Who Is an Immigrant?

James 2:1-10, 14-17; Mark 7:34-37; Isaiah 35:4-7a

Immigrant: one who comes to a country to take up residence.

Alien: a person of another family, race, nation; a foreigner; someone or something differing in nature or character, typically to the point of incompatibility.

Sojourner: one who stays temporarily.

Foreigner: a person belonging to or owing allegiance to another country.

Multiple translations of the Old Testament Hebrew intermix these terms, which are used upwards of 250 times, representing three word roots. The New Testament Greek’s uses come in at under three dozen.

In the Old Testament the phrase, “the widow, the orphan and the stranger/sojourner/alien” form a recurring refrain in legal code texts as well as the prophetic writings. 

While “stranger” is the preferred word in the King James version many of us were raised on, our sanctuary Contemporary English Bible likes the word “immigrant.”

Since this constellation of related words – with nuanced differences – is prevalent in scripture, there must be a message for us within them.

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews writes near the conclusion of the great listing of praiseworthy forebears in the faith:

“All these people died in faith without receiving the promises, but they saw the promises from a distance and welcomed them. They confessed that they were strangers and immigrants on earth.” (Hebrews 11:13)

The psalmist many centuries earlier wrote:

“Hear my prayer, Lord!
Listen closely to my cry for help!
Please don’t ignore my tears!
I’m just a foreigner—an immigrant with you.
Just like all my ancestors were.” (Psalm 39:12)

The word to us is that we are all aliens, foreigners, strangers, immigrants.

In the sociology of the Appalachian culture in the midst of which we dwell, a person isn’t a native until they have lived here well into the third or fourth generation. We aren’t native unless our great-grandparents lived here. We are still immigrants, even after a quarter century.

So think about it. We are immigrants. And we have been a number of times. 

• Many of us were immigrants leaving another place and society to come to Waverly.
• For some of you it was a hard immigration from a life of working to a life of retirement (and some of you failed, didn’t you?)
• We were immigrants leaving home and going to college, going into the military, marrying into a new family, getting our first job, and the next one, or changing careers.
• And, for most of us, this thing called aging is surely alien territory and there be dragons.

Being immigrants is not something new. Forget the fact that most all of our ancestors in one generation or another crossed an ocean to live in a land filled with promises and perils. The political revolution that created this nation was an immigration from the tyranny of an absent and exploitive monarchy to an experiment in broad-based community government, a democracy. Most of the early settlers lived off the land, hunting, fishing, doing subsistence farming. 

Later generations were immigrants in a new form of life called the Industrial Revolution. That led to immigration from far-flung rural cabins to the urban tenements of cities. The expansion of mass production was aided by the influx of immigrants mostly from Europe. Then the Great Depression set in and nearly a third of the population became immigrants in a life of hardship. 

Following the end of World War II our parents immigrated from being GI Joes and Rosie Riveters to living the seemingly never ending good life. Some of us immigrated from the inner city to the strange world of the suburbs. We became immigrants in the information age as television came of age, the Internet was created, and now the digital age in which our children and grandchildren are full-fledged natives. We can only imagine what they will have to immigrate to over the course of their lives.

In the great parable of the judgment of the nations in Matthew 25, when those to the king’s left, who are being eternally banished, ask, “When did we see you ... a stranger ?” their question is from a position of rootedness rather than the rootless life of immigrants. They had done everything they could to solidify and plant themselves in a life to which they dearly wanted to be accustomed. They missed the whole point of their relationship with God.

Calvin Butts, pastor of New York City’s Abyssinian Baptist Church had a father who was a butcher and a mother who was a simple servant. He says, “I never thought the dream was about trying to become more successful than my parents were materially. I never had an idea that it was about one generation doing better than the next.” To him the essence of the American Dream was in the “prophetic and poetic” words of the Declaration of Independence on the inalienable rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”(1) Once again we are brought back to those profound words of the Westminster divines: “The chief end of human beings is to glorify God and enjoy God forever.” 

We are immigrants in a world, a culture, a lifestyle that goes on around us. Yet the words of the Ephesian letter tell us a deeper truth than the dis-ease of daily living: 

“You are no longer strangers and aliens. Rather you are fellow citizens with God’s people, and you belong to God’s household.” (Ephesians 2:19)

Because we are immigrants in a culture and society that at best only mouths the word “God,” and at worst, denounces God, and because our citizenship is in a world very different from the physical world our bodies inhabit, we are in this together. That creates unlikely alliances. We are an mixture of bodies – toned, tattooed, or tubby. We are old, young, rich, poor, helpless and helpful, stutterers and orators, dreamers and pragmatists. Yet our citizenship is the same. In baptism we have been made all the same – adopted children of the King of kings. 

The words that James offers his faith community apply to every faith community. Regardless of outward appearances, despite what may appear to be blessing or curse of the economic and social life, believers – you and me and everyone washed in Christ’s name – are equal. There is to be no favoritism. Unlike the characters in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, some of us are not more equal than others. We are all citizens of God’s eternal realm, even in the here and now.

If we are called to treat each other as full sisters and brothers in the Lord, that behavior should be the way we behave no matter where we are or who we are with. Jesus on numerous occasions reached out to people who, for a variety of reasons, were not welcomed and included in the faith community created by God through the formation of the Israelite nation or its seemingly constant testing, discipline, exile, and reconstruction. The dream of Isaiah does not change: 

“Say to those who are panicking:
‘Be strong! Don’t fear! . . .
God will come to save you.’
Then the eyes of the blind will be opened;
and the ears of the deaf will be cleared.
Then the lame will leap like the deer,
And the tongue of the speechless will sing.” (Isaiah 35:4-6)

The realm of God’s rule is always coming near. God’s reign is always happening. But it is always happening in the midst of what seems like a universal and impossibly fierce effort to thwart it. That is why we are aliens, strangers, foreigners, immigrants. We live in the constantly coming, almost-but-not-yet reality of what God has called creation to be and do. 

Who is an immigrant? You and you and you and you – each of us. And that is all right. We are each a little colony of heaven. God the Father will protect us. God the Son will guide us. God the Spirit will bless our immigrant life.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

(1) Cited in America’s Moment: Creating Opportunity in the Connected Age (New York: W. W. Norton, 2015), 2-3.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.