Occasional Sermons

It never fails to dumbfound me that the Bible is considered by so many to be some kind of a handbook of seemliness. For some reason, the prim, the proper, and the straight-laced have claimed it as their own. This is highly ironic, because by and large the individuals featured in the Bible, even by ancient standards, were as unseemly a lot as you’ll ever meet. Take Moses, for instance. He was the son of a slave who was adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter. Think about that for a minute -- the son of a slave who was adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter. Imagine if, during the Civil War era, Jefferson Davis’ daughter took it into her head to adopt the son of a slave. This screams unseemly. But that’s nothing compared to the fact that Moses, when he came of age, murdered an Egyptian overlord in cold blood, then turned tail and ran when he feared he might be prosecuted for his crime. Forget unseemly; this screams criminal. Or take Paul. Now Paul actually was a model of seemliness, at least before his conversion to Christianity. After his conversion to Christianity, however, his seemliness went south. He kept getting himself thrown in prison again and again. This made him both a convict and a repeat offender. And when he was not behind bars, he kept getting himself whipped, stoned, and beaten with rods. Again, highly unseemly. Or how about John the Baptist? When he was not delivering one of his blistering attacks against the religious authorities, he was raging that the world was going to end. And what about his fashion sense? Camel pelts? And what about his palate? Locusts? I hope he at least had the seemliness to kill them first. He may be the most unseemly of them all. Imagine how the prim, proper, and straight-laced would react if he showed up at their garden party. And I could go on and on and on. How about Noah? He was a drunkard. How about Hosea? He married a prostitute. How about Rahab? She was a prostitute. Unseemly. Unseemly. Unseemly. And this applies not only to individuals featured in the Bible but the groups featured in the Bible as well – slaves, nomads, refugees, the diseased, prostitutes, prophets, aliens….Let’s face it, none of these groups has ever been considered to be, how shall I say it….quite wholesome. None of them have ever been in the mainstream of society because none of them has ever been deemed to belong in the mainstream of society. Their presence there would only cause mutual discomfiture and embarrassment, because they are, in that word, unseemly. Yes, I think that we must grant that the individuals and the groups featured in the Bible are indeed unseemly. And in granting that, we may begin to wonder why? Why are the individuals and groups featured in the Bible so unseemly? To give a comprehensive answer to that question would be injudicious. The sermon would last three hours. And so, because it’s National Immigrants Day, why don’t we focus on aliens, the word the Bible uses for immigrants? Why does the Bible feature a group so unseemly as aliens? For one thing, the Bible can’t help but feature aliens, for the people of Israel had a history of being aliens. Take Abraham, for instance, the first of the Lord’s elect. Abraham was a native of Mesopotamia. The Lord tapped him on the shoulder and directed him to sojourn for the rest of his life in the land of Canaan. This made Abraham an alien. The Lord says as much in our Old T estament lesson – “I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant….And I will give to you and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien….” Or take Moses, who I just mentioned. Moses too was an alien. In fact, he and his people found themselves enslaved in Egypt because their ancestors had been aliens there before him. His ancestors had been forced to leave the land of Canaan when a famine hit. Hear Moses’ instruction to his people, “For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords…who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, who loves the alien, providing them food and clothing. You also shall love the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” And later in their history the people of Israel again became aliens again when their nation fell to the armies of the Babylonians. The destruction of Judah marks the beginning of the great diaspora, the dispersion of the people of Israel among the nations – as aliens. Hear the lament of one those aliens in his new homeland, “By the rivers of Babylon – there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there, we hung up our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the sons of Zion!’ But how could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” Yes, the people of Israel had a history of being aliens, and because they did, not only is it unavoidable that the Bible feature aliens, but too the people of Israel developed a sympathy for aliens. They could identify with them because they understood their victimization. This kind of sympathetic identification is not particularly surprising. It’s documented again and again throughout history. For instance, after the Holocaust, scholars attempted to understand the so-called rescuers, those who, at great personal risk, harbored Jews. Who were these sympathizers? Were they Men? Women? Christians? Atheists? Political liberals? Political conservatives? From a certain class or age bracket? Scholars could find no common denominator among them, so instead they compiled a list of their traits. They discovered that all of them, either in their lives or their history, had been in some way or another persecuted. Perhaps you have heard of the phenomenon that occurred in French village Le Chambon. The entire village colluded to rescue Jewish children. They rescued so many that they soon came to outnumber the villagers. Could an entire village have been persecuted? As it turned out, yes. They were descended from the Huguenots who carried the memory of persecution by the Catholic Church down through the centuries. But aliens are featured in the Bible for a more profound and essential reason than these. It’s more than just the history of the people of Israel as aliens and their consequent sympathetic identification with them. It’s something that goes to the very heart of the biblical proclamation. The Bible proclaims, of course and obviously, that God created all people and loves all people. But especially, the Bible proclaims, God loves those who are victims, and this simply because they are victims. This is because it is in the nature of God’s love to hold a special place in his heart for those most in need of love. Look, after all, at those who held a special place in the heart of his Son. The Bible features immigrants most basically then because God holds a special place for them in his heart. And now we can see too, at least with respect to aliens, why the Bible is not preoccupied with seemliness. It is because seemliness is an effect of privilege. As often as not, in my opinion anyway, seemliness is an affect of privilege. But whatever it may be deemed, seemliness is above and beyond the consideration of most immigrants. Many immigrants become immigrants as a question of survival. The boundary lines have not fallen for them in pleasant places. The vulnerability, hardship, and risk before them is preferable to the hopelessness behind them. They are stripped of their bearings – their language, their nation, their culture, their society, their vocation. They must contend with discrimination and hostility and fear. They live their lives strangers in a strange land. The bottom line is that the Bible has bigger things to worry about than propriety and etiquette, things like suffering and injustice. It keeps its focus where it belongs, and where our focus belongs too. And so, on this National Immigrants Day, as we reflect upon the Bible’s proclamation about aliens, let us, from this day forward, commit ourselves to their cause, and as the Bible declares, “not just in word, but in action.” Amen.