Immigrants and Strangers in the World

Using First Peter as the text, this sermon preached at the ordination of Rev. Barbara Christensen explores our Christian vocation as members of the United Church of Christ in the toxic political environment we now inhabit. 

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Transcript

Sermons from Mission Hills UCC

San Diego, California

Rev. Dr. David Bahr

david.bahr@missionhillsucc.org

February 2, 2025

“Immigrants and Strangers in the World”

1st Peter 2: 9-10 – Common English Bible

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people who are God’s own possession. You have become this people so that you may speak of the wonderful acts of the one who called you out of darkness into his amazing light. 10 Once you weren’t a people, but now you are God’s people. Once you hadn’t received mercy, but now you have received mercy. 

Upon receiving Barbara’s, Babs, kind invitation to preach at her ordination, I asked what scripture text she wanted me to use.  She came back with four options and I chose this one from 1st Peter that turned out to be very timely for the chaotic world we have just been thrust into and into which you will be ordained.

The first letter of Peter, a letter someone wrote in Peter’s name that circulated among Christian communities in Asia Minor – today’s country of Turkey.  Unlike many letters in the New Testament that dealt with conflict within the church, these Christ-followers were in conflict with their neighbors.  They were a minority, frequently misunderstood, often ostracized and sometimes persecuted and even attacked.  Why?  Christians were seen as a threat to the established social order.  Their communities acted counter to traditional society by considering women and slaves as equals in the church.  If you can’t imagine how equality could be so upsetting, scroll through your newsfeed.

You see, the head of household determined what god or gods would be worshiped and told the rest of them.  But in some households, women and slaves worshiped a “foreign” god.  Increasingly, this was worrisome, subversive – a threat to the very foundations of the established social order.  Therefore, these Christians lived in an environment of suspicion and hostility toward them.  What would calm the anxiety of their neighbors and especially the authorities?  Unfortunately, the antidote reverberates throughout history and even today.

Howard Thurman is often considered the grandfather of the civil rights movement.  Back when he was a boy in 1900, his grandmother asked him every day to read passages from the Bible.  She had been enslaved and wasn’t permitted to learn how to read, though she knew much of the Bible by heart.  But there were certain parts of the New Testament she wouldn’t let him read.  As a girl, she had heard enough of the passages read by preachers provided by the master.  Over and over she heard, “the Bible says, slaves be obedient to your master.”  The stories told from the Bible at night when the master wasn’t listening were about the Hebrew slaves fleeing Egypt, of freedom in the promised land.  Or the prophets who sought to tie the practice of religion with the care of the most vulnerable.  Or Jesus.  Nothing said by Jesus sounded anything like slaves being obedient.  

So, that antidote.  The advice.  First Peter, chapter 2, verse 18 says:  “Slave, accept the authority of your masters with all deference, not only those who are kind and gentle but those who are harsh” and it goes on to talk of “enduring through beatings.”  First Peter continues, and “in the same way, wives accept the authority of your husbands…”  It reads, “For example, Sarah accepted Abraham’s authority when she called him master.  You have become her children when you do good and don’t respond to threats with fear.”  In the same way as slaves.  What in the name of the Ever-Living God!?  

This letter to the frequently misunderstood, often ostracized and sometimes persecuted and even attacked Christians of Asia Minor, this author believed his advice would calm the fears of their neighbors and authorities, to which he added this triplet:  “Honor the emperor.”  Obey.  Basically, don’t cause trouble.  Don’t even appear to be trouble.  And so, “Dear friends, since you are immigrants and strangers in the world…Live honorably among the unbelievers.  Today, they defame you, as if you were doing evil.  But in the day when God visits to judge, they will glorify God, because they have observed your honorable deeds.”

These passages have excused evil for centuries by its twisted appeal to the Bible, but I at least understand what this letter is trying to do.  And how it provides a context for today’s reading:  “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people who are God’s own possession.  Once you weren’t a people, but now you are God’s people.”  I understand why and to whom this letter was written:  Christians were seen as a threat to the established social order.  

But, of course, we live in such different times.  How is this even relevant?  Christians aren’t a threat to the social order.  Or are we?  Should we be?

So, on the one hand, Christians are behind the efforts to tear down, destroy, and overturn the very foundations of a democratic society based on equal civil rights – a social order that has been fought for by countless people, led by churches and pastors who sacrificed their very lives.  The demonizing talk of DEI is just cover for the more expansive goal of a pre-civil rights world where women submitted to men, “graciously” in the words of the Southern Baptists, where people of color knew their place at the back of the bus, disabled people stayed at home, queer people didn’t exist, and immigrants came from Norway.

On the other hand, Christians should be a threat to such a social order.  But perhaps in light of First Peter, in non-threatening ways – or if not non-threatening, then non-violent ways because apparently just using the word “mercy” is threatening.  

Many of us are still talking about the bravery of the Right Reverend Mariann Budde, speaking truth to power, while other Christians are still denouncing her and the very concept of mercy as woke, leftist, radical, demonic, a “feminist cancer” invading the church, and a reason why “women should not be allowed to speak in church services,”[1] to quote a prominent evangelical pastor who wrote a book called The Sin of Empathy.  

When preaching evokes this kind of response, you know you’re preaching the gospel – the gospel of Jesus Christ who proclaimed, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.”  And “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. And “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”  Not hungering for power and thirsting for domination or craving control and addicted to privilege.  As Mary the Mother of Jesus said, they shall be “toppled from their thrones” and humble lifted high.  The gospel is a powerful thing when we dare proclaim it.

I have sympathy for the persecuted Christians of Asia Minor, trying to survive in an environment of hostility and suspicion.  Bless them for persevering.  Bless them for their attempts to practice equality even though it brought them unwanted attention.  They got the message first delivered to the Galatians – You are no longer Jew or Greek, no longer slave or free, no longer male and female for you are all one in Christ.  You are all one in Christ.  They got the message and faced the consequences in a world where they had no power, except for their witness.  They didn’t have power, but we do.

And Barbara you are now entering the ranks of people with power – ordained clergy.  You may laugh, but for good or ill, whether we want it or not, with ordination we are granted a moral power.  Not a power to be used for ourselves.  Not an excuse for power over others.  Yes, power can be dangerous, but to abdicate the use of it for people who are marginalized and vulnerable is immoral.  Just like being silent today is to allow the takeover of Christianity by Christian Nationalists in the service of straight, white, Christian men, hungering for their own power and thirsting for domination, craving control and addicted to privilege.  

But you are being ordained into the legacy of our ancestors in the United Church of Christ:

• I’m sure you are well aware, the first church to ordain a woman 172 years ago.
• The first major denomination to ordain an openly gay man 53 years ago and advocate for same-sex marriage two full decades ago.
• The church that, in support of the civil rights movement, paid the salary of a young UCC pastor named Andrew Young, later the UN ambassador, to be Martin Luther King Jr’s right-hand man, at his side when he was murdered.  
• Did you know that at the General Synod in 1963, when the UCC was only six years old, the president set aside our own many organizational needs to focus all our attention on the civil rights struggle.  
• Did you know that we stopped in the middle of General  Synod in 1973 to charter a plane for delegates to fly to the Coachella Valley to stand with Cesar Chavez.  

We have plenty of paternalistic sins to pay for, but the direction of our legacy is clear to follow.  We have been woke for as long as the UCC has existed, which, by the way is a term dating back to the early 1900s that means someone is informed, educated and conscious of social injustice and racial inequality.  Somehow that’s supposed to make us feel like outsiders right now, those immigrants and strangers spoken of in First Peter.  And maybe that’s true as we stand and watch the country reverse the very things about which we have long stood.  

But like them, be comforted.  “Dear friends, since you are immigrants and strangers in the world…Live honorably among the unbelievers.”  

Here’s the best line in the whole letter.  Chapter 3, verse 14:  “Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated.”  Those who persecuted them for their practices were guided by fear.  Do not be intimidated by them.  Instead, chapter 5, verse 7:  “Cast your anxiety on God.”

“Today, they defame you, as if you were doing evil (like calling mercy a feminist cancer).  But in the day when God visits to judge they will glorify God, because they have observed your honorable deeds.”  

That may be too much to imagine right now, but history will ultimately ask – what did you do?  May you say, today I took my place among the UCC clergy and “I used my power.”

May we all do so.

[1] https://wordandway.org/2025/01/30/empathy-for-immigrants-sounds-like-christianity-101-heres-why-some-say-its-a-sin/