Scripture: Jeremiah 29: 4-9; 1 Peter 1: 1-2; 5: 12-14
Sermon: Living as Resident Aliens in this World[1]
Topics: aliens, race, justice, integration, shalom
Preached: June 21, 2020
Rev. Mike Abma
Jeremiah 29: 3-9
3The letter was sent by the hand of Elasah son of Shaphan and Gemariah son of Hilkiah, whom King Zedekiah of Judah sent to Babylon to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. It said:
4Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:
5Build houses and live in them;
plant gardens and eat what they produce.
6Take wives and have sons and daughters;
take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters;
multiply there, and do not decrease.
7But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
8For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let the prophets and the diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, 9for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, says the Lord.
1 Peter 1: 1-2
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
To the exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, 2who have been chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with his blood:
May grace and peace be yours in abundance.
1 Peter 5: 12-14
Through Silvanus, whom I consider a faithful brother, I have written this short letter to encourage you, and to testify that this is the true grace of God. Stand fast in it. 13Your sister church in Babylon, chosen together with you, sends you greetings; and so does my son Mark. 14Greet one another with a kiss of love.
Peace to all of you who are in Christ.
This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
INTRODUCTION — 3 STORIES
In the summer of 1951, Bill Buursma was still a seminary student. He and his young wife Althea, were assigned to a small immigrant church in the city of Thunder Bay, Ontario – a city on the north shore of Lake Superior. Since it was an immigrant church, Bill had to preach in the immigrant language, which was Dutch. Bill told me that when he and Althea were moving into an apartment that the church had rented for them, they were shot at by a neighbor.
The neighbor shot at them, then yelled,
“Go home.
You and your foreigner friends don’t belong here!”
Now, fast-forward almost 70 years.
In the spring of 2017, a 17 year old girl named Rajpreet Heir, was on a subway in New York. She was on her way to visit a friend.
Suddenly a man on the subway started yelling at her.
“Go back to your own country.
You don’t belong here.”
Rajpreet was terrified.
Yes, she was clearly of East-Indian descent,
but she was born in Indiana.[2]
The next year, in the summer of 2018, a young mother, Jazmine Abhulimen and her young son were at their neighborhood community swimming pool in North Carolina.
Suddenly, some pool officials asked them to leave.
Why?
Because they did not look like they belonged.
They were the only people of color at the pool.
They refused to leave.
So the police were called.
Jazmine and her son lived in that neighborhood.
They had a community pass to swim in that pool.[3]
GOING DEEPER
Of the 3 stories I just told, my guess is that we may remember the one about Bill and Althea Buursma being shot at. We may remember that one because many of us happen to have known Bill and Althea personally. They were members of our church.
But I am afraid there may be another reason it is easier for us to remember the Bill and Althea story.
Yes, years, and years ago, perhaps our parents, or grandparents, or great-grandparents may have heard someone say to them, “You don’t belong here.”
But today, isn’t it the painful truth that
we might be the ones
who sometimes think this of another person.
We may see someone who does not look like us and think:
“You don’t belong here.”
On NPR the other day, Dustin Dwyer of Michigan Public Radio, gave a report of a peaceful protest and march here in Grand Rapids – a city Dustin Dwyer himself lives in.
Dustin Dwyer reports being in this peaceful protest himself.
The marchers first wandered around downtown,
then left downtown
and eventually ended up entering East Grand Rapids.
Dustin Dwyer reports that some people cheered and waved.
But one woman came out of her house,
and stood in the middle of the street waving a baseball bat.
She said to the peaceful marchers,
“Go home. You don’t belong here.”[4]
And now, finally, let me get a little personal.
When our family moved to Grand Rapids in 1998, we spent the first while looking for a house to buy.
We ended up looking in the Alger Heights neighborhood.
The one question we were asked again and again was,
“Are you sure that is a good neighborhood?”
I was not sure what to make of that question.
I could not help but sense that there were racial undertones to that question –
that because Alger Heights was a racially integrated and diverse
neighborhood, that somehow we did not belong there.
THE ALIEN of “RESIDENT ALIENS”
We all know our country is facing many challenges,
and one big challenge it has faced for years
is the challenge of true racial justice and true racial equality.
Lately, that challenge has come roaring to the foreground.
If anyone should be able to speak into this,
we, the church
we, the body of Christ, should be able to.
We, of all people, should have a clear idea of what a community,
what a close, warm, loving, racially-integrated community
could look like and should look like.
One thing I believe we modern Christians forget is what made the New Testament church attractive in the first place.
From the very beginning, the church knew it was small.
The church knew it was scattered – Peter in this Letter uses the word dispersed.
The church knew that it had to live differently from the world around it.
One of the things that made the early church community so different
is that they attracted the poor;
they attracted slaves;
they attracted the marginalized of the world,
the mistreated of the world.
The church became a haven, a refuge,
a place where you were seen first and foremost as a child of God.
The church was a place where,
regardless of your status or station out there in the world,
in the church, you were an equal.
In the church, everyone was a brother and a sister in Christ.
This is the Alien part of our church DNA.
Yes, we may live in this world.
But we are not of this world.
In his letter, Peter calls us church members
exiles and strangers and aliens in this world
precisely because we are supposed to be living lives
that are different and alien from the lives around us.
We live different lives
because we serve a different king,
because we belong to a different kingdom,
and because we long for the day when that kingdom fully comes.
That is the “Alien” part of our identity as Resident Aliens in this world.
We, as a church,
are supposed to be counter-cultural.
We are supposed to be different.
And we are supposed to provide the world
with a picture of what a community —
a real, warm, loving, racially integrated
community — is supposed to look like.
THE RESIDENT of “RESIDENT ALIENS”
And yet….we live in this world.
We are residents in this world.
That is the “Resident” part of our “Resident Alien” identity.
We are not just some cloistered colony of believers,
trying to keep as separate from the world as possible.
No, we live as exiles, and strangers, and aliens,
in this world and for the benefit of this world.
Few places make this more clear than
the letter to the exiles in Jeremiah 29.
Just like those exiles back then,
we are also called to bloom where we are planted:
to build homes.
to plant gardens.
to raise families.
Just like those exiles back then
we are called to seek the welfare of the city in which we live.
Another way to put this
is that we seek the flourishing of the city in which we live.
The literal word here is Shalom – we seek the Shalom of the city in which
we live.
HOW CAN WE SEEK OUR CITY’S FLOURISHING?
As Christians living in this world,
we are “Resident Aliens”;
we are in this world but not of this world.
And yet, we are called to seek the well-being of wherever we live.
The BIG question is “How do we do that?”
How do we seek the Shalom of this City
especially in light of the racial challenges facing our city
and our country?
In January of 2019, Willie Jennings spoke at the January Series here at Calvin.
Willie Jennings grew up here in Grand Rapids.
He went to Calvin University.
He became a theologian and now teaches at Yale Divinity School.
When he spoke here last winter,
he spoke about Dreaming of the End of Racial America.
What I was struck by is that he spoke almost exclusively about
place and race.
He spoke almost exclusively
about how we live segregated lives.
He spoke about how
one group of people belongs here,
and another group of people belongs there,
and that anyone different entering our place and our space
is seen as an intruder,
a threat,
an unwelcome presence —
as someone who does not belong.
Willie Jennings made the point that
we live these segregated lives by the choices we make.
We live in neighborhoods,
where we feel we fit with “our kind of people.”
We shop in stores
again, “with our kind of people.”
We go to restaurants that serve
our kind of food and serve it to “our kind of people.”
We know this is not right.
We know we should be more intentional
about living in more diverse neighborhoods,
and shopping at more integrated stores,
and eating at more ethnic, and let’s face it,
really more interesting restaurants.
Willie Jenning’s point in his talk
is that the only way to bring more racial shalom to our city
is if we change the way we live,
and change where we do our living
intentionally seeking to be less segregated
and more integrated.
NOT EASY
That is not easy.
Everyone says they are for more integration.
Saying it is one thing.
Doing it is another.
Judge McFadden is a retired judge in Alabama.
In the 1970’s, McFadden was the judge who forced the school system in Tuscaloosa Alabama to end segregation and to integrate.
From the mid 1970’s to about 2000, that integration was a great success.
Then in 2000, it was ruled that court-ordered de-segregation was no longer necessary.
Now, in just 20 years, Tuscaloosa schools are no longer very integrated.
Now they are segregated once again.
Judge McFadden laments this.
He pondered aloud,
“How does one accomplish de-segregation in an ideal world?
I don’t have the answer.
But I know that before you can have that ideal,
Human beings need to change their attitudes.”
Human beings need to change their hearts.
CHRIST – THE CATALYST FOR CHANGE
Who will change our hearts?
When Jeremiah wrote his letter
the world was ruled by the Babylonian Empire.
When Peter wrote his letter
the world was ruled by the Roman Empire.
The gods of both these empires,
the Babylonian and Roman empires,
identified with the powerful,
with the privileged,
with the wealthy.
But we worship a God who consistently identifies
with the powerless,
with the oppressed,
with the poor.
In fact, God identifies with the powerless, and oppressed, and poor so much,
that when he came to dwell among us
he came into this world born into a dirt-poor family.
He came living as part of an oppressed Galilean minority.
He came willingly becoming powerless
when he suffered and died on the cross.
He did all this
to save us, to redeem us,
and to draw the whole world to himself.
He did all this
to break down all the dividing walls between us,
and to give us Shalom, and Koinonia — which means fellowship in his name.
He did this because he sought the welfare and the well-being
not just of a city,
but of the whole world.
CONCLUSION
We, as a church,
are not simply an isolated colony of the kingdom here in this world.
We are also the salt of the kingdom —
salt that is intent on keeping things from getting worse in this world.
We are the yeast of the kingdom —
yeast that may be small but that
is intent on changing things for the better in this whole world.
We are able to do this
because Christ is our King and we serve his Kingdom.
We want to do this
because his Spirit lives in our hearts.
AMEN
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Resident Aliens is the title of the well-known 1989 book by Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon and is a clarion call for the church to live as Resident Aliens in this world. They seem to have emphasized the Alien part, but there needs to be a balance between the Resident part (in this world) and Alien part (not of this world) of this identification. That is what this sermon tries to do. ↑
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In The New York Times, March 24, 2017. ↑
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In the New York Times, July 6, 2018 ↑
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Dustin Dwyer, “An Unplanned march, an unlikely leader, and for one night at least, a peaceful resolution” NPR, Michigan Public Radio, June 4, 2020. ↑
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