Tuesday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time
Brothers and sisters, You are no longer strangers and sojourners (foreigners and strangers), but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones (God’s people) and members of the household of God . . . This declaration from St Paul in the opening verse of our first reading vibrated my heart strings. You are no longer foreigners and strangers . . . Recall a time when you felt like a stranger – alone, unknown, overlooked, separated, or excluded. What did that feel like? Perhaps you’ve even had the experience of being shunned, neglected, ostracized, or abandoned. As you remember those situations where you felt like an outsider, allow Paul’s affirmation to wash over you. You are not an outsider; you are very much an insider in the household of God. Today, let us consider how embracing our own sense of belonging might cause us to open our arms more to those around us.
We all want to have a sense of belonging, of knowing that we are part of a group in a meaningful way. We tend to identify our groups very narrowly, however. Our “tribe” becomes our family, our friends, and people like us – people who share our culture, our ethnicity, come from the same geographical location, or who look like us. Paul redefines tribe to include everyone, the entire people of God. I’m wondering today how we might take our own experiences of feeling excluded and let them become catalysts to transform the way we see others. Can we invite love and mercy to go before us, opening our eyes, our hearts, and our arms so that we can embrace every human person as a member of our tribe?
Paul invites us to recognize that not only are we no longer strangers and foreigners, but that is the reality for each and every other person, as well! As we each awaken to our “no longer strangeness,” perhaps we can look around and see that everyone else is in that same boat with us. Together, says Paul, we are fellow citizens (of the global community and the Kingdom of God), members of the household of God, a temple sacred in the Lord, and a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. Look around this household. In it you find your tribe, and all the other tribes of the world beautifully united into one diverse and yet unified family, one holy people.
We all have such a strong need to belong, and yet we so often actively exclude others in our thoughts, words, and actions. We fear the stranger, and so we define our relationships accordingly, excluding anyone deemed to be different or other. As we hear God speak to us today, saying You are no longer strangers and foreigners, can we hear God speaking those same words to every human person on our planet? Today, can our personal experiences of feeling like a stranger transform us into persons who show radical hospitality, embracing the other members of the household of God?
Let us consider what would that look like in our thoughts, attitudes, words, and actions today. Who is one person or one people group that you have considered as stranger or other? What steps can you take today to begin to transform your attitude of exclusivity into one of hospitality and inclusivity? Come Holy Spirit, convict us, transform us, and guide us. Amen!
Elizabeth Wourms