"I was a stranger and you welcomed me." At the start of a new year, a look at what the Bible says about welcoming the foreigner, from Leviticus to Matthew, and what welcome can look like on an ordinary Sunday when the guest does not speak the language.
Yesterday, 6 January, many churches celebrated Epiphany: the wise men from the east, foreigners who travelled a long way, arriving in Bethlehem to worship the child. Among the very first people Matthew tells us came to Jesus were people from another country, who spoke another language.
A new year often brings new faces into a church. So it seems a good week to sit with what Scripture says about the stranger, and about welcome.
In Matthew 25, Jesus describes the day when the nations are gathered before the King, and He names the things that were done for Him:
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.
Those who are praised are surprised. They do not remember serving the King. And He answers: "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me." (Matthew 25:40, ESV)
There is something very ordinary in that list. Food, a drink, a welcome. Nothing in it needs a programme or a budget. It is the kind of thing that happens at a door, at a table, in a conversation after the service.
The command is much older than Matthew. In the law given to Israel, God says:
You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.
Notice the reason God gives. Not because the stranger is useful, or deserving, or will one day become like everyone else. Because Israel remembers what it was to be the stranger. Deuteronomy says it again: "Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt." (Deuteronomy 10:19, ESV)
Many of us have our own memory of it. The first week in a new country. The first church service in a language we did not yet have. Standing with a cup of coffee afterwards, smiling, understanding one word in five.
The book of Ruth turns on a moment of welcome. Ruth, a Moabite woman in Bethlehem, goes to glean in a stranger's field, and Boaz speaks kindly to her. She falls on her face and asks: "Why have I found favor in your eyes, that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner?" (Ruth 2:10, ESV)
That question, "that you should take notice of me", is the heart of it. Most strangers do not ask for much. They notice very quickly whether anyone has noticed them.
In many churches the welcome at the door is warm and genuine. The difficulty comes a few minutes later, when the service begins and everything is in a language the guest only half understands. They are in the room, and they are not quite part of it.
Here are a few small things churches do, none of them expensive:
Learn the guest's name, and say it right. Ask twice if you need to. It matters more than almost anything else.
Sit with them. A guest who sits alone at the back will leave alone at the end.
Have a Bible in their language. A Bible at the welcome table in the languages your guests speak lets them follow the readings.
Say one sentence in their language. A greeting, a blessing at the end. It tells them they were expected.
Ask them back, personally. Not an announcement. A person.
We started building MulingStream because of one guest in one church who could not follow the sermon. It lets a guest follow the whole service in their own language, live, on the phone already in their hand, without anything to install and without anyone needing to know in advance.
They can listen with earbuds or read the translation as text, which serves the guest who is hard of hearing as well as the one who reads faster than they listen. You can read more about the guest's side on how it works for listeners.
It is one way of saying "we noticed you". It does not replace the handshake, the name, the coffee and the invitation back. It simply means that when the sermon begins, the welcome does not stop.
And it works for the guest nobody planned for. A church cannot know which Sunday someone will walk in from Eritrea or Iran or Venezuela. When the guest can choose their own language on their own phone, the church does not have to know. It only has to be ready.
"Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." (Hebrews 13:2, ESV)
We do not know who will walk into our churches this year. Someone from far away, perhaps, travelling a long road the way the wise men did. Whoever they are, may they find a church that takes notice of them, and may your church have a blessed new year.
Tell us about your congregation and the languages your guests bring. We answer every message ourselves.