Welcoming the Stranger

Rev. Amy Russell - 2008-12-24

The Christmas story is a story about welcoming a stranger. The Inn was full and Mary and Joseph were exhausted from their journey. Mary was pregnant and was ready to give birth. They had to find a place to rest. They found the stable behind the inn and huddled together there with the animals as Mary went into labor. In this wonderful story we hear of the baby Jesus, born in the stable, and laid to rest in a manger.
The shepherds in a nearby field heard about the birth of this miraculous child from an angel who told them that this child was to become the Savior of the Jews. They traveled following the light of the star that led them to the stable were the baby was born. There they welcomed the birth of this wonderful miracle into their lives.
The three wise men also followed the bright star and came bearing gifts for this child said to become a king. They also welcomed the little stranger into their lives.
There are times in our lives when we are asked to welcome strangers. We may see someone on the street who may need help, someone who drops their bundle of groceries and needs help picking them up. Someone who asks us for a handout. Sometimes there are organizations who ask us to open our homes to strangers like some of us did during the campaign. Or to help provide lunch at St. Vincents. Or to bring hats and scarves like many of you did this Christmas season. The RE program made some wonderful hats and scarves to give to those who need them. In all these ways, we are asked to welcome strangers into our lives.
Every Sunday morning, we welcome guests who visit us here in our Sunday service. I know that many of you are wonderful at greeting new people and making them feel at home.
In the reading tonight from Sarah York’s book, The Holy Intimacy of Strangers, she tells a story about a stranger who came to the church asking to be able to pray. She talks about how she made all kinds of assumptions about who this person was and what they wanted from her. It turned out that this man needed her presence and her acceptance, that’s all. She felt herself open to “holy possibility” in that moment, realizing that she could let go of her need for control, her need to have only certain kinds of relationships with people much like her. She could be given a gift of connection with a stranger, unlike her, but accepting her with openness. Sarah York says, “To speak of intimacy with strangers is to experience a deep and profound closeness or innerness with what is most foreign or external to us.”
Intimacy is an interesting word that Sarah York used to describe these chance encounters we may have with strangers. To me intimacy is opening yourself to another, having trust that your offering will be accepted and returned. Often we meet a new person, and for some reason we offer them something of ourselves- sort of testing the waters to see how they’ll react to that piece of ourselves that we have revealed. We really can’t have any trust that they will accept us, not knowing them. So, offering ourselves in any way, is in a way trusting our own selves. Trusting that we have something to give to others that they might value. And if they don’t, trusting that we’ll be okay, regardless of how they react. The act of interacting with someone we don’t know is in fact, a way of offering the possibility of connection, the possibility of trust.
We don’t often find people that we end up becoming friends with. When we do, we are given a powerful gift of life. But even when our offer is not returned in kind, we have opened ourselves, we have created new possibilities within ourselves for reaching out, for a connection to the larger world, to the universe.
Thomas Merton, the Catholic monk who writes about his life of meditation, speaks about this feeling of connection. One day he was in Louisville on a busy corner in the shopping district. Since he spent most of this time in a silent monastery, this was an unusual experience for him. He suddenly had one of those Ah Ha moments when he realized the wonderfulness of the strangers around him.
…I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness…
I think the Christmas season reminds of us of this connection we have with others. We are all members of the same human race and we all have a need for each other. When we can find within ourselves the ability to reach out for these connections, to unknown people so different from us, we can find that hope for peace that we all pray for in this season.
This holiday season, I will take time to think of the soldiers in Iraq, all the soldiers, the American, the Iraqi, the British, who will be feeling disconnected perhaps on these special days. I will think of the people in Darfur who struggle each day to find safety, to find the means for survival. I will think of the people in India who lost so many loved ones to a devastating earthquake this year. And the people in Mumbai who suffered through a fearful destructive terrorist attack. People all over the world who we don’t know, will never meet. And yet with whom we share a common humanity.
We can welcome these strangers into our awareness as we broaden our awareness of our connection to them all. We are interconnected to all the creatures of this planet. We wish them all peace on earth, goodwill to humankind.