From Strangers to Neighbors | 4/12/26
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When you hear the word "stranger," do you tend to think of someone who is simply unknown, or does your mind immediately jump to someone whose politics, beliefs, or appearance feels like a threat?
If we define a stranger as someone who is currently detached from the networks of family, work, and community that sustain us, how does that shift your perspective on their "sacred worth"?
Think about a time when you were the one "coming from away"—have you ever experienced an unexpected act of hospitality that completely changed your outlook on a community?
If you stepped outside of your usual social circles, who is the "stranger" you are most hesitant to engage with—the person with the different political hat, the person with a language barrier, or perhaps someone struggling on the street—and what is stopping you from seeing them as a potential neighbor?
Transcript:
Once upon a time in a land far, far away was a man by the name of Saul. Now Saul was a devout Jewish man who loved God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength. And he believed that everyone must believe this way, too. So Saul set out on what he believed to be a God-ordained quest to capture, imprison, and sometimes even murder those who claimed to follow in the way of Christ. He went from town to town with letters from the high priest authorizing this quest for religious purity, giving him the power to do anything that would match these letters.
One day, when Saul was on his way to Damascus, he was met by the presence of the risen Christ, who asked him, "Saul, why are you persecuting me?" This encounter literally left him blinded by the light. Seeing that he was struck blind, those who were traveling with him brought him to Damascus, where he stayed for three days. Saul was so upset that he didn't eat or drink for those days. But today's story is not about Saul. It's a story about the bravery and courage of an unexpected helper named Ananias. His story is found in the very next passage, Acts chapter nine, verse 10 through 19. Hear these words from Acts:
In Damascus, there was a certain disciple named Ananias. The Lord spoke to him in a vision, and in this he answered, "Yes, Lord". The Lord instructed him, "Go to Judas' house on Straight Street, and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul. He is praying. In a vision, he has seen a man named Ananias enter and put his hands on him to restore his sight". Ananias countered, "Lord, I have heard many reports about this man. People say he has done horrible things to your holy people in Jerusalem. He's here with authority from the chief priests to arrest everyone who calls on your name". The Lord replied, "Go. This man is the agent I have chosen to carry my name before Gentiles, kings, and Israelites. I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name".
Ananias went to the house. He placed his hands on Saul and said, "Brother Saul, the Lord sent me—Jesus, who appeared to you on the way as you were coming here". He said to me, so that you could see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit. Instantly, flakes fell from Saul's eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized. After eating, he regained his strength. He stayed with the disciples in Damascus for several days.
This is the Word of God for us, the people of God. And we say, thanks be to God. Will you pray with me?
God of all creation, God of all hope, God of all light. We give you thanks for this moment and the gift of your Holy Scripture. We ask that by Your Holy Spirit, you would meet us in this moment to offer to us a new way of thinking and being in the world. Open our hearts and our minds that we might hear all you have for us this day. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
There are these really weird moments when you are a parent, when you are saying something to your child, and as you are saying it, you hear the voice of your parent saying the same thing to you. Any time I yell after my kids, who seem to be sprinting toward their own autonomy, I often find myself yelling, "Be careful!" "Don't talk to strangers," as I'm chasing after them. Don't talk to strangers. I imagine that many of us have either been warned or have warned our own children about the dangers of strangers. It's important to help our children set boundaries and to build an awareness of their surroundings as they are learning to exercise their freedom of choice, and I often wonder if this warning that we received as a child has become so internalized in us as adults today that it impacts the way that we see the world, our society.
Right now, in this day, strangers are so much more than just people we don't know. Strangers seem to be anyone who looks differently, acts differently, believes differently, speaks differently, or votes differently from us. Strangers are something to be feared. Strangers are bad news, and often they are criminalized and dehumanized by our rhetoric. So much so that whole groups of people that we don't actually know personally become our enemies. But really, strangers are simply people, human beings like you and like me.
As Christine Pohl says in her book Making Room—this is a book that we, as Northwest District clergy, have been assigned to read over the next several weeks—she says this: "Strangers are people without a place to be. Without a place means to be detached from basic life-supporting institutions: family, work, polity, religious community; and to be without networks of relations that sustain and support human beings". When we get caught up in the language of us versus them, we forget that anyone we perceive as a stranger is someone of sacred worth, with valuable stories and important perspectives that do make us better as a community.
As people who follow Christ, this truth is what grounds our hope, because we believe and hope for a day where anyone is welcomed into our community. The Kingdom of God is where there are no more strangers, not because they have been excluded, but because they have been welcomed as our neighbors. This is a time where we celebrate differences rather than force others to conform to our own ways and patterns of being and thinking. Our hope is reflected in the transformation from strangers to neighbors. It's a transformation that has absolutely nothing to do with their personhood, who they are, and has everything to do with transforming us. This is a work of our sanctification, or becoming more like Christ.
It is here, in the middle of this transformation from stranger to neighbor, where we hear Christ's crystal-clear invitation and the action of peacemaking to practice a kind of peace that empowers this transformation. This is our role: to be conduits of God's peace that builds community rather than separates it. But my question for us today is, what does this actually look like in today's world? What does peacebuilding look like when everyone we encounter seems to be a stranger, someone to be feared, or even worse, made to be our enemy?
And so we turn to the story of Ananias, who God used as this conduit of peace to a blind Saul. Ananias was a follower of Christ who was already living in Damascus. He was going about his day-to-day life when he heard that Saul and his agents of terror were setting their sights on his town. We can only imagine the fear that gripped him as he prepared to keep his own family safe from harm. I wonder if he was busy storing up food so that they wouldn't have to leave for the duration of Saul's parade of persecution?. I wonder if he was ensuring that other Christian families in their community knew of the danger of these strangers?.
When God shows up in a vision to Ananias and tells him to go to Saul, he had every right to be afraid. He had heard the reports. He knew the danger of this man, and yet Ananias showed up anyway. He made the difficult choice to go, not knowing exactly what he would encounter, despite the fear, and trusting that God would show up there too. Scripture would have us believe that Ananias' encounter with Saul was short and sweet, to the point: Ananias walked into the house where Saul was, laid his hands on Saul, prayed a little prayer, got up, and left.
But I think that there is more to the story between the words we read on the page. Saul had just had this life-changing, earth-shattering, maybe even traumatic experience in those three days. I wonder if he was confronted with all of the trauma and the harm that he caused other people in the process of getting to that moment?. There was a lot that he was grappling with, trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. And then there was Ananias, a gentle soul who followed in the way of Christ. I wonder what those conversations looked like. What questions did Saul ask of Ananias?. What was the truth-telling that Ananias did in those moments?. Saul did stay there with those disciples, which we assume included Ananias. He stayed for several more days. And over the course of those days and all of those conversations, Saul became Paul. He was no longer a foe; he was a friend. He was no longer a stranger; he was a neighbor.
Ananias was just an ordinary man who made the extraordinary choice to say yes to the opportunity that God had placed before him to be that conduit of peace—to show up for a stranger, despite the fear and apprehension that he held within his soul and his spirit, to spend time with this stranger, to get to know the person behind the behaviors, the man behind the agenda, and the human who needed someone to care about him in that very moment.
Ananias's yes didn't just impact Paul's life, though. It impacted all of ours, too. Because without the life and ministry of Paul, the church wouldn't look like it does today. It would be very different for us. Ananias' story reminds me of another group of ordinary people from a teeny tiny town called Gander, Newfoundland, who made an extraordinary choice on September 11th, 2001, to show up when it counted most—a group of people whose hospitality inspired the Broadway musical, and my favorite one at this moment, Come From Away. Here is their story.
[Video clip] “Well, our September 11th was just like any other hard, ordinary day in Gander. I was at Tim Hortons coffee shop, where I go almost every morning, and someone came in and said that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. But it was only about probably 15, 20 minutes after, when someone else said the second plane had crashed. And, you know, bells start to go off in the air, that this is not normal.”
“All of a sudden, our plane took a steep drop, and we started turning to the north, and looked up at the GPS, and it looked like we were headed to the North Pole. The captain said there was a problem with American airspace. It was closed, and we were diverting to Newfoundland, and I had to look up on my little map, being like, 'Newfoundland. Okay. Yeah'. So we ended up with 38 aircraft, and we ended up with a little over 7000 passengers for five days. A lot were from the United States; there was Germany, and there was France, and there was England, and Dublin, Ireland. We covered 98 countries.”
“The first task we were given was to move furniture and make room on the floor for people to sleep, and we did that in two schools. And by the time we arrived back at Gander Academy, where I taught, there were 100 volunteers in the building. There was bedding, there was food. That's the way people in Newfoundland were raised. You help each other".
"We deplaned and walked into the Gander airport immediately. The first thing that happened: we were greeted with food and smiles. Just the whole community mobilized instantly. My husband used to have a saying, 'You never miss what you give away,' and that's so true. There was a little bit of anxiety. It was a different age in 2001, where a gay couple in a foreign country, in a small town, but they are a very welcoming community. And as the mayor says, 'People need help. You help them'. It doesn't matter who you are, your religion, your sexual orientation. And isn't that how the world ought to operate? On the first day, we had 7000 strangers; on the third day, we had 7000 friends; and on the fifth day, 7000 family members".
"And we traveled all the time. And it's clear that if you grow up and you live and you stay in your little community and you never branch out of it, you don't get to experience other cultures. It gives us an opportunity to learn about other people and realize that we're all human at the end of the day. To me, that is what Come From Away reminds us to do: look up in Gander, look up at the people around you, and talk to them. Say hello. You know, a smile, a simple gesture, a small act of kindness, a pay-it-forward can is really what's going to fix our broken world. It's a long journey, but I think we can get there. And I think this musical is changing people's lives. The world, there's no question about it".
That's the Kingdom of God in action in normal, everyday, ordinary people. Kevin said on that video: "Look up in Gander. Look up at the people around you and talk to them. Say hello. You know, a smile. A simple gesture. A small act of kindness. A pay-it-forward is really what's going to fix our broken world". This is how strangers become our neighbors. This is where that transformation begins: when we choose to allow Christ to use us as conduits of peace through ordinary, small, simple, seemingly insignificant moments. Because it's those moments that just might open a doorway, a channel to a new perspective, a different understanding, and maybe even a new friend to call your neighbor.
Those townspeople in Gander made this choice that day to use the opportunity to show up for those "plane people," they called them. They could have done the bare minimum, but instead they welcomed those perfectly good strangers and made them a part of their community. And those plane people, they had a choice to make too: to push through the fear of what was happening in New York, to push past the anxiety that they must have felt to get back on an airplane after that, the apprehension of being in a strange place with strange people without their belongings or their community of comfort. And yet they made the choice to trust, to return Gander's hospitality with friendship.
Friends, for those of us who follow Christ, we are called to this work. We pray for it every time we pray the Lord's Prayer: "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven". We are called to be conduits of peace that empowers this transformation from strangers to neighbors. But it requires something of us. As Christine Pohl says later in that book, to reach these people requires a willingness to enter their world and to accept the role of the stranger who brings friendship and comfort.
This is a choice that I have seen you make time and time again. Every time our Circles program meets at Faith Mission, where allies and leaders meet, where lots of basketball is played with children, strangers become neighbors. Every time a member of our visitation team enters into a home of someone who is no longer able to attend worship in person or any of our church activities like they once did, or when a Stephen Minister meets with their care receiver who's going through crisis, strangers become neighbors. Every time a new student walks through the doors of our youth building, every time a student walks through the doors of Gator Wesley, strangers become neighbors. You do this work already!.
But friends, what would it look like if you did the work outside of the context of our church ministries?. When we are not engaging with the community as Trinity United Methodist Church or Gator Wesley, when we are out there as just us normal, everyday people. What would it look like to make it an intentional choice to be a conduit of peace to the person on the side of the street with that sign that says, "Please help"?. Or to the ones who have broken English that are hard to understand?. Or maybe it's those ones with the big red hats?. Or maybe the ones with all of the rainbow stickers all over the place?. Or maybe it's those with lots of tattoos, or with five kids running in five different directions? You never know. Those people, they might just transform you, and they could very well be the best dang neighbor you've ever had in your life. Why don't you go find out? In the name of Jesus, Amen.
