RESIDENT ALIENS

In one way or another we are all strangers in a strange land, resident aliens, if you will. Our faith tells us that our real citizenship is in heaven; until then we are residing in alien territory. So what we do while residing here is to make this strange land hospitable, even habitable. It is often a struggle.

One of the basic human drives is to look for rootedness, to find a home. Once we have found a home, once we discover roots, we are often very reluctant to pull up those roots and move, even if the move is a promise of a better place and life. If we have never moved before, we quickly discover how deep those roots are, how difficult it is to be uprooted.

What we also discover when we have moved on, picked up those roots, is that trying to be re-rooted is not always easy. It's like gardening and medicine: transplants are not always successful; and even if they are, they often come only after a long and hard struggle.

What the transplanted looks for is that hospitable climate where new roots can quickly find support and nourishment, find a safe home, a shelter. While the "alien" may reside in a new place, the alien does not wish to be the stranger, the newcomer, for long. It/he/she wants to become part of the new environment, as if there had been a life-long, or certainly long-time residence. But for that to happen, the old-timers have to welcome the newcomer with open arms. While rejection is an option, it is never desired. Yet it is the fear of rejection that makes being uprooted so frightening.

What is interesting is that the word "stranger" in Greek also means "guest" and "host." Thus, there is a mutuality there. There is, and must be, a mutual reaching out. The stranger reaches out for new roots. The host reaches out to the stranger's roots to pull him in. The host can refuse, of course, but at the risk of the host's own death.

The body can refuse the new heart; the garden can refuse the new plants. Rejection is always a possibility. But, again, rejection means eventual death. Thus, what both stranger and host are each looking for is new life. The stranger wants to find new life in a strange land; the host wants the new life the stranger can and does bring.

It is frightening; no doubt about it. Being uprooted, accepting new roots is a venture into the unknown. Resurrection, new life always is. But that is also what hospitality is: an opportunity for resurrection, for new life -- for everyone.

When a stranger comes into our community, that stranger brings new life to us and new life for himself. To be sure, we do not always, if ever, know what that new life will look like, only that it will be new and different and, hopefully, better for every one of us. But we never know for sure. That is why there is that reluctance in us to be hospitable to strangers. Yet we all are, all resident aliens, strangers, foreigners. We need one another and need to reach out to one another even if it is with trembling hands.