The service today was a special one too. The theme country for the World Day of Prayer was France and the readings focused on the experiences of immigrants and refugees living within France and the gospel reading was Matthew 25:31-40:
31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdomprepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
So, here it is, today's sermon entitled "I was a stranger and you welcomed me."
“Now, O Lord, take my lips and speak through them;
Take our minds and think through them;
Take our hearts and set them on fire with love for Yourself. Amen.”
Take our minds and think through them;
Take our hearts and set them on fire with love for Yourself. Amen.”
It is wonderful to be here today. I was so excited when I was first asked to come and speak and share with you today, and it got me thinking about how wonderful it is to receive an invitation, to be invited somewhere, welcomed somewhere. When we receive an invitation for something it’s always a bit exciting, isn’t it? I remember as a child feeling honoured to see my name on a wedding invitation along with my parents’ names. Being asked to come, invited in, encouraged and welcomed, it creates a wonderful feeling within us. Those gestures make us feel worthy, connected, wanted, even loved. An invitation is, to me, a special thing.
When I was nine years old I found myself, in the middle of the year, at a new school. My family had just moved from the town of Port Pirie, up north on the Spencer Gulf, down to the city of Adelaide and I found it quite an overwhelming experience. I was used to having my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins around. I was used to riding my bike to school. I was used to a little town and suddenly felt out of my depth. Added to this, I was distressingly shy around new people (you wouldn’t know it now) and had no idea how to go about making new friends. My friends in Port Pirie had been the people I’d known since I was too young to remember and so on my first day at my new school I felt lost and alone and so very scared. And in my nine-year-old way, I thought that this was how it was going to be from now on. I was just going to be alone. And I felt sorry for myself. So sorry for myself that I nearly missed the invitation offered to me.
“You can sit next to me if you like.”
It was so simple. But I was a little wary.
Why would this other girl, this fellow student, want me to sit with her when she so obviously had plenty of other friends? I remember that she smiled at me encouragingly and so I did sit. She chatted to me about the other kids in the class and our teacher and the project we would all be working on later in the day. And when recess came she invited me to sit with her and her friends. And over the next few years she came to become one of my closest friends.
And that first invitation, it was so simple, given so freely, so cheerfully, and yet it changed my life.
A number of years later I came to see that that friend had been Christ for me, at that time of fear and anxiety.
It wasn’t until over a decade later, as I began to reread my Bible as an adult searching for meaning in my life, that I realised that in a way, I had been Christ for her too. I was a stranger and she welcomed me. And she did it because it was kind.
As we get older, and life gets more complicated, it is all too easy to forget to be kind. And as we lose our natural inclination to kindness we also lose our ability to recognise it in others, because we see it and receive it less and less. Age, sadly, brings with it cynicism, caution and mistrust, as we realise that it is actually very difficult at times to tell the sheep from the goats. We harden. And we learn not to see the things that might distress us, or are too difficult to deal with. We learn not to see those people who are the least, the lowliest. Kindness, being generous with our time, our belongings and ourselves, is seen by so many people in our world as weak, because it does not serve our own purposes. It does not give an immediate return.
Yet Jesus tells us that it is when we are kind - without thought or desire of reward - that we become worthy to enter the kingdom of God. So why do we forget?
This morning we have heard words from women living as immigrants, refugees, and citizens of France; both good and bad experiences. We have heard snippets of lives still being lived and we have felt a whisper of the emotions written through those words and those lives.
And those same voices could so easily have come from within our own community.
Australia is the country that it is because of immigration and the refugees who have come to our shores and have enriched our culture, our society, our lives, whether we want to admit it or not. We are a young nation and very much a composite one and it is very easy to look at a nation like France and envy their strong sense of national identity, their history, a culture that has developed and evolved over so many centuries.
And yet it is not necessarily how long one has been in France that determines how French one is.
I have a friend who really epitomizes this understanding of being French. When I first met her and asked her, as politely as I could, where she was from, I was surprised when she told me she was French. She had a French accent, for sure, but she also had the most beautiful dark caramel skin. And it wasn’t a colour that I necessarily associated with French people at that time. And later I found out that she hadn’t been born in France but had arrived, as a refugee, at the age of five and had embraced and been embraced by the unique nationalism of that country.
I was really impressed. I was also impressed by the fact that she wasn’t one of a few lucky asylum seekers who made it through the system. France is faced with just over 50,000 refugees each year, compared to Australia’s 13,000. (A drop in the ocean considering there are over 1.7 million refugees worldwide.) She found acceptance there, her parents found the better life they were looking for there. They became French, gladly and with pride, because they had been welcomed. She said what helped the most was the welcome they received from the families in their neighbourhood. Things like an invitation to dinner made all the difference to their lives. Once again it was a very simple invitation to turn a stranger into a friend that had the greatest impact. An act of kindness.
And it has made me think.
When did I last do something like that?
When did I go out and give welcome to a stranger? To a person who felt alone and anxious and strange in their new surroundings? I realised that I don’t even know if there are any refugee families living in my suburb, let alone whether they feel welcomed, whether they need help. So I’ve tried to find out and I found, through the Refugee Council of Australia that there are communities and councils within our country that have signed up to be Refugee Welcome Zones, places committed to embracing new members of our communities and offering a hand of friendship. It’s not widely known about, but I think it’s brilliant. It’s doing the work of Christ, and seeing Christ in others, whether it does so knowingly or not and it is very much in the spirit of the World Day of Prayer that brings us together here today.
On the World Day of Prayer Australia website this day is described as part of a movement of women from over 170 countries and regions throughout the world. It is a day when together we affirm our faith in Christ, when we share our hopes and fears, joys and sorrows. It is a time when we are encouraged (and I really like this bit) to become aware of the whole world and no longer live in isolation; to take up the burdens of other people and pray with them and for them; and to become aware of their talents and use them in the service of society.
We are encouraged to come together as one people and invite into relationship with us the lost, the broken, the hungry, the naked, the sick, the unwanted, the strange. Because that is where Christ is.
It is a task that seems immense. Even when we know that we are joined in our undertaking with women and men throughout the whole world, it seems like a really huge and hard thing to do. But it doesn’t have to be.
We can start, if we dare, by remembering how it felt when we were young and small and vulnerable, and when we still had faith that the world and the people within it were kind. We can try and remember back to that time when kindness came easily. When it flowed from us.
And once we remember that way of being, once we tap into that thinking, we might be able to get our heads around the fact that changing our world for the better can begin with the simplest acts of kindness, friendship and warmth.
I find this a rather exciting thought. Whether the aim is welcoming refugees, new immigrants, the homeless, the poor or those who feel like strangers in the community they’ve lived in for twenty or thirty years, I know you can do it. I know that Christian outreach, invitation, and welcoming is something that this community excels at. Because I’ve seen it. Because you welcomed me. When I was a stranger.
