September 7, 2025
What Do We Owe the Stranger?
Deuteronomy 10:18-19
Our theme this year in worship and preaching is “Making Room: Living Into the Welcome of Christ.” In this initial series, we’re exploring especially how we make room for one another in the church, in the household of faith. Today I’d like to think with you about how we make room for strangers.
What do we owe the stranger who comes to our door? Let us pray.
What do we owe the stranger? It seems like such a straightforward question. Basic friendliness, maybe some help. It’s part of what you’re taught as a child, to be nice to others, lend a hand, to treat someone as you want to be treated.
But when I really think about how actual strangers show up in my life, the question gets complicated.
Our house is on hillside; the driveway goes up a hill, and then you need to walk up some steps to get to the door. It’s a journey. From the house, we can see someone coming up the drive. When a stranger comes to the house, it’s a big deal. They have to make an effort. By the time they get to the door, the dog is barking, the kids have gotten me to come, I’m making my way to meet the person.
After all that, I’m cautiously curious: what do they want, why are they here, what are they selling, what do they want me to join?
When a stranger comes into the door of the church, it can also be complicated. What brought them here? What are they looking for? What if their theology is different than ours? What if they have criticism of us or our church? What if they ask uncomfortable questions? What if they have a hidden agenda?
On the one hand, our mission of radical hospitality says we welcome strangers; and on the other hand, we know it’s more complicated. Here’s what’s fascinating – even the Bible wrestles with the complexity of the stranger.
The Hebrew language uses many words for stranger, but the most common and the one in our text today is ger. It refers to someone who has established permanent residence while maintaining their foreign identity. So, this wasn’t a person passing through, nor was this a guest who was visiting.
These were people living in the society, as a resident, while remaining fundamentally different.
The passage from Deuteronomy makes it sound like the command is a simple welcome, but modern scholars point out that ancient Israel actually had intricate rules about strangers. There were different categories of stranger. Some could participate in religious rituals, others could not. Some faced economic restrictions, others did not. Some could own property, others could become permanent slaves. In some ways strangers were equal before the law, and in other ways they were not.
The biblical community wrestled with the tension between welcoming the stranger and drawing boundaries.
Even the word stranger, or “resident alien” as ger is sometimes translated is complicated: it’s a two-edged sword. Calling someone a “stranger” highlights their need for welcome and also reinforces their otherness. The very word throws up a wall, and creates a box.
When a stranger comes into the religious community of the church, we can feel some of the same tensions. Strangers will sometimes ask challenging theological questions that make comfortable members – sometimes pastors – squirm. Sometimes the stranger has economic struggles that don’t fit our assumptions about giving and participation. Sometimes the stranger is a baptized Christian who is returning to church after a personal failure, or who carries wounds from their previous church experience. Sometimes the stranger holds political views that makes conversation awkward.
How do we offer genuine welcome to the stranger in our midst without labeling them as the “other”?
Despite all this complexity, the passage from Deuteronomy provides us a theological starting point and anchor from which to begin.
Listen to what it says:
“God executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
Notice the theological logic here. It starts with God’s character. God executes justice for the vulnerable – the orphan, the widow, and the stranger. These three groups appear together throughout Hebrew Scripture as society’s most defenseless people. But look at the specific language about the stranger: God doesn’t just protect the ger, God loves the ger. And this love isn’t abstract – it’s tangible. God provides “food and clothing,” the most basic requirements for human dignity. God’s love for the stranger goes straight to their most fundamental needs.
The law of Deuteronomy makes a crucial move here. It connects God’s character to Israel’s identity: “You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” The word ger appears again – you were gerim in Egypt. This is foundational. Israel’s entire identity as God’s people is rooted in their experience as vulnerable strangers who received divine hospitality.
The theological equation is simple: God’s character toward strangers is why God rescued you when you were a stranger; and now your calling is to love strangers. This is your identity. Not just what you do, but who you are. You welcome the stranger.
One of my favorite children’s stories is about how a stranger is welcomed, and the welcome becomes transformational for everyone: Paddington Bear. Not the movie version, which is more of a melodramatic rewrite, but the original story. Paddington is a small bear from Peru who arrives at Paddington Station with nothing but a suitcase and a note asking someone to care for him.
Family after family walks past – they’re busy, they have their own concerns, they don’t see him, and if they do, they don’t know what to do with him.
The Browns finally decide to take him home. He doesn’t fit their London townhouse. He upsets all their routines, he makes a literal mess of things. Remember the marmalade toast? And the bath that overflows the house?
But along the way, something beautiful happens. He transforms their family. Their whole world becomes more generous, more adventurous, more alive.
When they welcomed the stranger, he did not just receive their hospitality, their lives were immeasurably enriched. This is part of what the Old Testament law is pointing to: welcoming the stranger is not just transactional, it’s transformational. Not just something we do, it’s part of who God’s people are and reflects God’s character.
Now, let’s take another step. God’s character as one who loves the stranger finds its greatest expressionin Jesus, who is our Savior. Listen to how John describes Jesus: “He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.”
Think about this. Jesus came to his own people – the religious community, God’s people who had been waiting for him and who should have recognized him – and his own people did not welcome him. The Son of God arrives as the ultimate stranger, not recognized, needing welcome, vulnerable to human reception or rejection.
And then this promise: “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” The stranger we welcome is one who welcomes us into God’s family.
You see, the gospel is extending and deepening the theological logic of God’s covenant with Israel. Israel was commanded to love the stranger because God loved them when they were strangers. In Jesus, God becomes the stranger among us to rescue us while we are still strangers to God. The Creator takes up residence in creation. The eternal Word dwells in time.
Those who welcome this divine stranger don’t just offer hospitality. They receive adoption, they become God’s child.
The truth is, every one of us has been the stranger seeking welcome. In this church, in some community, in life itself. Maybe you walked through these doors for the first time carrying questions, wounds, hopes you weren’t sure anyone would understand. Maybe you returned to faith after a long absence, uncertain whether there was room for someone with your particular story.
And if we’ve experienced God’s grace at all, we know what it means to be received by the divine stranger. Christ made room for us when we were outsiders, and that welcome transformed us into God’s children. We weren’t just helped – we were adopted.
When someone walks into our sanctuary carrying different theology, different wounds, different questions, they might be carrying Christ himself. Not metaphorically, but mysteriously, really. Jesus said, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”
When we welcome the economic stranger, the family struggling to make ends meet, we’re not just being charitable. When we embrace the generational stranger, the young family in our aging congregation, or the older adult in new circumstances, we’re not just being inclusive. When we make space for the theological stranger, the person whose questions challenge our comfortable assumptions, we’re not just being open-minded.
We’re creating space where Christ might be encountered, both by the stranger being received and by the community doing the receiving.
Remember Paddington – he didn’t just need the Browns, they needed him. His different perspective, his joy, his way of seeing the world enriched their family in ways they never expected. That’s what happens when we welcome the stranger Christ. We don’t just offer hospitality; we participate in transformation.
It feels impossible to talk about welcoming the stranger and not think about the immigrant and the stranger in our own country. Modern biblical scholars warn us about making that leap too casually. Even the biblical tradition is complicated. Yet, scripture is clear enough that the stranger is owed the dignity of the human person. For the most part, even in the ancient biblical society, strangers and citizens were treated equally before the law. Why? Because each person bears the image of God, irrespective of their nationality. And God has a special concern for the vulnerable, and God has commanded God’s people to share that concern.
I wish, and I hope, and I pray that our nation – especially our leaders and those who hold authority – will bear this in mind in how we treat the stranger among us. I feel ashamed by what I see happening today. Yet, for the church, especially if we are going to be light to the nation, we need to ask ourselves: How are we doing with the strangers in our own midst?
Our credibility to speak about welcoming strangers at any level – whether it’s the refugee family arriving in Asheville, or the immigrant family across town, or the newcomer walking into our Sunday service – flows from our practice of transformative hospitality right here.
When we learn to make room for the theological questioner, the returning believer, the family struggling financially, we become the kind of community that can speak with moral authority about what it means to welcome strangers.
What do we owe the stranger? We owe them the same welcome we ourselves received when Christ made room for us in God’s family. We owe them the kind of welcome that gradually dissolves the category of “stranger” altogether.”
There are no permanent strangers in God’s world – only children who finding their way home.
The question “What do we owe the stranger?” is ultimately answered in the face of Jesus. We owe the stranger everything, because we were strangers, and Christ welcomed us home.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Patrick W. T. Johnson, Ph.D.
First Presbyterian Church
Asheville, North Carolina