Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Living Truth Lutheran Church
Text: Genesis 2:4b-25
Grace and peace to you, my brothers and sisters, from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Tervetuloa. Is a word in the Finnish language that means “Healthy Coming,” or in our language, “welcome.” It is used as a name for a movement in Finland to bring refugees to their country. People are opening their homes to welcome the tired, the hungry, the scared, the huddled masses.
First Lutheran Church was founded in 1886 by immigrants from Norway and Sweden. And they did so to say “VelKommen” to those who traveled from their home country to this country by boat, train, and covered wagons. They were tired, hungry and scared.
Living Truth Lutheran Church was founded in 2006 by immigrants from China. And they did so to say "你好 Ni Hao." Even though they traveled by plane, still they were tired and scared.
When one is displaced from where one calls home we have many words to describe them depending on their circumstances: Migrant, Immigrant, Refugee, Alien, Foreigner, Evacuee, Expatriate, Drifter, Itinerant or even Pioneer. Yet they are still our neighbor – and they are tired and scared.
For Adam he is none of these. He is created and placed in the only place he will ever know, a garden provided by God, to care for it and till it. Eve is brought into the picture because apparently Adam can’t handle it by himself. A “helper” God calls her. The only other time the word “helper” is used is in reference to God. She is God’s helper to Adam.
These two inhabited the world. We are not told if they are of brown or pink skinned. We are not told if they even know what nationality they are. These divisions come along later, when they eat of the forbidden fruit.
It was once said that the knowledge of Good and Evil is really the sin of noticing differences. Noticing that they are naked they see that they are different and become ashamed. So they cover themselves. And we have been covering and hiding ourselves ever since.
Not only have we been covering ourselves, but we have insisted that others do so as well. Cover themselves with clothes we deem appropriate. Cover themselves with identities that we deem appropriate. Cover themselves with national identity that we deem appropriate. Chinese, American, Syrian, Balkan, Ethiopian, Norwegian, Columbian, Thai, Israeli, Palestinian. And once we have identified you as other and have appropriately covered you with all the labels that matter we learned the way of violence to squash what is different. And pain entered the garden. And we gave birth to refugees.
Today, we reap what we have sown and we are surprised! We bomb a country and create chaos. We create refugees. And then we do the most horrible thing – we do not allow them to find safety. We create places of immeasurable violence and then we continue that violence by making peace seeking people suffer the humiliation of begging for a place of safety.
And we are surprised when we are held accountable to them. We are shocked that anyone would sully our shores begging for peace and safety. Instead we are riveted to the news about a privileged white person being inconvenienced by being asked to do her job. All the while millions of our brothers and sisters are dying on boats, on dusty roads, seeking safety from our bombs and guns.
We should feel immense shame for what we have wrought in the name of our own safety, to quell our own made up fears. These are the countries with the most refugees: Palestine 6.6 million. Syria 3.4 million. Iraq 1.5 million, Somalia 1 million, Sudan half a million. Recognize the names. They are countries that we have either ignored as our allies abuse them or we have directly caused them to leave their homes. We have displaced them from their homes, their jobs, their families.
God created this beautiful planet, with trees and carrots, water and rain, dirt and Denali. And instead of living into the promise that God made at the beginning, that we would never be alone, we choose to destroy the other. Instead of eating of the fruit of the land, we destroy the earth that produces it.
We are called, brothers and sisters, to a better way. The way of Jesus. The way of peace and justice. As the Apostle Paul writes in Galatians: There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise.
The Promise.
The Promise is this. You are not alone. You are a child of God, an heir to all that God has. God has sent the Spirit into our hearts crying, “Daddy, Mamma!” Children of the heavenly kingdom. Our call is to share this immense love with the other: Migrant, Immigrant, Refugee, Alien, Foreigner, Evacuee, Expatriate, Drifter, Itinerant and Pioneer; Palestinian, Syrian, Iraqi, Somali, and Sudanese. For they, too, have been given the same gift of life as we, and who are we to deny them their gift?
We are a proud people and often it is hard for us to let go of our place of righteousness. But that is what we are being called to do. Lift up your voices and speak out on behalf of those who are being persecuted all day long.
And when you speak say: Tervetuloa. Ni Hao. Welcome. Speak the word God spoke to you when he breathed the breath of life into you. God said: you are not alone, I am with you.
Let us, as a people of God open our hearts and our homes to the other and offer them holy welcome. Amen.
