As the church, according to Scripture, it is our job to love our neighbors and serve them as Jesus did.
One of the most powerful themes of Scripture is God’s special love for resident aliens, “strangers within the gate.” They were rescued by God, healed, and held up as examples of faith and models of profound love. The people of Israel were told to forever remember their own place of estrangement in Egypt and the moment of God’s deliverance. In gratitude for their deliverance, they were commanded to welcome strangers. Just as God reached out in Christ to draw estranged humanity into God’s family, Scripture teaches Christians to treat the strangers they encounter as neighbors and family.
The Scriptural Mandate
Provisions for Strangers in the Old Testament Law
The Exodus is a dramatic and central story of God rescuing a foreign people from exploitation. Restored to a life of independence, self-support, and dignity, they were destined to become a blessing to other nations. Throughout the Old Testament, Israel is reminded in the law and the prophets that precisely because they were delivered by God from bondage, they should remember the strangers—resident aliens—in their midst (Exod. 22.21; 23.9). They were commanded to treat any stranger kindly, virtually as a fellow Israelite (Deut. 24.17-22).
The law specified certain protection for strangers. Anyone who disobeyed, depriving foreigners of their rights, was to be cursed (Deut. 27.19). But the very letter of the law pointed far beyond a bare minimum. Leviticus 19 balances the command to love the neighbor as yourself (v. 18) with a command to love the stranger as yourself (v. 34). (See also Deut. 10.19.) The prophets called Israel to account for failing to practice toward others the extravagant love and perfect justice that they had known at the hand of God. The Psalmist proclaimed, “The Lord watches over sojourners” (Ps. 146.9); and Malachi warned that the Lord will testify against those who show disrespect for God by taking advantage of foreigners (Mal. 3.5).
Old Testament Accounts of Strangers—Examples of Love, Faith, Hospitality, Courage, and Repentance
Just about the time that a faithful person in Israel began to feel that he and his nation had God in their hip pocket, God would bring in a stranger to show what real love, faith, and obedience were like. Consider Ruth, the foreigner who left her own family, language, culture, and religion behind out of love for Naomi, her Israelite mother-in-law. So celebrated is this story that, in wedding ceremonies, we hear the words of Ruth to Naomi lifted out of context to describe the self-abandoning love of husband for wife and wife for husband: “Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God” (Ruth 1.16). Thus, the love of a stranger for her godly mother-in-law is held up as a model for love in marriage.
In response to her love and faith, God blessed Ruth, the stranger, with plenty of food for herself and Naomi. The help came by the hand of a successful farmer, Boaz, who practiced the commandment to “love the stranger as yourself” by allowing Ruth to join other needy peasants and widows who gleaned in his fields. And God didn’t stop at blessing Ruth with the bare necessities of life! She married the rich man Boaz, was blessed with a son, and eventually became the great grandmother of King David and a direct ancestor of Jesus. Apparently, the faithful love of a stranger for the people of her adopted land and the obedient love of faithful citizens for strangers in their midst are both part of God’s plan for our blessing and salvation!
The story of Ruth’s marriage to Boaz is surprising, given the warnings of the law and the prophets against Israelites marrying foreigners—who might lead them into worshiping other gods (Ezra 9.1-2). Ruth’s story is all the more remarkable since her people, the Moabites, were singled out for special disfavor. Because they had called upon Balaam to curse Israel during their journey through the wilderness, the Moabites were never to be allowed to set foot in the assembly of God (Neh. 13.1-2). Yet, it was a daughter of the Moabites who was to serve as an honored forebear of Jesus, the Savior of all people. It seems to be the surprising (at times disturbing) way of our God to turn even enemies into family! Perhaps this is why we can expect amazing things when we follow the Lord’s command to “love your enemies.”
Various strands of this same theme of Israel’s blessing at the hands of strangers appear in other biblical accounts. Long before he was sent off by God to deliver Israel from bondage, Moses was welcomed as a stranger into a Midianite home and family. Partly in honor of their hospitality, Moses named his first son Gershom—a play on the Hebrew word for stranger (Exod. 2.11-22).
It was a foreign prostitute, Rahab, whose act of courage helped give a stunning victory to Israel over Jericho and saved the lives of her own family (Josh. 2; 6.22-25). According to the genealogy of Jesus, recorded in Matthew 1.5, this Rahab was an ancestor of Jesus through the family of Boaz, Ruth’s husband. Thus, Rahab is another stranger through whom the world was to receive its Deliverer.
Strangers, even enemies, were often surprising Israel, even in their capacity to repent. Who would have expected the wicked pagan city of Nineveh to actually heed God’s call to repentance? Certainly not the reluctant prophet, Jonah, who was so angry with God for failing to destroy Nineveh that he asked to die. Jonah, personally delivered by God from the belly of a whale, apparently didn’t want to see God deliver a city of 120,000 repentant pagans from destruction! This account stands as a dramatic reminder that God’s call and grace extend to every nation—even if God has to redirect the paths of the faithful to bring that message.
Related: Migration and Immigration Church Resources
Jesus and Strangers
The sometimes upsetting message to Israel of God’s plan to save and bless strangers in their midst continues in the New Testament. In his hometown synagogue, Jesus read from Isaiah, identifying himself with the liberating and healing Messiah. When the congregation took offense at this claim, Jesus reminded them of a foreign widow who took in Elijah during a severe famine. She, not the Israelites, was blessed with a bowl that never ran out of flour and a cruse of oil that never ran dry. Jesus further reminded them that though there were many lepers in Israel, God chose to heal Na’aman, a pagan commander, by Elisha’s hand (Luke 4.16-27, 1 Kings 17.8-16, and 2 Kings 5.1-14). Later Jesus’ famous story of the good Samaritan illustrated how the mercy of a stranger may have much to teach self-righteous members of the religious and civil fold about genuine neighborly love.
Jesus’ healing ministry touched several foreigners, such as the Canaanite woman whose fearless appeal to Jesus resulted in her daughter being freed from a demon (Matt. 15.22-28). This foreign woman was one of only two people of whom Jesus said they had “great faith.” The other was a foreign officer who sought and received healing for his slave. Jesus exclaimed, “Not even in Israel have I found such faith!” (Luke 7.1-10). And when only one of ten healed lepers returned to thank Jesus, he called attention to the fact that this man was a foreigner (Luke 17.11-19).
It is easy to forget these and other lessons from all of Scripture about the centrality of strangers to God’s work and witness! Sometimes, like Jonah, we’d rather not believe that God’s salvation and blessings are meant to go far beyond the border of the culture and way of life we know. Even when we celebrate the arrival of three wise men at the place where Jesus and his family were staying, we seldom stop to reflect on how God brought foreign dignitaries to bear witness to the Light, which went unnoticed by most of the faithful. We also forget that the “unwashed,” like the Samaritan woman who met Jesus at a well (John 4.1-42), may turn out to be the most effective voices calling new people into God’s kingdom.
Certainly our own story, as Gentile Christians, illustrates God’s persistent outreach to strangers. According to the remarkable Acts account of Peter’s dream and his baptism of the household of Cornelius, a foreign officer, God went out of his way to show the apostles that the gospel of Jesus Christ is for all persons (Acts 10). Thanks to Peter’s obedience and to the faithful witness of those who carried the gospel far beyond their own land, we are no longer strangers to the family of God. As Paul wrote to the Ephesians, Gentile Christians who were “strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God” through Christ you have been made “citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God” (Eph. 2.12, 19)! Remembering how we came to be adopted into God’s family, we can never turn our own backs on strangers among us, nor ignore the needs of strangers far away. Jesus promised that when we take in strangers, we welcome him (Matt. 25.35).
Practicing Justice and Providing a Place for Strangers at the Table Today
What does this expansive theme in Scripture teach us about our relationship to literal strangers in our midst? The Seder meal (during Passover) is the right model. Not only do Jews still reserve a place and a cup for Elijah, but they also invite strangers and the needy to share this special meal with them. Christians, too, should never let strangers remain “across the tracks.” They should never be away from the core of our lives, never farther than the other side of our own table. How else are we to remember—as God’s people are commanded to do—that “we were aliens/strangers in the land of Egypt” (Lev. 19.34 and Deut. 10.19)? How are we to let God’s mercy flow through us, if we don’t daily remember where we’ve come from, namely the other side of the tracks?
For Christians, Easter is the crowning climax of The Story. The Stranger became our Brother and our Savior. Each Sunday is our Easter, and every communion is our Passover meal. Elijah’s cup is overflowing in the hands of our Host, who is no longer a “stranger” among us. The Christian community, gathered around the table, must make room for those of Christ’s family who are still strangers in our midst. And the first tables to which all strangers should be welcome are those in the homes of Christian families.
What does this mean, and how can it be done? There are many models, but the option of ignoring strangers is not ours. Churches have often served as sponsors for refugee families, providing assistance with jobs, food, and tutoring. These families are welcomed into the life of the Christian community, at a pace and depth determined by their own response to the invitation. Some churches have provided refuge to undocumented persons. This they have done because God’s commandment to “love the stranger as yourself” is not qualified by any requirement of citizenship. In fact, it was precisely because resident aliens were not citizens of Israel, and were therefore vulnerable, that the Old Testament law made special provision for their protection and commanded that they be loved like family (Lev. 19.34).
The biblical text leaves no doubt that the practice of justice and mercy toward strangers is central to our calling as people of God. The Old Testament law confronts our human tendency to apply a double standard in human rights—one for citizens and another for resident foreigners—by proclaiming, “You shall have one law for the alien and for the citizen, for I am the Lord your God” (Lev. 24.22). Thus, the commandments against exploiting workers, or perverting justice, apply equally to citizens and foreigners (Lev. 19.13, Deut. 1.16, 24.17). Guided by the law of God, we should not be party to the exploitation of workers; we should be eager to speak in the defense of foreigners who are cheated, abused, or denied justice in any way. Like Boaz, who encouraged the foreigner, Ruth, to glean in his fields, we should be providing employment and food for strangers who are able and eager to work (Ruth 2; Deut. 10.18-19).
God’s law required Israel to collect an in-kind tax in the form of tithes of grain to assist widows, orphans, and poor strangers (Deut. 26.12-14). In our day, such help takes the form of food banks and other emergency assistance supported through our offerings, as well as public-sector food, housing, and health assistance, paid for by our taxes. Through a multitude of channels, our efforts should aim to imitate the restorative work of God by assuring strangers a secure place, a dignified life, blessings in present crises, and hope for the future.
At a minimum, this model suggests Christian participation in programs to provide legal assistance and emergency relief, as well as access to housing, education, and jobs for strangers. Beyond that, God’s example calls us to challenge prejudice against strangers in our communities and to root it out of our own thinking and behavior.
Clearly many of us appreciate ethnic diversity in America—at a certain level. We eat Mexican cuisine, for instance, enjoy folk festivals, and like to visit Chinatown. Yet at a deeper level, appreciation too often turns to impatience and blame. Do we at times resent the dependence of first-generation immigrants on their mother tongue? Since most of us don’t learn other languages, do we fail to recognize how difficult it is for adults to become fluent in a new language? Do we then equate a stranger’s broken English with ignorance and stupidity, or with lack of respect for her adopted country? Do we participate (or silently acquiesce) in conversations that blame residential blight, drugs, and crime on foreigners? To the extent that we do so, are we not “forgetting where we came from”—some earlier generation of poor, likely non-English-speaking immigrants? Indeed, the prelude to disobedience by the people of Israel, and their divine punishment, was often their failure to remember that they had been abused strangers who were delivered by God and restored to a place of blessing and dignity!
Related: A Call to Support Immigrants and Refugees in Christ’s Name
Our Call to Receive and Celebrate Blessings from the Lives of Strangers
It is unlikely that a day will ever come when justice and mercy toward the strangers in our midst are fully practiced until we also hear another dimension of Scripture’s teaching concerning strangers. The stories of strangers like Rahab and Naomi, and accounts of Jesus’s respectful and rehabilitating relationships with foreigners, suggest that we ignore and distance ourselves from strangers only at our own peril. Our security may depend, as Naomi’s did, on the loyal love of a foreigner married into our own family. Our lives may be saved by some good “Samaritan’s” journeying through our land (Luke 10.25-37). Our families may be spared destruction because we, like Abraham, welcome strangers who turn out to be angels in disguise (Gen. 18).
Strangers may not only play significant roles in God’s protection over our lives. They can also be instruments in God’s hand for our spiritual growth. Thus, our witness and worship may be blessed if we discover, like St. Paul, the divine light reflected in the works of foreign poets (Acts 17.16-32). Furthermore, our understanding of the power of faith will be enhanced as we meditate on both the scriptural description of Jesus’ encounter with a foreign officer, who sought help for his dying servant, and on the remarkable stories of God’s response to faith-filled strangers in our own midst.
If we are attentive and available, the strangers among us have much to teach us about love, loyalty, and faith. They may protect us from bodily harm and can certainly save us from the spiritual death of self-righteousness. Their reception of the gospel can renew within us the joy of our salvation.
Sometimes what keeps us away from strangers is the powerful uneasiness we can feel upon encountering very vulnerable people. Surely part of what God has in mind in instructing us to attend to strangers in our midst is to deliver us from the idolatry of finding our security in the status we enjoy as citizens of our own country, members of our own culture, and communicants in our own church. Instead, our security is found in the call and grace of God alone. In the presence of strangers, we are reminded that none of us is by birth a citizen of God’s kingdom. Only by adoption, in faith, are we strangers made a part of God’s family.
The Key to Obedience—Remembering
Christians are meant to encounter strangers in all these ways—ensuring their wellbeing, defending their rights, being instructed in virtue by their example, receiving divine blessings at their hands, and carrying God’s good news into their lives. The key to all is surely remembrance. Using the stories of Scripture, we can “remember” that the experience of Israel as strangers—their rescue, restoration, and reception of the law—is also our individual and collective story. By hearing and relating our own stories of virtue, wisdom, and joy experienced in the company of strangers, we can recover the sense that God is surely in our midst! In unusual places, at unexpected times, and through unfamiliar people, we are touched by God!
Such grateful remembrance is the spring of mercy. It is the foundation of justice. It is the motivation for love. It is a foretaste of heaven, where no one will be a stranger anymore! Indeed, one of the first steps on earth that a Christian can take in anticipation of heaven is to be a neighbor to strangers, recognizing them already as sisters and brothers in God’s extended family.
RCA Commission on Theology
The Reformed Church in America’s Commission on Theology studies theological matters arising in the life of the church.
