Stranger Friendly Campus: Theological Pressure Points for Christians
Recently I hosted a discussion with the University Multifaith Chaplains Association at UBC. This lively group of people meet twice a month forming a learning and leadership community.
We live in an age that has never had such easy access and opportunity to appreciate and value the differences and commonalities in the world’s ethnē. Yet we also live in an age in which it remains just as easy to demonize the stranger as it has always been. Openness to the stranger is something I believe we want in the commons. Creating a stranger friendly campus is not easy and it will surely be challenged further in the days to come.
As nationalism raises its voice as an expression of xenophobia I have been searching for theological pressure points within the Christian conversation that lead might lead a person toward becoming a raging xenophile.
I chose only six pressure points for our discussion. Each pressure point is accompanied by Scripture. I am not providing the theological work but hopefully you as readers can make the associations. The first pressure point may be the most important one for creating movement and a willingness to encounter a stranger. It requires me to humbly manage the tendency to promote my opinions and quick judgements as truth. This questioning of my own assumptions creates generosity, invites trust, and leaves room for God to show up. The Emmaus Road (Luke 24:13-35) encounter is the account of Jesus, the Resurrected Lord, showing up and being received as a stranger by two disciples on their journey. I believe we will have to train ourselves for this pressure point in an age of manipulated feeds and censured news. This first pressure point is the required posture for every picture and byline we read on the Internet. Pressure point #1 is the growth mindset applied to relationships.
Pressure Point #1. My assumptions about the stranger are probably wrong.
“Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.” Hebrews 13:1-3, NIV
Pressure Point #2. I am part of a minority story… too.
“Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.” Exodus 23:9, NIV
Pressure Point #3. Perceived weakness is not all about a lack of personal responsibility.
“Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah. In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.”
Acts 5:42-Acts 6:1, NIV
Pressure Point #4. The academy is a transactional relationship yet has potential for genuine friendship.
“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down on’e life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other.” John 15:9-17, NIV
Pressure Point #5. The stranger may be the one from whom I receive and share in God’s blessings.
“So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, or all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” Galatians 3:26-29 NIV
Pressure Point #6. Being “sent” requires becoming the stranger who is received.
“Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person as a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward. And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward.” Matthew 10:40-42, NIV
Extra Thoughts and Music
Unfortunately, some places develop a hostile and pervading ethos of suspicion toward the stranger. These places seem to know and perhaps relish in their stranger-unfriendliness. I grew up with two phrases that treated being the stranger as a common experience and as a spiritual experience. These phrases have been memorialized in songs. “Rank Stranger” tells of leaving a community, coming back and then experiencing “home” and its people as strange, even objectionable. A second song is confessional too. “I’m just a Wayfaring Stranger,” I’m just passing through. These confessions do not guarantee empathy for the stranger or outsider but they do tap into pressure points within my theological stream.