighbor, and if your neighbor is different from you, you may damage each other.
I like to watch the television series, “All Creatures Great and Small”. These are stories about the life of a veterinarian – an animal doctor – in Yorkshire, in northern England, near the Scottish border. These stories have much to teach us. In one of the episodes of “All Creatures Great and Small”, there was the story of a stranger who came to live in Yorkshire. Mr. Pendretti was an Italian. He had been sent to that part of England as a prisoner of war in the 1940’s, and he had stayed there after the war ended. Mr. Pendretti had made friends with a young girl in Yorkshire, but the girl’s grandmother was completely unfriendly to Mr. Pendretti. She wanted nothing to do with him, and she wanted her granddaughter to avoid him too. No one could understand why Mrs. Clark was so much against Mr. Pendretti. Was it because he was a stranger? Was it because he came from another country? Was it because his English was heavily accented?
As it turned out, Mrs. Clark’s son, the young girl’s father, had been killed fighting in Italy during the Second World War. In an emotional moment during the show, she says, “Why should I welcome you here in my country when my son is lying dead in your country?” She just refused to accept this stranger, because she had been deeply wounded. She had been severely hurt.
Good friends, you are like Mr. Pendretti. You are living in a world that does not easily understand you. You are living in a nation that has very little knowledge of your history. You are living in a community that thinks it is wounded because immigrants have come here from all over the world, and some of them break the law or become violent. I would not be surprised at all to learn that some of you have met hostility and anger and misunderstanding.
You must not think that if these things happen, it is your fault. If these things happen, it is because many Americans are wounded people, damaged people, who have forgotten their history and who have strayed from their God. If you have been subjected to an unfriendly spirit, and have been treated as suspect strangers, that is not really about you. That is about those who have strayed from all that God has done in their lives.
Today I want to think about two kinds of people. Two kinds of people, and in English the words sound much the same. There are strangers; and there are strays. There are strangers, who have come here from other places, other cultures, and who may not yet feel at home. And there are strays, people who have been here and have benefited from all that this nation has to offer, but who have wandered away from God. They have strayed. There are strangers and there are strays.
But there is someone else too. In addition to strangers and strays, there are those who are at home and at peace. There are those who are God’s own people, and they know it. They celebrate it. They live it. They are no longer strangers, but they are God’s own, living among the strays.
Peter points this out so beautifully: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”
God’s own people are no longer strangers. But God’s own people live among the strays, among those who have wandered away from our God. That gives you a special witness. That gives you a unique place in the Kingdom.
First, let’s think about what it was to be strangers, and how God has brought you out of that. And then let’s think about what our God has called you to be among His strays.
I
The history of the human race is full of one harsh reality – that we are threatened by those who are not like us. It is not only that we are more comfortable with people who look like us, sound like us, share our tastes, and do what we do. Deeper than that, nearly every culture in human history has learned to hate those who are different. They are treated as enemies. They are at best ignored and at worse made to live in oppressive conditions.
You know better than I about the caste system in India, which creates rank upon rank of status. From the Brahmins at the top to the untouchables at the bottom, members of one caste are not expected to associate with another. They are made to be strangers to one another.
Or, we have been reading in only the last few weeks about the eruption of tribal conflicts in Kenya. In this great African nation, old suspicions have broken out and blood has been shed, as people slaughter one another for no other reason than that they are of a different tribe. They have become strangers to one another.
And in this nation, in the United States, we have had a long and unhappy history of making some people to be strangers. Yes, it is true that we are the children of immigrants – my own ancestors came from England and Wales and Germany, for example. But some immigrants were made to live as strangers. Eastern European Jews lived in crowded apartments in New York City … Chinese laborers built our railroads but were treated with contempt in California … Japanese citizens were put into prison camps in the 1940’s because the United States was at war with Japan, and it was feared that they would not be loyal. All of these, made to be strangers in this land.
And, I must mention the longest and saddest of all – that until 1863 people of African descent were kept as slaves, and that for a century and more after slavery ended, African-Americans were forced to live in poverty and were pushed to the side everywhere, from schools to housing to transportation. We have much to be ashamed of in this country! For we took our own, born right here, and treated them as if they were strangers. May God forgive us!
I do not know what you have experienced. I am not familiar enough with your history to know what you have felt or seen in this land. But I do know, because you have gathered and united as a church, that the one great truth about you is that you are God’s own. You are His people. He has brought you out of darkness into His marvelous light. He has taken you who may have been treated as though you were nobodies and has made you His sons and His daughters. Let no one put you down, for you are children of the Most High! Let no one make you feel unwelcome, for you are welcomed at the courts of the Creator!
The most awesome truth in all of human history is that the God who at first made of one blood all nations to dwell on the face of the earth has also reached out to every nation, every race, every language, and has brought us together in His church. We are a people united by the blood of the Cross. All enmity is cancelled, all misunderstanding is set aside. We are His and He is ours, and that is all we need to know.
Prejudice has no place in our hearts, because God has made us His own. Hatred does not rule us, because God’s love has covered us. And, even though much of the world thinks that unity is impossible, we know better. We know that God is able through Christ to bring together rich and poor, young and old, wise and foolish, Asians and Europeans, Africans and Hispanics – all of us. Praise God, who makes us one! Praise God, whose we are and whom we serve! We are His own. We are not strangers, not any more.
II
But I believe that God has brought you here and has made you His own in this land for a reason. There is a purpose behind what God has done and wants to do through you. Peter says it, again, “[You are] God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” “In order that you may proclaim …” God has made you His own so that you may witness to who He is and what He is about. And that witness is needed in America. That witness is vitally needed in the American church. You are God’s own among God’s strays.
Brothers and sisters, there was a day when American Christians were passionate about their faith. There was a time when all across this land, believers would actively witness to others and would urge them to receive Christ as Lord. But in too many places, that is no longer true. In too many churches, the members are happy just to come and listen to the music and hear the preaching – of course they don’t want the sermon to go on too long, and they really don’t want the preacher to deal with their sins too seriously – they just want a nice time on Sunday morning, they want to be comfortable, they want to be with folks who are just like they are. We are strays.
Once American churches reached out to welcome strangers; but today, far too many of us are becoming strays. We no longer believe anything with passion. We no longer care about the growth of the Kingdom. We no longer think of ourselves as God’s own people in the midst of a world that needs redemption. We are strays. And we need your help.
One Sunday some years ago I went to preach at a church in Washington. The congregation was rather small. I asked someone what they were doing about reaching people for Christ. He said, “Oh, we can’t do that. Nobody lives around here any more.” I looked out the window. I saw houses and cars, shops and schools. “Nobody lives around here any more? I don’t understand.” And then he told me what he really meant, “Nobody like us lives here any more.” There weren’t enough white people, middle-class people, people who were already Christian anyway, people who were raised as Baptists, and if they didn’t have their kind of people around, well, it was as if nobody lived there anymore! Not the kind of people they wanted. There were only strangers.
That church was filled with strays. Strays. People who had wandered away from what it means to be Christian … people who had forgotten what Christ had done when He brought them to the truth … people who needed someone to remind them of Him who brought them out of darkness into His marvelous light.
Guess what? The Lord did exactly that! The Lord sent them new people, strangers. First a Japanese woman joined. Then a Chinese family. Soon followed Nigerians and South Africans, Salvadorans and Mexicans – and the last time I went to that church to preach, my soul was lifted up, for I saw how those who had once been thought of as strangers brought energy and commitment to a dying church. Today that church lives; today that church carries love and mercy to its neighbors, because God’s own, once thought of as strangers, settled down among God’s strays, and brought them home again.
Brothers and sisters, teach us. Teach us in the American churches what you know. Teach us how to sing, not just lazily mumbling words, but lifting up our voices in glorious praise! Teach us how to greet one another, not just with careless handshakes, but with great joy! Teach us how to worship, not just showing up again because it’s Sunday and it’s what we always do, but teach us how to worship in spirit and in truth, because without an encounter with the living God we cannot live!
And teach us, above all, how to share our faith. Teach us how to witness. Teach us how to gather others into Christ. Teach us how to proclaim the mighty acts of God who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light. We need that. Our churches are dying. But worse than that, the souls of men and women are dying. Our churches have too few young people, our churches are losing interest in missions, our churches call pastors to preach but then reject what they hear. Oh, brothers and sisters, we need you, for we are strays. We are God’s people, yes, but we are strays. And we need your youth, your passion, your energy, and your power, to be God’s own among us strays.
I told you the story of Mrs. Clark, the English lady who disliked Mr. Pendretti, the Italian stranger, just because he was Italian, and because her son had died in Italy, fighting a great battle. She wanted to keep her distance, because he represented a great hurt. He was a symbol of her terrible loss.
But that is not the end of the story. As I watched it unfold, Mr. Pendretti began to speak of his own pain. He told Mrs. Clark of what he too had lost. Everything that he had worked for in his little Italian mountaintop village had been destroyed by that war. He had built a little farm, but the battle had torn it apart – the land, the crops, the house, the barn; there was nothing to go back to. And his wife and his children – all dead, all sacrificed to the monster of war. Mr. Pendretti told his English neighbors, “I have no other place to go, no other family, no other home but you. I too have suffered, and I turn to you. I love you.”
And the Lord says today to His own, “You were strangers, yes. You are exiles, far from home. But so am I. I left the halls of heaven and came to earth to live among you. I too was a stranger. But I love you.” The Lord says to us, “I too have hurt. I understand you because I was abused, I suffered, I died, I left my Son in a strange land – and it was for you. It was for you”.
Remember today who you are. You are not strangers, but you are God’s own: “He Himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.”
Remember today who you are. You are not strangers, you are God’s own, among God’s strays, and I pray that because of you, Peter’s word may be fulfilled, “For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.” God’s own of the Lai Church, bring us strays home to Him and unite us in His Spirit.
