I arrived at the Atlanta Airport, Georgia in 1987 as a stranger, a foreigner. I still remember the kind of smell of August in Atlanta. Everywhere I went, I met strangers. I felt some initial fear of people in America, but as time went by, I made many friends. I worked at a downtown meat shop in Atlanta, spending time with people, facing my fear. In early September, my five-month-old son, Kori cried without ceasing for two days. As new parents, we didn’t know what to do with his high fever except to give him Tylenol. A stranger came by and checked our baby. She brought him to the hospital and paid all the medical expenses. The doctor diagnosed Cori with an ear infection and prescribed an antibiotic. Our hardship was solved by a caring stranger.
Jesus was a stranger, coming from Galilee. The pious Jews despised Galileans and Samaritans: “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” (John 1:46) Jesus as a good Samaritan anoints our wounds with oil, a symbol of the healing power of Jesus. Like the traveler in the time of Jesus, we lie robbed and injured by the wayside of life. Jesus does not pass us by when we are wounded. Full of compassion, Jesus bends over us and pours oil and wine into our wounds. When we are lying in the dust and can’t get up again, let us look at the Cross! Jesus carries us and our suffering on his shoulders to raise us to the cross and set us upright. The stranger whom I met in Atlanta was Jesus, as two men met the risen Christ on the road to Emmaus.
It’s natural to fear strangers and foreigners. But we are all foreigners. “They (all the forefather of our faith) were strangers and exiles on the earth.” ( Hebrews 11:13) You are not home. Not yet. I am not home. From the time we decided to follow Jesus, we have been strangers in a foreign land. May we all identify ourselves as foreigners and nomads, destitute and homeless. May we all treat one another as neighbor refugees, as brothers and sisters and foreigners, and may we all meet Jesus as the foreigner and let Christ heal us and uplift us. Condemned to death and rejected by the Jewish authorities, unjustly persecuted, Jesus was indeed the outsider, stranger and foreigner, par excellence.
Reflection:
When and where were you left by the wayside, lying injured in body and soul? Where and when were wounded and plundered people lying on the wayside of your life? To whom should we go today as a stranger of Jesus?
Pastor Seok-Hwan
