Have you ever walked into a room and wondered, “Is this place for me?” In this sermon, we begin with the memory of a ten-year-old Methodist visiting an evangelical church for the first time, and with the quiet awkwardness of being the stranger. We then remember who made us feel welcome, and hold those two experiences side by side.
From there we trace the call to welcome the stranger through Scripture: the command in Leviticus to remember our own time as strangers in Egypt, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and the angels entertained unaware, Paul’s language of adoption in Ephesians, and the road to Emmaus in Luke, where Christ is recognized only when hospitality is offered. Reflecting on Jesus’ words in Matthew 25, we ask what it means that being a stranger is a kind of vulnerability most of us have actually felt, and how that experience can open our eyes to the vulnerability of others in our own community and in the news.
The sermon closes with a challenge: some of the ways Jesus calls us to care, like feeding the hungry or clothing the naked, can be done from a comfortable distance. Welcoming the stranger, visiting the prisoner, and caring for the sick cannot. They require us to step into one another’s lives, and in doing so we discover our gift to care and glimpse the image of Christ in our neighbor.
