Resident Aliens

 Nineteenth Saturday after Pentecost

Thanks to Jennifer and Pat for recent comments. I would love to hear more comments.

Please read Acts 7:1-8.

We have here part of a lengthy speech that is in the context of a defense speech at at trial. The trial is before the high priest's court, the Sanhedrin. The speech is in all likelihood a Lucan composition. Stephen's strategy is to show himself, Jesus, the Apostles, and their followers as being faithful Jews who follow in the faith of their heritage, while the priests represent those Jews who have consistently failed to heed the words of Moses and the prophets. Stephen's defense is to attack. His desired outcome is not to save his life but to justify this nascent Christian movement. He achieves that outcome.

Stephen begins with something of a recital of the early history of Israel, Abraham through Moses. Notice that there is no reference to anything in the Bible before Abraham, nothing on creation, Adam and Eve, Noah, the Tower of Babel. Israel's history, both for Stephen and for all of Israel, both before Stephen abed after him, begins with Abraham. "A wandering Aramaean was my father," goes the refrain from Deuteronomy 26:5. 

Stephen reminds his hearers that God told Abraham that his descendants would be "resident aliens" in a land not their own. Some of you may have read the best selling book Resident Aliens by Will Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas. The Jews have long understood this phrase as prophecy of the Jewish diaspora, Jews scattered in countries all over the world.

 

I think the phrase states my understanding of what it means for me to be a Christian. Paul, as we shall see, was a citizen of the Roman Empire, a citizenship that entitled him to extensive rights and privileges. But being a Roman was not Paul's major self-understanding. He was a Christian first and foremost. He respected the Empire and worked within its laws. Yet he would always be an alien within his own country, and for that matter, within his own people, the Jews. In John 17 Jesus told his disciples to be in the world but not of the world. 

I live in the United States of America. I am a citizen, enjoying all the rights and privileges of citizenship. But my country is not my first allegiance. Jesus guides what I do and how I think. That is not always what my country does and thinks. My first allegiance is my faith.

 

As Stephen here, and Paul in much of the rest of Acts, find themselves at odds with their own Jewish people, so I find myself at odds with a lot of other Christians, particularly evangelicals. Too many of them have distorted Christian faith into being something identical with American patriotism. I feel as alienated from them as I do from many non-Christians. 

My feelings and my faith won't get me executed, as they did both Stephen and Paul, but they do make me different. They do make me a resident alien.

 

Faithfully,

Christian