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| Strangers in a Strange Land 2 Samuel 7:1-14(a)
Reflections on the reading from II Samuel David wanted to build for the Lord, Yahweh, a temple. As a king newly comes into his royal city, David himself enjoyed a palace. No longer was he a shepherd out in the fields. By oil of anointment, by military prowess, by cunning and even by deceit and betrayal, he is now a king, a ruler ensconced in a residence that demonstrated his power and command. By David’s logic, how could it be right for him to have such a throne, while the Lord’s presence and favor was only to be expressed in a traveling ark, in a tent? “How should I live in a house of cedar but the ark of God stays in a tent?” The Lord’s answer through the prophet Nathan reveals the ambiguity in David’s proposal. Should the Lord be “domesticated”—housed? The Hebrew text plays on the word for house—as is clear when the Lord responds to David’s plan. “You want to build ME a house. I will build YOU one—I will make you a house (a dynasty, including a future ruler who will be the Lord’s specially chosen one). But the Lord--could the Lord of Hosts be housed? The Lord who was on the move with the people of Israel, from Egypt? There was no need for a temple in Sinai, in the desert, not in Canaan. With the establishment of the royal city—with all the dangers that a king presented, in terms of reducing the people to servitude, to imposing the burdens of taxes, and the violence implied in a standing army—was David forgetting that from the very beginning, the people of the covenant were at root aliens, strangers? Abraham, the father of the people, was a wandering Aramean, coming into a strange land. Joseph through his brothers winds up in Egypt—and we know then the years of exile and final exodus. That memory of Exodus was the defining experience, whereby the people remember their days of captivity, and remember they became people in strange lands, on the move. The very symbol of God’s wondrous and sustaining presence--the Ark of the Covenant—was a symbol of a divine power unbound by territorial restraints, a holy presence, a Shekinah, on the move into strange and alien lands. David’s own great grandmother—Ruth—was famously an alien, a stranger who proved herself more faithful than the native born. And David—how many years he lived as a fugitive from the wrath of Saul, living even as an alien among the Philistines. David was not the one to build such a house; that would be left to his successor, Solomon. Can any one claiming the heritage
of the people of the Exodus forget that they were aliens? Then we turn to our first reading: the writer of the letter to the Ephesians repeats a central Pauline message—that in the new reality initiated by Jesus, the barrier between Jew and the Ethnics (the Greek word we’ve come to hear as Gentile) has been broken down. Remember the temple that David wanted to build? In the temple of the first century of the Christian era, (“Solomon’s Temple” as rebuilt—by Herod), in this massive structure, before you could enter the area for sacrifices, before the more sacred symbols of the presence of the Lord —there was a barrier wall that separated the court of the Gentiles from the inner courts into which only the “circumcised” could enter. The barrier was serious: Ethnics were forbidden to enter under pain of death. Only the people of the promise could go up into the sacred grounds. The writer emphasizes that we who are not born into the people of the covenant, the people of Israel, we ethnics by birth, we were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenant. But that barrier has been broken down—that sign saying “stay out” has been torn down. Now both the original heirs to the promise, and we recent immigrants, newcomers to the covenant—have become co-citizens. Listen to the language of this reading: we aliens, strangers have become citizens with the saints, members of the household of God. The writer calls us “sym-politai” - co-participants in the same polity, members of the same city-- fellow-citizens of a new commonwealth. The Pauline writer states we have become equals in the new humanity that the writer calls “the household of God”---the very phrase that carries the double meaning of “temple” and household, the same double meaning we heard in the reading from Samuel. We ethnics have become heirs to the promise, without the ritual sign of the citizen, the required circumcision. Before becoming citizens of this new commonwealth, the Pauline letter describes us as “without God, without hope”—people wandering without a home, without a future. But it remains true that we have been granted citizenship, with the original citizens of Israel. We have undeservedly come to share that original blessing. We have been granted a new citizenship as a gift. No passports, no quotas, no immigration or custom procedures, no requirements of birth or national origin. Only by grace, by the wonder of God’s love, have we become newly enrolled citizens in God’s commonwealth. But we have been aliens. We need to remember. Do we really sense, experience ourselves as aliens, as one’s granted citizenship in a new commonwealth not by birth but by an act of inclusion? Do we see ourselves as the Pauline writer invites us to do, as aliens? Do we realize that we are “newcomers”? If we believed that, how would we then treat the other “aliens” in our lives? Do most of us even have any experience as aliens, as strangers? We’ve heard the cliché, that as Americans we are a nation of immigrants. I don’t believe that the First Nation, the Native Americans see themselves that way. We may have been a nation of immigrants, aliens coming into a new country. But we can also experience amnesia of that reality. Americans travel a lot—Carroll and I just returned from a glorious trip to Alaska—but vacation traveling or adventure traveling is not the same as being an alien, unless the security of travel breaks down or the travelers immerse themselves in the new country. Tourists can experience another place, another culture, but they know they are on a return trip home. An alien has come into a new country, a new culture—and is there. Not passing through, not protected by embassy or tour group. An alien has not become assimilated. I can’t find many times in my life when I experienced being “other” or alien. Maybe in Chicago, I had some analogous experience of being an alien—when I moved out of the enclave surrounding the University of Chicago and ventured into the reality of South Side Chicago. A sense of not knowing the social clues, feeling that I just couldn’t be at ease, looking for kindly faces, depending on the kindness of strangers. Maybe some of us remember the strangeness of being brand new in a college dorm—cut off from home, not knowing anyone, looking clueless. Nothing like the experience of a day laborer from Guatemala, afraid of La Migra, looking for work, but fearful that he’s not going to be paid—knowing only smatterings of English. Not like the family here from Afghanistan, looked at suspiciously for their strange sounding names, wondering if they are suspected of being terrorist sympathizers. Not like the Iranians who run a family restaurant, but carefully call the cuisine “Persian.” Not like the legally papered aliens who must rely on free medical clinics or emergency rooms because they can’t afford insurance. Who else do we encounter as aliens, as strangers in a strange land? Are gay and lesbian persons, gay and lesbian couples labeled and treated as aliens, as undesirable “others”? Do we encounter people even here within our Christian community who feel themselves to be if not “aliens” at least to be alienated—ill at ease, needing a welcoming face, an outstretched hand, an understanding, listening presence? We can be glad to have the opportunity to support such efforts as the Latino Outreach Program of CMR, and be thankful that we can offer our space to that program which so helps recent neighbors learn English. We can praise and support such efforts as CASA of Maryland that extends such care and assistance to struggling newcomers. We can praise and support the Kaseman Health Initiative, extending medical care to the uninsured in our community, and to Mercy Clinic in Germantown that freely serves so many uninsured. We can extend hospitality and welcome to all who come—looking beyond the barriers of race, gender, sexual orientation or identity. If we remember that we have been aliens, will not our hearts be opened always to the stranger, the newcomer, the one who is different? If we so remember, then perhaps the concluding words of today’s excerpt from Ephesians might ring true of us as RUC: we might become “a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.” We might be that holy place where the reality of the divine is encountered. So let it be. Amen. |
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