Sojourning In a Foreign Land

     Exodus 2: 22, Matthew 2; 13-15

 

 

          Have you ever been a sojourner? Chances are excellent that you have. A sojourner is a temporary resident. Sojourners are college students staying in dormitories. Sojourners are infantrymen in tents or barracks, sailors on board ships, missionaries working far afield from their homes.

          Sojourner just means temporary visitor. Add to it “in a foreign land” and you have a familiar Biblical concept. The Hebrew word (ger) that we usually translate as “sojourner,” or sometimes “stranger,” occurs about 160 times in Scripture as either a noun or verb. It’s used a lot because it’s common in scripture for people to find themselves in a temporary place.

          In the Book of Exodus, Moses has spent the first chapter of his life as a sojourner in the land of Egypt, where he is Pharaoh’s adopted prince. He doesn’t know he’s a sojourner. He thinks he is home. As time passes, he realizes what God has in store for him. In the second chapter of his life, banished from Egypt, Moses finds himself in the region of Midian. He goes to work for Jethro, the priest of Midian. Moses marries Jethro’s daughter and his first son is called Gershom, meaning sojourner in a foreign land. As you know, Moses was to experience a couple more significant chapters in his life. He was not done with either sojourning or doing so in a foreign land. God had a lot in store for Moses.

          Sojourning is a common Biblical theme. Look at Abraham. He was the king of the sojourners. He moved from the land of Ur to a nomadic life which would eventually bring him to the land of Canaan. His grandson Jacob would later flee to another land after stealing his brother’s birthright. When famine came, Jacob’s family ended up in Goshen, right outside the Egyptian capital. More sojourning. This time, it lasted about four hundred years, as God’s people became enslaved to the Egyptians, but it still was God’s people sojourning in a foreign land.

          King David spent a lot of time knocking around. It was a dozen years between his anointing and his assuming the throne as king. The prophet Elijah spent about as much time running away to the wilderness and the desert as he did trying to wake up the nation of Israel. The Israelites didn’t just wander through the Exodus years; they were also exiled in Babylon, far from home for several generations. It seems that in many instances, sojourning in a foreign land was a way of life for God’s people.

          But, you might say, that was the Old Testament. It was different in the New Testament, wasn’t it? Things began to settle down. God’s people were back in Israel.  Not really. That’s tells only part of the story. For instance, the book of Matthew reports that after Jesus was born, wise men came from the east to Jerusalem. There, they found out Jesus had been born in Bethlehem and they traveled there, finding Jesus in a house. The nativity scene we display every year has the characters right, but not the timing. The wise men, or magi, came later, probably months later. Maybe more. That’s why Herod had all the male children less than two years old killed. Jesus was sure to have been in that group.

          But Jesus wasn’t in that group. Joseph had been warned by an angel and Jesus and his family had fled quickly to Egypt, where they stayed until Herod died. So Jesus started out his life as a sojourner in a foreign land. Even when they returned, they started over in a new town where they were not known.

          Where did the great apostle Paul live? On the road. How about Philip? Try Africa. The same is true for so many of Jesus’ disciples. They found themselves sojourners in a foreign land for the sake of the gospel

          Yet as great a commitment as it is to leave your home or familiar surroundings and strike out for some unfamiliar place, it is by far a greater commitment, indeed the ultimate act of obedience, to stay right where you are, but change your allegiance. Want to try it out? Want to be a sojourner in a foreign land? Just try to follow Jesus!

First, you might want to take an inventory. Is there anything you might have to change?  Look at what you have. Let’s just take a quick tour of the average person in this community. You would say you’re pretty average, wouldn’t you? You’re certainly not rich and you aren’t poor either.

Okay. Do you own a car? Jesus didn’t. Do you own your own home? Jesus didn’t. How many pairs of shoes do you own? Jesus owned a pair of sandals. How many changes of clothes sit in your closet unworn for months or even years? Jesus owned a robe.  

          How do you support God’s church? Do you give money? The widow Jesus saw at the temple gave a mite. That’s less than a penny. It’s also a fortune, for it was all she had. How much time do you give each week? An hour, two, five?  Paul gave his life to God and paid his own way as a tentmaker to boot.  

My point is not to disparage anyone. We all fall short of Jesus and we already know that. My point is this. Jesus showed us the way to live in this world with our eyes on the kingdom.  

          It’s very difficult to live in this world and keep your eyes on the prize. We are constantly being told by every message on every billboard, in every newspaper or magazine, in every  commercial, that we need to be taller and thinner and prettier, that we can do so if we just use the right drugs, wear the right clothes, drive the right cars. The idols the media promotes are bachelors and bachelorettes, quarterbacks and singers. Even when religion is front and center, it revolves around the bigness of the ministry, the size of the purse.

          If we can turn away from such massive promotion, such a penetrating social message, then we will indeed find ourselves  sojourners in a foreign land. Almost everything in our society points us in another way, a selfish way. But Jesus is calling, too.  We live with one foot balanced precariously in the reality of place, of the here and now, of time and space and yes, consumerism.

But as Christians, we must reach. We must thrust that other foot into a spiritual land that day by day, hour by hour, begins to make us realize that the ground on which we walk is quicksand. It is only the firm ground of the cross where reality really exists. That is where we find home. That is where we can hang up the shoes of the sojourner and take our rest.

The apostle Paul, writing to the Roman church, encouraged them to present themselves as living sacrifices acceptable, not to their friends or co-workers or classmates, but to God. He entreated them to “not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of their minds…to discern the will of God.” He was asking them to do what Jesus alluded to in the seventeenth chapter of John. Jesus, praying to God during the Passion Week. asked God that his disciples could be “in this world, but not of it.”

What does Paul mean? What does Jesus mean? Jesus goes on to say that he is sending his disciples into the world, not withdrawing them from it. He asks God for their protection from evil, not for a place to hide. I think the message here is that we are always to be guided by Christ, by God’s grace, that we are always to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. We Christians are the answer. We just need to keep reminding the world of what the true questions are.

Yes, if we are Christians, then we are called upon to be sojourners in a foreign land. It is a land full of temptation, ripe with idols, loaded with pressure from all around us to conform to its ways. But we know better. It’s only temporary.

Why should we do such a thing, make such a commitment? Why should we make life so hard? Don’t be misled. Hard can be good; even easy. Jesus promises us that his yoke is easy and his burden is light.

It’s time to recognize that even while we sit at home surrounded by family, relaxed in all our earthly rituals, we are just sojourners, passing through this place on the way to eternity. The place we live, the space we occupy, is only temporary. We cannot find real lasting stability on such a foundation. It just can’t hold but so long.

We can find that stability in Jesus. We can find that foundation in him. There’s nothing temporary about Jesus. Where do you stand, and how will you serve? On Christ the solid rock we stand. All other ground…is sinking sand!