Category Archives: holy writings

I have been reading more Nouwen.

I can’t stop. I got the book, Beloved, at the book tables at my conference last week, and it came with the CD of Nouwen’s conversation with Philip Roderick. I listened to it twice, once driving to Dubuque, Iowa from Chicago, Illinois (more on that later, when Graeme and Aaron send me better pictures to post than my cell phone pics), and again driving from Dubuque, Iowa to Chicago, Illinois. Now I am reading it, and marveling at how different an experience (and oddly, to me, more powerful) reading Nouwen’s words is to listening to him speak. Here is a passage that struck me particularly on both car rides:

“Augustine says, ‘My heart is restless until it rests in you, O Lord.’ You can say that much of what we are doing is to find some solution for our loneliness. On a very deep level, we know that if we want human beings or human structures to solve our loneliness, we can quickly become extremely demanding and obsessive. If you use your relationship to solve your loneliness, you can quickly find yourself being very clinging and oppressive. This is why loneliness often leads to so much violence. You want somebody else to take that loneliness away and it doesn’t work. You can see how quickly people’s behaviour starts becoming violent — kissing is a loving behaviour, but it becomes biting before you know it. Listening becomes overhearing, and looking tenderly becomes looking suspiciously. Precisely when they come out of loneliness, all these gentle things become violent things very quickly…

“Solitude is a discipline in which you deal with your loneliness in a way that it doesn’t destroy you or others, but instead becomes a place to discover the truth of who you are. You are created by a God who wants all your attention and who wants to give you all the love you need.”

He who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet.

The past two days I have been emerging from an intense bout with the flu feeling a renewed burst of energy that I almost don’t know what to do with.  Besides finally doing my laundry and paying my student loan bill (sorry Gordon-Conwell) I have been making phone calls and emails for fund raising (up to 51% and rising), plotting a letter writing campaign to David Kern’s Children’s Literature professor (how hard would it be to let the boy take his exam early so he can go to his friend’s wedding and see all of us who love him?), trying to reintroduce my stomach to its former role of digesting (it seems to still be adverse to this “eating” thing: I think a week and a half of nothing but Sprite has it out of practice), and picking up books that have laid neglected.

The first book I re-picked up was The Inner Voice of Love, by Henri Nouwen.  My housemate Mark gave me this book (technically I bought it myself, but he truly gave me the gift of it) a few months ago and it has been like a direct lifeline between me and God.  It is the private journal of Nouwen, written when he was undergoing an intense personal despair, and it resonates with me as few other books have.  Yes, I have gone fully Bostonian/politically correct/touchy feely, etc. and started using phrases like “resonates with me.”  We all knew it was coming.

The second book I re-picked up was The Brothers Karamazov.  I have been planning on rereading this for eleven years, but saving it as a rare and beautiful treat.  It bowled me over when I read it in my senior Russian Literature course, and I am very excited to be into it again.  It turns out that some friends — Graeme, Aaron and Karen — are reading it as well, so I look forward to good discussions.

The third book — sad that it was not the first, I guess, but that’s what it is — is the Bible, specifically my two favorite passages, Matthew 5-7 and John 13-18.  I have been trying for years to memorize these pieces, but my memory has the habit of lasting only so long as I am daily practicing them.  Still, there is something powerful about reading a passage that you have at least attempted to memorize.  The words are a part of you, so that you feel you are reading not only the Word of God, but your own Word as well.  I love the feel in Matthew that the God of Abraham, Issaac and Jacob, the creator of the universe and the terrifying presence on the mountain with Moses is sitting among his people, speaking his words of love and grace for the first time clearly, without intermediary.  Blessed indeed are those who hear.  And in John I love the raw pain and confusion of the disciples as they struggle to understand where Jesus is going and what he is telling them.  Today I wept again as I read Peter’s plea, “Then, Lord, not only my feet but my hands and my head as well!”  Jesus’ response was a reassurance to me, as well, as I emerge coughing and exhausted from fighting the flu: “He who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet.”  I am not starting from scratch, though it feels like it.  I am on a continuing journey, and it is overseen by One who knows both its beginning and its end.

And so I wash my feet in the Word, and in Nouwen and Dostoevsky, and jump back into the business of life.  Right now my business is fundraising, getting to 70% as quickly as possible so I can get onto campus and start the work I feel called to do.  My business, also, is relationships.  I feel this calling as strongly as any career path.  My old friends, the Greenhaus community, the International students from church, Bagshot Row — these are all my “job” to me as much as InterVarsity.

May the Lord be with you in your business as well.

A Study of Hospitality to Strangers

As soon as I am up to 70% of my fundraising, I will be working as a minister to international students at Boston University.  This is a study that I did of the Biblical support for hospitality to internationals.

 

Holladay defines the Hebrew word ger as “A man who, either alone or with his family, leaves his village & tribe, because of war, famine, pestilence, blood guilt, &c. & seeks shelter & sojourn elsewhere, where his right to own land, to marry, & to participate in the administration of justice, in the cult, & in war is curtailed.”  The NIV translates ger as “alien” or sometimes “stranger,” and the word is most often associated with God’s chosen people.

 

            In Genesis 15:13 God prepares Abraham for this reality: “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own…”  A few chapters later, in Gen. 23:4 Abraham tells the Hittites, “I am an alien and a stranger among you.”  The author of Hebrews also speaks of Abraham’s call: “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.  By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him in the same promise.  For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.”

 

            When Abraham’s descendents were slaves in Egypt, and for the forty years of wandering the desert before they entered the promised land, this became a part of their national identity.  “When they were but few in number, few indeed, and strangers in it, they wandered from nation to nation, from one kingdom to another.”  (I Chron. 16:19 (and Ps. 105:12)).  Moses, when he had fled to Midian, named his first son Gershom, which means “an alien there,” because, “I have become an alien in a foreign land”  (Ex. 2:22).  Many years later, when God exiled the Israelites for their sins, Zechariah used the familiar language to speak of it: “I scattered them among all the nations, where they were strangers.”  (Zech 7:14).

 

            David uses this language to describe the results of his devotion to God: “I am a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my own mother’s sons;” (Ps. 69:8) and, “I am a stranger on earth.” (Ps. 119:19).  He even uses it to describe his relationship to God, “For I dwell with you as an alien, a stranger, as all my fathers were.”  (Ps. 39:12).

 

Jeremiah 14:8  “O Hope of Israel, its Savior in times of distress, why are you like a stranger in the land like a traveler who stays only a night?”

 

            When God gives his law at Sinai, this engraved national identity becomes the reason to treat other aliens well.

 

            “Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt.”  Ex. 22:21

 

                        “When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him.  The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native born.  Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt.  I am the LORD your God.” Lev. 19:33-34.

 

            “You are to have the same law for the alien and the native born.  I am the LORD your God.”  Lev. 24:22

 

            “If one of your countrymen becomes poor and is unable to support himself among you, help him as you would an alien or a temporary resident, so he can continue to live among you.” Lev. 25:35.

 

            “Do not deprive the alien or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge.  Remember that you were slaves in Egypt, and the LORD your God redeemed you from there.” Deut. 24:17.

 

            See also Psalm. 146:9, Jer 7:6, Jer. 22:3, Ez. 22:7 & 29, Zech. 7:10, Mal. 3:5.

 

            “When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field.  Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen.  Leave them for the poor and the alien.”  Lev. !9:9-10.  See also Lev. 23:22; Deut. 24:19-22.

 

            It is this last command that Boaz obeys when he watches over Ruth the Moabitess  she gleans in his field.

 

            The author of Hebrews develops this theme even more.

 

            “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.  By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him in the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” Heb. 11:8-10

 

            Jesus spoke in strong terms of showing hospitality to strangers in Matt. 25:35-44.  A similar sentiment is expressed in Hebrews 13:2, “Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.”

 

            The same terminology that is applied to the Israelites in the Old Testament is given to the Christians in the New:

 

            “To God’s elect, strangers in the world…” I Pet. 1:1

            “Live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear.” I Pet. 1:17

            “I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world…” I Pet. 2:11

 

            Hospitality is also enjoined in the  New Testament, though it seems to be directed towards other Christians:

 

            “Share with God’s people who are in need.  Practice hospitality.”  Ro 12:13

            “Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.” I Peter 4:9

            See also Acts 28:7, Ro 16:23, I Tim 3:2 &5:10, Tit 1:8, III John 1:8.

 

            In Acts 18:26 Priscilla and Aquilla show hospitality to Apollos in order to correct and complete his theological training.

 

            We need only add the Great Commission to complete the thought.  Though the Bible does not address the specific situation of Internationals from an “unreached” country visiting a “Christian” country, its theology towards both foreigners and unreached peoples is more than clear.  It is the responsibility of those called to spread the gospel of Christ to show hospitality to the aliens and strangers among us.  Not only is this clearly commanded in the Bible, it is one of the most strategic ways of fulfilling the commission to “make disciples of all ethne.”