Richard Hays, an American New Testament scholar said in his lecture that Christians should welcome strangers in a time of the pandemic.
On June 5, 2020, the George Washington Ivey Professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity School, gave a speech entitled, “Welcoming Strangers in a Time of Pandemic” in the virtual seventh annual Christian Forum for Reconciliation in Northeast Asia. He shared that in the midst of the hostility and hatred toward each other due to the coronavirus, nationalism, and racism, we need to go back to the early church. The early Christians were regarded as strangers in the Roman Empire, feeling the xenophobia and rejection. Hebrews 11 describes the history of God’s people as being aliens and strangers on earth. The same idea was also expressed in 1 Peter 2:11-12.
According to Romans 12:9-13, the early Christians truly understood that the core of discipleship was in part practicing hospitality, showing love towards strangers. In the Old Testament, God commanded the Israelites not to oppress the foreigner because they themselves were foreigners in Egypt (Exodus 23:9). Jesus Christ also exhorted his followers, by showing in the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25, that they should welcome strangers. Because Jesus Christ is a stranger to the world, when we welcome a stranger, we welcome Him. As the COVID-19 pandemic has become global, Christians need to practice the Christian custom of hospitality.
Below is the full text of the speech:
Welcoming Strangers in a Time of Pandemic
Richard B. Hays
June 5, 2020
Hello friends. It’s an honor and a pleasure to be able to speak with you once again. As we gather virtually for this session of the Northeast Asian Reconciliation Initiative, I’m mindful that the last time I was able to be with you was five years ago in Nagasaki when we gathered there for a meeting of the Forum. That was a remarkable time. As those of you who were there will recall, the meeting included a trip to the museum of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki—not only to commemorate and mourn the destruction of war but also to reflect on what it might mean for Christians to gather and speak of reconciliation in such a context. As we gather this time, we are faced with a new challenge, a new cause for lament and mourning and grieving because of the global pandemic that has caused us to meet in this virtual form, rather than face to face. Nonetheless I am thankful for this opportunity to be able to speak to you because I’m aware that we can’t take for granted our ability even to connect in this way.
Some of you know that just a few weeks after the Nagasaki meeting, I unexpectedly received a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and started undergoing cancer treatment. Remarkably I’m still here. In fact, I just had a scan this week, which once again confirms that there’s no sign of the recurrence of cancer. So I find myself thinking of a wonderful Charles Wesley hymn entitled ‘And Are We Yet Alive.’ It’s always sung at the initial gathering of Methodist pastors for their annual conference; it was sung initially, of course, by groups of itinerant Methodist pastors who wouldn’t see each other for an entire year, and then would gather again for an annual meeting for support and encouragement. I would like to read for you the first couple of stanzas of that hymn because it expresses what I feel, and perhaps what many of us feel, on this occasion.
“And are we yet alive,
and see each other’s face?
Glory and thanks to Jesus give
for his almighty grace!
Preserved by power divine
to full salvation here,
again in Jesus’ praise we join,
and in his sight appear.”
So we gather in one another’s sight on our computer screens here, but also in the sight of Jesus who has preserved us and brought us through many conflicts and brought us to this day where we have the opportunity to reflect together.
The parallel between the Nagasaki bombing and the current pandemic is imprecise, but both of those terrible realities indicate the seriousness of our human condition, the reality of suffering in the world, and our calling to be ministers of reconciliation in that context. So I join you as we all join together in praying for the sick and the dying, for those who are suffering, for those who are living with unemployment and fear and anxiety, and especially for all those who are seeking to minister to those who are in need in this time. I’m grateful that we can all be together, and I pray that all of you are well and faithfully bearing the challenges of this moment.
I’ve been asked by the organizers of this meeting to speak to two things. First, what was the response of early Christians, as attested in the New Testament, to the issue of xenophobia, the fear or hostility towards strangers and foreigners. And secondly, I’ve been asked to reflect on our role and responsibilities as Christians in a time of globalization. These two issues are linked, because unfortunately, the rapid pace of globalization seems to have generated a counterreaction of rising nationalism and hostility towards foreigners and those who are different, those who are perceived as a threat simply because of their nationality or ethnicity. Those are the two issues I’m going to speak to.
We are hearing frequently in the popular news media that the crisis we’re facing now is “unprecedented.” I’m afraid that that is simply not true. Anyone who says that is reflecting a lack of historical perspective. The fact is that our history, not only as Christians, but simply as human beings, gives ample precedent for the phenomenon of plagues that wipe out many people, large parts of populations. This happened in antiquity, it happened in the medieval period, and throughout the pre-modern period in Europe. Undoubtedly it happened also in Asian countries, whose history I don’t know as well. What we’re facing now is not unprecedented. For that reason, we can perhaps learn a lot from seeing the way in which our forebears in the Christian faith responded to the challenges of plagues and pandemics in their time.
First of all, let’s consider xenophobia. The early Christians knew all about that. The first reason they knew about it is that they themselves were targets of xenophobia within the context of the Roman Empire. In that world, Christians were regarded by most people as strangers (the Greek word for “strangers” is xenoi), and they had to confront xenophobic hostility and rejection. The Roman historian Tacitus spoke of the early Christian presence in Rome as a pernicious superstition, a strange, unsavory cult brought to Rome from some exotic near Eastern location and foreign to the traditions of the Roman city. So the early Christians were very aware of the status they had as strangers. For example, in the Letter to the Hebrews chapter 11, the author summarizes the long past history of the people of God in this way: “All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth.”
Strangers and foreigners. Xenoi and parepidēmoi. The latter word (parepidēmoi), translated by the NRSV as “foreigners” is also often translated as sojourners. Strangers and sojourners: that’s how the early Christians saw the history of the people of God, and it’s also how they understood themselves. This language appears frequently in the New Testament.
We find the same thing, for example, in 1 Peter. The author of this letter begins by writing: “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.” The Christians addressed by this letter saw themselves as people who were sent out into an exile, a diaspora. The text that is translated here as “exiles” is once again the term parepidēmoi, the same word that can mean sojourners. These are people who are in transit somewhere. They’re not living in their own homeland.
And the text then continues as we move through 1 Peter 1 down to verses 6 and 7; “In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” So the suffering of being a people who are strangers, regarded as strangers, was thought to be not something unexpected, but something central to the identity of the early Christians.
In 1 Peter 2:11, once again we find this exhortation; “Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles, to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul. Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that when they malign you as evildoers, they may see your honorable deeds and glorify God when he comes to judge.” So that’s the vocation of early Christians. They see themselves as strangers, sojourners, aliens—and they were regarded that way by people who were repeatedly hostile towards them, because they thought frankly that these followers of Jesus were just weird. They were regarded as weird not only for believing what they believed but also for the kinds of practices that they embodied: their communal practices of sharing in common worship that crossed boundary lines, bringing together people of different social classes and nationalities in ways that were in fact unprecedented in their time—to use that word again, and this time properly, unprecedented.
And it’s precisely because they knew what it meant to be strangers and sojourners and to share the suffering of Christ, that they understood a central part of their discipleship to be the practice of hospitality. Interestingly, that word “hospitality” is the usual English translation of the Greek word philoxenia: it means literally “the love of strangers”—lovingly welcoming people who are foreigners.
In Romans 12, when Paul gets to the hortatory part of his letter to the community of believers in Rome, he gives them this counsel about how to live faithfully: “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints, extend hospitality to strangers (Rom 12:9-13). Philoxenia, the love of strangers, is at the heart of Paul's exhortation. That’s his fundamental description of what the life of the community should look like.
Similarly, that same exact directive about the practice of hospitality as central to discipleship shows up in Hebrews 13. “Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality [philoxenia again]--Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” That’s probably an allusion to the story of Abraham in Genesis 18, entertaining the three unexpected strangers who show up under the Oaks of Mamre to speak with him. Abraham welcomes them in and receives an unexpected blessing.
Now, as the example of Abraham shows, this practice of hospitality is not a novelty of the early Christian movement. I want to make this point very clearly. The practice of hospitality is already deeply rooted in Jewish tradition and Jewish law.
One of the most powerful texts from the Torah--and I could go on quoting, but I’m just going to give you one passage here—is found in Leviticus 19:33-34. “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” Here again, as we saw in the New Testament texts I was quoting, you see the same pattern of logic: because the Hebrew people who had come out of Egypt, where they had been in slavery, had formerly been aliens or strangers in the land of Egypt, they understood that it was now their calling from God to welcome others who may be strangers. That’s part of what God commands to God’s own people.
Interestingly (and I will confess I hadn’t thought about this one too much until I was asked to reflect on this for our gathering today) in the great passage in Matthew 25, where Jesus portrays the scene of the final judgment and the separation of the sheep and the goats, the one thing he says to those who are being blessed and welcomed to inherit the kingdom is this: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me,”-- “I was a xenos, a stranger.” That word appears four times in this passage, alongside “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you welcomed me, and you gave me something to drink,” and so on. The act of welcoming the stranger is highlighted four times in this last judgment scene as something that those who are being judged either did or failed to do. So again we see that the welcoming of the stranger is central to the discipleship; it’s at the heart of what God expects of us. But, amazingly, in the Gospel of Matthew we are called to welcome the stranger not only because God commands it; we are called to welcome the stranger not only because we were strangers in the land of Egypt; we are called to welcome the stranger not only because we as Christians are aliens and exiles on the earth. No, we are called to welcome the stranger because Jesus himself was a stranger, and insofar as we welcome the stranger, we are welcoming Jesus. So we begin to see how fundamental, how foundational this really is when we understand it in these terms.
And of course, we could also look in quite a different way to the parable of the good Samaritan in Luke 10, where the alien, the stranger, the despised foreigner not only becomes the neighbor, but unexpectedly becomes the giver of gifts and mercy, as was also the case with the angels that Abraham encountered.
So, in sum, discipleship among the early Christians was understood as integrally tied to the welcoming of the stranger. Xenophobia is antithetical to living as disciples of Jesus. Obviously that sets for us a high bar of challenge for what we will do in our own time and how we think about our own vocation in the situation that we face now.
Now the other matter I was asked to say something about is globalization. Of course this is a topic of huge significance. Insofar as the current pandemic is unprecedented, it is unprecedented with regard to the speed with which a virus can spread around the globe, as a result of the international transportation that is available now.
But along with the spread of the COVID-19 virus, we’ve also seen the spread of a different kind of virus: the virus of ethno-nationalism. I’m speaking of an ethno-nationalism that’s born of fear, a desire to close the borders and wall off those who are different or strange to protect ourselves not only from the corona virus but also from the threat of foreign languages, foreign practices, things that may challenge our cultural norms and pose economic challenges. That ethno-nationalist virus has also spread rapidly around the globe. You don’t need me to detail this; my own country, the United States, is among the worst offenders in this regard. We have sadly elected leaders who are spreading antagonism and hostility towards the stranger and the foreigner. It’s an antagonism that’s utterly antithetical to everything that the New Testament and the Christian tradition teach. I’m sorry to say it, but that’s the reality we have. And of course the United States is not the only place where this is happening. We’ve seen the resurgence of an angry ethno-nationalism in many other places.
By comparison, it’s interesting to see that the early Christians were not only interested in welcoming strangers who might happen to wander into their community; instead, they saw their vocation as integrally bound up with a thrust towards globalization, an outward movement of mission that saw the church spreading throughout the Mediterranean world in those early decades. The early church was a driver of globalization. That outward thrust is classically articulated in the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, when the apostles asked the risen Jesus if this was the time when he would restore the kingdom to Israel. His reply gives them a commission: “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:7-8). To the ends of the earth--Jesus is undoubtedly echoing a crucial prophecy in Isaiah: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth” (Acts 49:6).
That drive, that outward movement--the movement towards spreading the good news of the lordship of Jesus Christ over the whole world--was integral to the early Christian sense of identity and mission, and it’s one of the things that made Christianity spread in an astonishingly rapid fashion throughout the known world in that time. Of course, the great commission at the end of the Gospel of Matthew expresses exactly this same imperative: the disciples are charged by the risen Jesus to go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe all that he had commanded (Matt 28:16-20).
So from the resurrection and Pentecost onwards, we followers of Jesus remember that charge to go out--and insofar as that happens, we are also engaged in the breaking down of barriers. One of the most beautiful expressions of that is in Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. I want you to listen to this. (I know you know this passage; I know you know every passage I’m quoting. But it’s good that we remind ourselves.) This passage in Ephesians is the way it articulates the logic of the gospel as calling people who were once aliens, once strangers, to be part of a universal, globalized fellowship.
“So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called ‘the uncircumcision’ by those who are called ‘the circumcision’ . . . remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers (xenoi) to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us” (Eph 2:11-14).
That’s the picture of those who have been brought near and given access in one spirit through Christ through the Father. So there’s a logic of globalization there that is inescapable. It’s at the heart of who we are, our identity as Christ’s people. I could go on citing texts that illustrate this, but it's hammered home again and again in the New Testament. We are the one body of Christ in a way that overcomes barriers of nationality and ethnicity.
There’s a famous passage in a letter called the Epistle to Diognetus. We don’t really know the date of this early Christian letter. It’s probably from the late second or early third century. But this letter articulates the way in which the movement of believers in Jesus transcends national boundaries and dissolves any nationalistic sense of identity.
This is from the Epistle to Diognetus chapter 5: “The distinction between Christians and others is neither in country nor language or customs. They do not dwell in some strange place of their own, nor do they use any strange variety of dialect or practice an extraordinary kind of life. They dwell in their own fatherlands, but as if sojourners in them. They share all things as citizens and suffer all things as strangers. Every foreign country is their fatherland and every fatherland is a foreign country.”
Once again here we see how pervasive this theme is in the consciousness and identity of the early Christians. And of course, all of it points towards the eschatological vision of Revelation 7, in which we are given a vision of the people of God gathered around the throne of God: “After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!’”
That gathering of all tribes and peoples and languages standing before the throne is a picture of where we are headed. It’s our final destiny, our final identity. So globalization is hardwired, as it were, into who we are as the people of God and as followers of Jesus. There’s ultimately no escaping it; therefore, the way we live in the present time should be a foretaste, a foreshadowing, of that globalized reality.
Now all of that may sound very theoretical or very visionary and abstract, but we must ask what we are to do in the situation we find ourselves in now, in which we are suffering the effects of a global pandemic that has caused the shutting off of international travel, that has caused the closing down of communities and businesses and churches. Churches in my country are not meeting, and I assume the same is true in the countries all of you represent. What then shall we do? I don’t know enough about your specific local circumstances to be able to give a lot of detailed prescriptions. I hope there will be a good discussion of that in the breakout discussions that follow this talk. I do, however, want to point to a couple of things in the history of the early church that might usefully inform our thinking.
The first thing is this: one of the institutions that the church established in the early centuries of its existence was an institution called the xenodocheia. These were places for the welcoming of migrants and foreigners. They were housing and care facilities for people who were displaced and needed a place to go (people who were homeless). This was a remarkable thing. There was nothing like this before in the Roman Empire, and it was a matter of some astonishment in pagan antiquity that the Christians would create these places of welcome for people who were strangers and migrants.
The second thing I want to share with you from the history of the early church is a particular story from a time of plague. This story is pertinent to understanding how the church responded in a situation similar to what we face now. I’m going to read you an account from Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria, writing about a plague that hit the Eastern Empire in the year AD 250, in the city of Alexandria in Egypt. Here is Dionysius’s description of the effects of the plague in that city.
“Now indeed, all is lamentation. And all men mourn and wailings resound throughout the city because of the number of dead and those that are dying day by day. For as it is written of the firstborn of the Egyptians, so also it is now: there was a great cry, for there is not a house where there is not one dead--and would indeed that it were but one.”
But then following his description of the terrible suffering in Alexandria, here’s what Dionysius writes about the response of the church: “The most at all events of our brethren, in their exceeding love and affection for the brotherhood, were unsparing of themselves, and they clung to one another, visiting the sick without a thought as to the danger, assiduously ministering to them, tending them in Christ. And so most gladly departed this life along with them, being infected with the disease from others, drawing upon themselves the sickness of their neighbors and willingly taking over their pains. Many, when they had cared for and restored to health others, died themselves, thus transferring their death to themselves.” So the early Christians were caring for those who were afflicted by the plague, even at a great risk to their own lives. Of course, in those days the transmission of disease was not scientifically understood. They didn’t have any personal protective equipment; they were simply caring for the sick, because that’s what they had been commanded to do by Jesus.
I continue now Dionysius' account of what was going on in Alexandria in the year 250. “But the conduct of the gentiles [ethnē] was the exact opposite. Even those who were in the first stages of the disease they thrust away and fled from their dearest. They would even cast them in the roads half dead and treat the unburied corpses as vile refuse, in their attempts to avoid the spreading and contagion of the death plague, a thing which for all their devices it was not easy for them to escape.” The stark contrast here is quite extraordinary—the contrast between the Christians who took responsibility for acting in love and mercy and caring for the sick, as opposed to those who fled in fear and terror and rejected even their own families and those closest to them.
It seems to me that the challenge for us in our time as Christians is to ask: what must we do to resist ethno-nationalism and fear? What must we do to become witnesses through service, through works of welcome and mercy for those who are sick and dying of the virus, and even for those who might reject and hate us ourselves as foreigners and strangers? What must we do to take upon ourselves the suffering of others, which is the suffering of Christ? What must we do to take upon ourselves the suffering of Christ who came and gave himself up for our sake in love? We embody that danger as a community. If we suffer as a result of that, whether hardship or sickness, that is simply a part of our calling to be followers of Jesus.
I want to conclude by reading you a poem by a friend of mine, Malcolm Guite, an Anglican priest who lives in Cambridge, England. He wrote this for the occasion of Easter this year, describing what Easter in 2020 has meant in the context of the pandemic. Here is Malcolm’s poem:
Easter 2020
“And where is Jesus, this strange Easter day?
Not lost in our locked churches, anymore
Than he was sealed in that dark sepulchre.
The locks are loosed; the stone is rolled away,
And he is up and risen, long before,
Alive, at large, and making his strong way
Into the world he gave his life to save,
No need to seek him in his empty grave.
He might have been a wafer in the hands
Of priests this day, or music from the lips
Of red-robed choristers, instead he slips
Away from church, shakes off our linen bands
To don his apron with a nurse: he grips
And lifts a stretcher, soothes with gentle hands
The frail flesh of the dying, gives them hope,
Breathes with the breathless, lends them strength to cope.
On Thursday we applauded, for he came
And served us in a thousand names and faces
Mopping our sickroom floors and catching traces
Of that corona which was death to him:
Good Friday happened in a thousand places
Where Jesus held the helpless, died with them
That they might share his Easter in their need,
Now they are risen with him, risen indeed.”
Jesus is risen. Death does not have the last word. Fear does not have the last word. Nationalism does not have the last word. Nationalism is a sad, angry defense against the universally embracing love of God that seeks to gather us all up as one people, so that the walls are broken down and we are one in Christ. Our task is simply to bear witness to that truth in whatever ways we can. I’m sure that in the conversations that will follow, many of you will have stories to share about ways you see that happening in your own contexts, ways that you found yourself called to reach out and to serve in a time in plague and pandemic. But I’m grateful that death does not have the last word, that we are in this moment yet alive and see each other’s face. The concluding stanza of Charles Wesley’s hymn is this:
“Let us take up the cross
til we the crown obtain
and gladly reckon all things loss
so we may Jesus gain.”
May it be so; may we be one people gathered together under the sign of the cross, people who embody the ministry of reconciliation. Grace and peace be with you all.
(The speech has been authorized to be published without proofreading.)
以下是理查德·海斯的演讲全文：
2020年6月5日
大家好，各位朋友。我很荣幸，也很开心能再次与你们分享。当我们现在进行“东北亚和好论坛”的这次线上会议时，我想起上次五年前，我们齐聚在长崎举行论坛会议的情景。那是一段非凡的时光。我们当中参加过那次活动的朋友应该记得，那次活动安排了一次参观长崎原子弹爆炸纪念馆。我们不仅纪念和哀悼当年战争带来的毁灭，更是思考这种背景下我们聚集讨论“和好”对基督徒来说意味着什么。此刻我们聚在一起，共同面对一个新挑战，令我们扼腕叹息悲痛不已的新事件。因为全球疫情大流行的缘故，我们现在只能在线相会，却无法面对面。然而，我仍感恩能有这样的交流机会，因为我觉得并不能将我们能这样相互联系的机会看作稀松平常的小事一桩。
你们有些人知道，长崎那次会议的几个星期后，我意外地被诊断出患上了胰腺癌，然后就开始治疗。你们看，我还活着！实际上，我这周刚作了一次扫描检测，再次确认没有复发迹象。这不禁让我想起查尔•卫斯理那首美妙的赞美诗，诗歌叫做《我们仍否健在》。卫理公会在年会的开幕礼上，牧师们总会唱这歌。当然，最初是因为卫理公会牧师们由于巡回讲道导致一整年都会见不着面，所以就在年会上相见时以此相互扶持鼓励。我给大家读一下这首诗歌的开头几节，我觉得很能表达我此刻的感受，或许也是我们很多人在这种情景下的心情。
我们仍否健在，得以再次相见？
荣耀称谢全归耶稣，因他赐下恩典。
我们齐来赞美，得见上主容颜。
权柄能力常佑圣徒，靠神救恩成全。
所以我们此刻相见是在电脑屏幕面前，更是在那位带领我们度过患难，保守我们直到如今，赐予我们一起省察思考的耶稣面前。
拿长崎大爆炸和当下的疫情作比较并不准确，但这两个灾难都显示了深重的世间苦难和严峻的人类处境，并引向我们作和解圣工的呼召。让我们一起为患病和病危的，为正在经历患难，处于失业中而承受焦虑和恐惧的，以及特别地为正在服侍当下有需要者的人来祷告。非常感恩我们能在一起，愿神赐大家平安，也叫每个人忠实地承受当下的诸般挑战。
此次会议的主办方要求我谈论两点。第一是从新约圣经看早期基督徒如何回应仇外（xenophobia）的问题。仇外是指对陌生人（strangers）和外来人（foreigners）的恐惧或敌意。第二是反思我们基督徒在全球化时代的角色和责任。其实这两点彼此关联。因为，非常不幸的是，全球化的迅猛势头似乎引发了逆反效应，民族主义情绪高涨，将外国人以及那些仅因属于不同国别或族群的人视作威胁，心生敌意。接下来我围绕这两点展开论述。
我们现在频繁地从大众传媒那里听到说：当下的危机“前所未有”。我认为并非如此，这种说法缺乏历史眼光。作为基督徒，作为人类，我们的历史有着太多导致许多仍甚至大量人口被瘟疫吞没的先例。类似现象古代发生过，中世纪有之，而且贯穿整个欧洲前现代时期。虽然我对亚洲国家的历史知之甚少，但毫无疑问他们也经历过。我们现在所面临的并非前所未有。为此，就如何回应瘟疫和大传染病的挑战，我们或许可以从信仰先辈那里学到很多。
首先，我们来说看仇外。早期基督徒对此了如指掌。第一、他们自己就是罗马帝国里被仇视的目标对象。在当时的社会环境中，他们被大多数人视作陌生人（陌生人的希腊文字词是xenoi），并遭遇敌意和排斥。罗马史家塔西佗（Tacitus）就曾称罗马基督徒是迷信而有害的一群人，信奉来自某个奇葩的近东角落，与罗马城传统格格不入的，怪异又恶心的宗教。所以早期基督徒深知自己的陌生人身份。希伯来书11章13节里，作者这样概括神的子民的过往历史：“这些人都是存着信心死的，并没有得着所应许的，却从远处望见，且欢喜迎接，又承认自己在世上是客旅，是寄居的。”（译者注：如非特别说明，本文的圣经经文均采用中文和合本）
Xenoi和parepidēmoi，客旅和寄居者，后面parepidēmoi这个字词在英文新修订标准译本（NRSV）里译为“外国人/外来人”（foreigners），另外也常作“寄居者”（sojourners）。客旅和寄居者，这就是早期基督徒对选民历史的解读，也是他们的自我认知。这种用语在新约里频繁出现。
譬如，彼得前书的作者开篇就说：“耶稣基督的使徒彼得写信给那分散在本都、加拉太、加帕多家、亚细亚、庇推尼寄居的（译者注：NRSV在这里译作exiles，流亡者）”（彼前1.1）。收信人视自己为被外遣而四处流散的一群人。此处被译作“寄居的”（exiles）的字词即为parepidēmoi。他们人在旅途，并不在故土家乡。
书信接下来在1章6-7节又说：“因此，你们是大有喜乐。但如今在百般的试炼中暂时忧愁，叫你们的信心既被试验，就比那被火试验仍然能坏的金子更显宝贵，可以在耶稣基督显现的时候，得着称赞、荣耀、尊贵。”可见，身为一群被视为陌生人的寄居者，早期基督徒不认为经历苦难是意外之事，而是他们身份的集中体现。
在2章11-12节里我们再次看到这个劝勉：“亲爱的弟兄啊，你们是客旅，是寄居的。我劝你们要禁戒肉体的私欲，这私欲是与灵魂争战的。你们在外邦人中，应当品行端正，叫那些毁谤你们是作恶的，因看见你们的好行为，便在鉴察的日子归荣耀给神。”这就是早期基督徒的使命。他们看自己是异乡客、寄居者和外来人，对他们一直抱有敌意的人也这么看，因为他们真心认为这些跟随耶稣的人太怪异了。他们被认为怪异，不仅是因为他们所信奉的，也因为他们种种的行为实践。他们打破了社会阶级和民族国家的界限，各色人等聚在一起参与公共崇拜，这在当时实在是前所未有。在这里，我要强调下“前所未有”这个词语，这里用的也很贴切。
正因为他们深知何为作客旅和寄居者并参与基督的苦难，所以就明白作门徒的核心操守之一就是好客或款待（hospitality）。很有意思的是，好客一词的希腊文字词是philoxenia，字面意义恰恰就是关爱客旅，以爱心欢迎客旅。
从罗马书12章起，保罗给罗马信众的致信进入劝勉部分。他这样劝导大家忠实地活着：爱人不可虚假，恶要厌恶，善要亲近。爱弟兄，要彼此亲热；恭敬人，要彼此推让。殷勤不可懒惰。要心里火热，常常服侍主。在指望中要喜乐，在患难中要忍耐，祷告要恒切。圣徒缺乏要帮补，客要一味地款待（罗12.9-13）。Philoxenia， 好客，关爱客旅，是保罗这段劝勉的重心。这是他对团契生活的基本勾勒。
无独有偶，希伯来书13章也给了完全一样的指示，劝勉信徒践行款待客旅这一至关重要的门徒之道：“你们务要常存弟兄相爱的心。不可忘记用爱心接待客旅，因为曾有接待客旅的，不知不觉就接待了天使。”（来13.1-2）这可能是在暗指创世记18章亚伯拉罕的故事。三位客旅突然现身幔利橡树下，与亚伯拉罕说话，他便欢迎款待，最终领受意外的祝福。
我要明确指出，正如亚伯拉罕的例子所表明的，好客之道并非早期基督教运动的首创，而是深植于犹太教传统和律法中。
利19.33-34是律法书中最为有力的经节之一，我还可以引用其他更多经文段落，但这里就先引这一处。经文说：“若有外人在你们国中和你同住，就不可欺负他。和你们同住的外人，你们要看他如本地人，并要爱他如己，因为你们在埃及地也作过寄居的。我是耶和华你们的神。”就像前述的新约经文一样，这处旧约经文遵循同样的逻辑：逃离埃及奴役之地的希伯来民族曾在那里作客旅和寄居的，于是，他们明白现在上帝呼召他们要欢迎他人，接纳那些作寄居的客旅的其他人。这是上帝对他自己的子民的命令。
值得注意的是，马太福音25章记载了耶稣论及末日审判和分开绵羊山羊。他对那些受祝福被接纳承受国度的人说了一件事：“我作客旅，你们留我住。”耶稣说他是一个客旅。该字词与“我饿了，你们给我吃；渴了，你们给我喝”等并列，在这个段落出现了四次。我要承认，直至我受邀为此次会议作分享前，我对这一点并没多少在意。在这段末日审判的场景中，那些被审判之人是否接待客旅被四次重点提及，再次让我们看到款待客旅是门徒之道的关键所在，是上帝对我们的核心期待。但是，令人惊奇的是，马太福音里讲论我们蒙召去接待客旅，这不单因为那是神的命令，也不是因为我们自己也曾在埃及之地作客旅寄居，也不是因为我们基督徒是世上的客旅和寄居者，而是因为耶稣本人是客旅。所以，当我们接待客旅时，我们乃是接待耶稣。我们只有这样来理解这些字词时，才是把握其重要性和基础性的真正开始。
现在，我们当然也就可以用不同的视角来看路加福音10章里好撒玛利亚人的比喻。那个外族人、那个客旅，那个被鄙夷的外人，不但成了一个邻舍，而且出人意料地成为礼物和怜悯的施与者，正如亚伯拉罕遇到的天使那样。
总结一下，接待客旅在早期基督徒看来与门徒之道融为一体。排外仇外与跟随耶稣的生活背道而驰。这显然对在当下处境中思考使命和行动的我们提出了极大的挑战。
第二个我被要求谈及的话题是全球化。这个话题显然意义重大。当今的国际交通往来导致病毒能在全球迅速广为传播，就此而言，此次的瘟疫确实前所未有。
但是伴随着新冠病毒的传播，我们看到还有一种不同的病毒也在蔓延——民族主义。我说的这种民族主义脱胎于恐惧，让人想要关闭边境，建隔离墙，然后把和自己不同的人和陌生人排除在外，这样不单远离新冠病毒，同时也不受任何外来文化风俗或挑战我们的文化规范和经济生活的威胁。这种民族主义病毒已经迅速蔓延全球。你们不需要我来详细说明。我国美国就是这样一个带坏头的。很不幸，我们选出的一些官员正在大肆散播对客旅和寄居者的敌意。这种敌意与新约和基督教传统的教导完全对立。我很抱歉这样说，但这是实情。当然，美国不是惟一一个出现这种现象的国家。我们可以看见全球许多地方都在兴起这种易怒的民族主义。
比较而言，值得注意的是，早期基督徒不仅热心接纳刚好进入他们中间的客旅，更是认定他们的使命和全球化趋势紧密关联。他们的使命是一个向外扩展的运动，见证了教会在那最初几十年就传遍了地中海地区。早期教会是全球化的推动者。《使徒行传》一开始就对这种外展作了经典表述。当使徒们问复活的耶稣他何时会复兴以色列国，他的回答则是颁赐使命：“父凭着自己的权柄所定的时候、日期，不是你们可以知道的。但圣灵要降在你们身上，你们要得着能力；并要在耶路撒冷、犹太全地和撒玛利亚，直到地极，作我的见证。”（徒1.7-8）“直到地极”，耶稣毫无疑问是在呼应《以赛亚书的重要预言：“现在他说：‘你作我的仆人，使雅各众支派复兴，使以色列中得保全的归回尚为小事；我还要使你作外邦人的光，叫你施行我的救恩，直到地极。’”（赛49.6）
这种动力，这种向外扩展的运动，向全地宣扬耶稣基督作主掌权的福音的运动，内化于早期基督徒的身份和使命意识中，构成基督教在那个时代在已知的世界里惊人地快速传播的重要因素之一。《马太福音》结尾的大使命也表达了相同的命令。门徒从复活的耶稣领命，去使万民作他的门徒，教导他们遵行他的训诲（太28.16-20）。
所以，自基督复活和五旬节圣灵降临起，我们这群跟随耶稣的人牢记使命，向外出发。这一过程中，我们也不断打破藩篱。保罗的《以弗所书》中就有这样一个极其动人的表述，请大家一起来听。我知道你们知道这段经文，我也知道你们知道我引的每处经文，但时刻提醒我们自己还是有益处的。《以弗所书》的这段经文阐述了福音的逻辑，福音如何呼召那些曾作客旅和局外人的人成为普世而全球化的团契的一部分。
“所以你们应当记念，你们从前按肉体是外邦人，是称为没受割礼的，这名原是那些.....称为受割礼之人所起的。那时，你们与基督无关，在以色列国民以外，在所应许的诸约上是局外人，并且活在世上没有指望，没有神。你们从前远离神的人，如今却在基督耶稣里，靠着他的血，已经得亲近了。因他使我们和睦，将两下合而为一，拆毁了中间隔断的墙”（弗2.11-14）
这段经文给那些藉着基督同蒙一灵的引导得以亲近父神的一群人勾勒了画像。这里的全球化思路不容忽视，直指我们作为基督的子民的身份。我可以继续引用能说明这一点的其他经文，在新约里比比皆是，确凿无疑。我们同属基督的一个身体，克服国家和民族的障碍。
名为《致丢格那妥书》的早期基督教书信有一著名段落。该书的写作日期不详，可能是2世纪晚期或3世纪早期。书信表述了这个信仰耶稣的运动如何超越民族界限，并消解任何民族主义倾向的身份认同。
下面这段话来自书信第5章：“基督徒的与众不同并不是由于他们的国家、语言和习俗。他们不是住在自己的城市里，他们沒有说一些异乎寻常的方言，也沒有持守乖僻的生活方式。他们生活在自己的国家里，但只是作为寄居的人；
他们作为公民，参与各种事务，却作为外人忍受一切；每一个异国都是他们的故土，而每一片故土却都是异地。”（译者注：本段译文引自黄锡木主编的《使徒教父著作》）
在此，我们再次看到这个主题如何贯穿在早期基督徒的身份意识中。当然，这些都指向启示录第7章的末世异象。在那里，我们看到神的子民在他宝座前聚集：“此后，我观看，见有许多的人，没有人能数过来，是从各国、各族、各民、各方来的，站在宝座和羔羊面前，身穿白衣，手拿棕树枝，大声喊着说：‘愿救恩归与坐在宝座上我们的神，也归与羔羊。’”（启7.9-10）
各国各族各民齐聚宝座前是我们走向的未来，是我们最后的归宿，终极的身份。可见，全球化已经植入到我们作为神的子民和耶稣门徒的生命里，它与我们如影随形。所以，我们当下的生活乃是预尝和预兆那全球化的真相。
所有以上我说的听起来都很理论，很高远，很抽象，但我们必须问当下我们要做什么。全球疫情导致国际旅行停止，社区、商业和教会也关闭，我们正在遭受这些事。美国的教会都没法聚会了，我想各位代表的国家应该也是如此。那我们该怎么做呢？我不清楚你们各自地方的特别情况，所以给不了具体建议。我希望之后的分组交流时候我们能很好地讨论一番。不过，我确实想指出早期教会历史上的几件事，相信可以对我们的思考大有裨益。
首先，教会在头几个世纪里建立了一系列机构，其中之一叫做“客旅之家”（xenodocheia）。这是些接待迁居者和外来人的地方，为流离失所和流浪者提供住处和关怀设施。这非常了不起，罗马帝国从来没有这样的事。基督徒专门造了那些庇护外来人和迁居者的地方，实在让当时的古代世界震惊不已。
其次，我要跟大家讲个早期教会历史上一个关于瘟疫的故事。这个故事让我们明白，教会当时是怎么回应类似我们现在面临的情形。主后250年一场瘟疫席卷罗马帝国东部。亚历山大主教狄奥尼修斯记录了当时这座埃及大城里的疫情惨象，我读给你们听，他这样写到：现在确实一片哀鸿。所有人都在哀伤，全城哭号，因为死者甚众，且天天都有死讯。我们现在正如圣经上记载的埃及头生的事那样，“有大哀号，无一家不死一个人的”。
但在他描绘了亚历山大的惨象后，狄氏紧接着记录了教会的反应：“我们大部分的弟兄姐妹们自始至终以大爱待人。他们没有抽身事外，而是彼此守候，不惧危险地探望病人，孜孜不倦的服侍众人，在基督里照料大家。他们很多人被感染，自己亲身担当了他们邻舍的疾病，甘愿为他们忍受痛苦，甚至最后与病人一同丧生，但他们却是满怀喜乐地离世。很多人在照顾病人使之痊愈后，自己却倒下了，因为他们将死转到了自己身上。”早期基督徒照料为瘟疫所苦害的人，甚至冒着巨大的生命危险。当然，那时候他们对疾病传播没有科学的理解，他们没有个人防护设备。他们就非常单纯地照料病人，因为耶稣这是给他们的命令。
我们看亚历山大还发生了什么，狄奥尼修斯继续写道：“外邦人则截然相反。即使有人仍在病症早期阶段，他们就会立刻远离。他们甚至将半死的人扔在路边，把未掩埋的尸体当作令人生厌的垃圾。他们千方百计地阻止死疫的传播和感染，但只是徒劳无功，因为没人能轻易躲开。”基督徒勇于担当，活出爱和怜悯，照顾病患。与之相对的，有人却万分惊恐，仓皇而逃，甚至抛弃了自己的家人和亲友。这种反差过于强烈，太令人吃惊。
我觉得我们基督徒当下的挑战是要问问自己：我们该作些什么抵制民族主义和恐惧心理？为了见证基督，我们该有怎样的服务呢？藉着接纳和怜悯那些病患者和因感染病毒而丧生的人，甚至那些把我们当作路人和外人进而拒绝我们仇恨我们的人吗？我们该怎样来担当他人的患难，也就是基督的患难呢？我们该怎样去担当那位以大爱为人舍己的基督的患难呢？作为一个团契，我们要承受风险。如果我们因此遭遇患难，不论是困苦还是疾病，那就是我们活出跟随基督的呼召的一部分。我想以我一位好友马尔科姆·圭特 （Malcolm Guite）的一首诗作为分享的结语。他是英国圣公会牧师，住在剑桥。他作了这首诗来形容今年全球大流行病阴影下的复活节。
2020年复活节
这奇异的复活节，耶稣去了何方？
他没有消失在我们紧锁的教堂中，
更没有被尘封于那黑暗的坟冢里。
门锁松动；巨石从墓穴门口滚离，
早在很久之前，他就已起身复活
且一直活着，逃之夭夭，以大能
闯入他曾舍弃生命拯救的人世间，
无需在他的空坟墓里再徒然寻觅。
在这一天，他原本可以是牧师们
手中的圣餐饼，或是红袍唱诗班
歌手们唇间的音乐，可他却悄然
溜出教堂，挣脱我们缠裹的麻布，
与护士一同穿上白大褂：他紧握住
并抬起担架，用温柔的双手安抚
垂死者虚弱的肉体，给他们盼望，
与残喘者共呼吸，借予他们力量。
圣周四我们欢呼称颂，因他来临
并化身千人千面服侍我们，
擦洗我们的病房地板，追踪捕捉
那对他一样意味着死亡的冠状物：
受难日也在一千个地方同时发生，
当耶稣拥抱无助的人与他们同死，
好让他们在贫乏中与他同享节日，
此刻也与他一同复活，真的复活。
耶稣复活了。死亡不掌握最终的决定权，惧怕也不掌握，民族主义也不能。民族主义非常可悲地与神作对，愤怒地抵挡他向普世所施的慈爱。神则将我们合而为一，使隔墙被推倒，叫我们在基督里成为一体。我们的任务就是尽我们所能的见证这个真理。我很肯定，在我们接下来的谈论中，你们都会分享自己的故事，在各自不同的环境中如何看到神对我们的呼召，叫我们在瘟疫的时代里继续服侍。我心怀感恩，因为死亡说了不算，而且我们现在仍然都活着，并且看见对方。查尔•卫斯理那首诗歌的结束句如下：
我们背起十架，得享荣耀冠冕；
万事荣华皆作有损，有主喜得圆满。
愿神如此成就，愿我们在十字架的记号下聚集，成为一体，践行和好的职分。愿恩惠、平安与你们同在。
以上由王曲奇翻译。
著名基督教伦理学家理查德·海斯：在大疫情期间，基督徒应欢迎陌生人
Richard Hays, an American New Testament scholar said in his lecture that Christians should welcome strangers in a time of the pandemic.
On June 5, 2020, the George Washington Ivey Professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity School, gave a speech entitled, “Welcoming Strangers in a Time of Pandemic” in the virtual seventh annual Christian Forum for Reconciliation in Northeast Asia. He shared that in the midst of the hostility and hatred toward each other due to the coronavirus, nationalism, and racism, we need to go back to the early church. The early Christians were regarded as strangers in the Roman Empire, feeling the xenophobia and rejection. Hebrews 11 describes the history of God’s people as being aliens and strangers on earth. The same idea was also expressed in 1 Peter 2:11-12.
According to Romans 12:9-13, the early Christians truly understood that the core of discipleship was in part practicing hospitality, showing love towards strangers. In the Old Testament, God commanded the Israelites not to oppress the foreigner because they themselves were foreigners in Egypt (Exodus 23:9). Jesus Christ also exhorted his followers, by showing in the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25, that they should welcome strangers. Because Jesus Christ is a stranger to the world, when we welcome a stranger, we welcome Him. As the COVID-19 pandemic has become global, Christians need to practice the Christian custom of hospitality.
Below is the full text of the speech:
Welcoming Strangers in a Time of Pandemic
Richard B. Hays
June 5, 2020
Hello friends. It’s an honor and a pleasure to be able to speak with you once again. As we gather virtually for this session of the Northeast Asian Reconciliation Initiative, I’m mindful that the last time I was able to be with you was five years ago in Nagasaki when we gathered there for a meeting of the Forum. That was a remarkable time. As those of you who were there will recall, the meeting included a trip to the museum of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki—not only to commemorate and mourn the destruction of war but also to reflect on what it might mean for Christians to gather and speak of reconciliation in such a context. As we gather this time, we are faced with a new challenge, a new cause for lament and mourning and grieving because of the global pandemic that has caused us to meet in this virtual form, rather than face to face. Nonetheless I am thankful for this opportunity to be able to speak to you because I’m aware that we can’t take for granted our ability even to connect in this way.
Some of you know that just a few weeks after the Nagasaki meeting, I unexpectedly received a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and started undergoing cancer treatment. Remarkably I’m still here. In fact, I just had a scan this week, which once again confirms that there’s no sign of the recurrence of cancer. So I find myself thinking of a wonderful Charles Wesley hymn entitled ‘And Are We Yet Alive.’ It’s always sung at the initial gathering of Methodist pastors for their annual conference; it was sung initially, of course, by groups of itinerant Methodist pastors who wouldn’t see each other for an entire year, and then would gather again for an annual meeting for support and encouragement. I would like to read for you the first couple of stanzas of that hymn because it expresses what I feel, and perhaps what many of us feel, on this occasion.
“And are we yet alive,
and see each other’s face?
Glory and thanks to Jesus give
for his almighty grace!
Preserved by power divine
to full salvation here,
again in Jesus’ praise we join,
and in his sight appear.”
So we gather in one another’s sight on our computer screens here, but also in the sight of Jesus who has preserved us and brought us through many conflicts and brought us to this day where we have the opportunity to reflect together.
The parallel between the Nagasaki bombing and the current pandemic is imprecise, but both of those terrible realities indicate the seriousness of our human condition, the reality of suffering in the world, and our calling to be ministers of reconciliation in that context. So I join you as we all join together in praying for the sick and the dying, for those who are suffering, for those who are living with unemployment and fear and anxiety, and especially for all those who are seeking to minister to those who are in need in this time. I’m grateful that we can all be together, and I pray that all of you are well and faithfully bearing the challenges of this moment.
I’ve been asked by the organizers of this meeting to speak to two things. First, what was the response of early Christians, as attested in the New Testament, to the issue of xenophobia, the fear or hostility towards strangers and foreigners. And secondly, I’ve been asked to reflect on our role and responsibilities as Christians in a time of globalization. These two issues are linked, because unfortunately, the rapid pace of globalization seems to have generated a counterreaction of rising nationalism and hostility towards foreigners and those who are different, those who are perceived as a threat simply because of their nationality or ethnicity. Those are the two issues I’m going to speak to.
We are hearing frequently in the popular news media that the crisis we’re facing now is “unprecedented.” I’m afraid that that is simply not true. Anyone who says that is reflecting a lack of historical perspective. The fact is that our history, not only as Christians, but simply as human beings, gives ample precedent for the phenomenon of plagues that wipe out many people, large parts of populations. This happened in antiquity, it happened in the medieval period, and throughout the pre-modern period in Europe. Undoubtedly it happened also in Asian countries, whose history I don’t know as well. What we’re facing now is not unprecedented. For that reason, we can perhaps learn a lot from seeing the way in which our forebears in the Christian faith responded to the challenges of plagues and pandemics in their time.
First of all, let’s consider xenophobia. The early Christians knew all about that. The first reason they knew about it is that they themselves were targets of xenophobia within the context of the Roman Empire. In that world, Christians were regarded by most people as strangers (the Greek word for “strangers” is xenoi), and they had to confront xenophobic hostility and rejection. The Roman historian Tacitus spoke of the early Christian presence in Rome as a pernicious superstition, a strange, unsavory cult brought to Rome from some exotic near Eastern location and foreign to the traditions of the Roman city. So the early Christians were very aware of the status they had as strangers. For example, in the Letter to the Hebrews chapter 11, the author summarizes the long past history of the people of God in this way: “All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth.”
Strangers and foreigners. Xenoi and parepidēmoi. The latter word (parepidēmoi), translated by the NRSV as “foreigners” is also often translated as sojourners. Strangers and sojourners: that’s how the early Christians saw the history of the people of God, and it’s also how they understood themselves. This language appears frequently in the New Testament.
We find the same thing, for example, in 1 Peter. The author of this letter begins by writing: “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.” The Christians addressed by this letter saw themselves as people who were sent out into an exile, a diaspora. The text that is translated here as “exiles” is once again the term parepidēmoi, the same word that can mean sojourners. These are people who are in transit somewhere. They’re not living in their own homeland.
And the text then continues as we move through 1 Peter 1 down to verses 6 and 7; “In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” So the suffering of being a people who are strangers, regarded as strangers, was thought to be not something unexpected, but something central to the identity of the early Christians.
In 1 Peter 2:11, once again we find this exhortation; “Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles, to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul. Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that when they malign you as evildoers, they may see your honorable deeds and glorify God when he comes to judge.” So that’s the vocation of early Christians. They see themselves as strangers, sojourners, aliens—and they were regarded that way by people who were repeatedly hostile towards them, because they thought frankly that these followers of Jesus were just weird. They were regarded as weird not only for believing what they believed but also for the kinds of practices that they embodied: their communal practices of sharing in common worship that crossed boundary lines, bringing together people of different social classes and nationalities in ways that were in fact unprecedented in their time—to use that word again, and this time properly, unprecedented.
And it’s precisely because they knew what it meant to be strangers and sojourners and to share the suffering of Christ, that they understood a central part of their discipleship to be the practice of hospitality. Interestingly, that word “hospitality” is the usual English translation of the Greek word philoxenia: it means literally “the love of strangers”—lovingly welcoming people who are foreigners.
In Romans 12, when Paul gets to the hortatory part of his letter to the community of believers in Rome, he gives them this counsel about how to live faithfully: “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints, extend hospitality to strangers (Rom 12:9-13). Philoxenia, the love of strangers, is at the heart of Paul's exhortation. That’s his fundamental description of what the life of the community should look like.
Similarly, that same exact directive about the practice of hospitality as central to discipleship shows up in Hebrews 13. “Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality [philoxenia again]--Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” That’s probably an allusion to the story of Abraham in Genesis 18, entertaining the three unexpected strangers who show up under the Oaks of Mamre to speak with him. Abraham welcomes them in and receives an unexpected blessing.
Now, as the example of Abraham shows, this practice of hospitality is not a novelty of the early Christian movement. I want to make this point very clearly. The practice of hospitality is already deeply rooted in Jewish tradition and Jewish law.
One of the most powerful texts from the Torah--and I could go on quoting, but I’m just going to give you one passage here—is found in Leviticus 19:33-34. “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” Here again, as we saw in the New Testament texts I was quoting, you see the same pattern of logic: because the Hebrew people who had come out of Egypt, where they had been in slavery, had formerly been aliens or strangers in the land of Egypt, they understood that it was now their calling from God to welcome others who may be strangers. That’s part of what God commands to God’s own people.
Interestingly (and I will confess I hadn’t thought about this one too much until I was asked to reflect on this for our gathering today) in the great passage in Matthew 25, where Jesus portrays the scene of the final judgment and the separation of the sheep and the goats, the one thing he says to those who are being blessed and welcomed to inherit the kingdom is this: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me,”-- “I was a xenos, a stranger.” That word appears four times in this passage, alongside “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you welcomed me, and you gave me something to drink,” and so on. The act of welcoming the stranger is highlighted four times in this last judgment scene as something that those who are being judged either did or failed to do. So again we see that the welcoming of the stranger is central to the discipleship; it’s at the heart of what God expects of us. But, amazingly, in the Gospel of Matthew we are called to welcome the stranger not only because God commands it; we are called to welcome the stranger not only because we were strangers in the land of Egypt; we are called to welcome the stranger not only because we as Christians are aliens and exiles on the earth. No, we are called to welcome the stranger because Jesus himself was a stranger, and insofar as we welcome the stranger, we are welcoming Jesus. So we begin to see how fundamental, how foundational this really is when we understand it in these terms.
And of course, we could also look in quite a different way to the parable of the good Samaritan in Luke 10, where the alien, the stranger, the despised foreigner not only becomes the neighbor, but unexpectedly becomes the giver of gifts and mercy, as was also the case with the angels that Abraham encountered.
So, in sum, discipleship among the early Christians was understood as integrally tied to the welcoming of the stranger. Xenophobia is antithetical to living as disciples of Jesus. Obviously that sets for us a high bar of challenge for what we will do in our own time and how we think about our own vocation in the situation that we face now.
Now the other matter I was asked to say something about is globalization. Of course this is a topic of huge significance. Insofar as the current pandemic is unprecedented, it is unprecedented with regard to the speed with which a virus can spread around the globe, as a result of the international transportation that is available now.
But along with the spread of the COVID-19 virus, we’ve also seen the spread of a different kind of virus: the virus of ethno-nationalism. I’m speaking of an ethno-nationalism that’s born of fear, a desire to close the borders and wall off those who are different or strange to protect ourselves not only from the corona virus but also from the threat of foreign languages, foreign practices, things that may challenge our cultural norms and pose economic challenges. That ethno-nationalist virus has also spread rapidly around the globe. You don’t need me to detail this; my own country, the United States, is among the worst offenders in this regard. We have sadly elected leaders who are spreading antagonism and hostility towards the stranger and the foreigner. It’s an antagonism that’s utterly antithetical to everything that the New Testament and the Christian tradition teach. I’m sorry to say it, but that’s the reality we have. And of course the United States is not the only place where this is happening. We’ve seen the resurgence of an angry ethno-nationalism in many other places.
By comparison, it’s interesting to see that the early Christians were not only interested in welcoming strangers who might happen to wander into their community; instead, they saw their vocation as integrally bound up with a thrust towards globalization, an outward movement of mission that saw the church spreading throughout the Mediterranean world in those early decades. The early church was a driver of globalization. That outward thrust is classically articulated in the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, when the apostles asked the risen Jesus if this was the time when he would restore the kingdom to Israel. His reply gives them a commission: “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:7-8). To the ends of the earth--Jesus is undoubtedly echoing a crucial prophecy in Isaiah: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth” (Acts 49:6).
That drive, that outward movement--the movement towards spreading the good news of the lordship of Jesus Christ over the whole world--was integral to the early Christian sense of identity and mission, and it’s one of the things that made Christianity spread in an astonishingly rapid fashion throughout the known world in that time. Of course, the great commission at the end of the Gospel of Matthew expresses exactly this same imperative: the disciples are charged by the risen Jesus to go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe all that he had commanded (Matt 28:16-20).
So from the resurrection and Pentecost onwards, we followers of Jesus remember that charge to go out--and insofar as that happens, we are also engaged in the breaking down of barriers. One of the most beautiful expressions of that is in Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. I want you to listen to this. (I know you know this passage; I know you know every passage I’m quoting. But it’s good that we remind ourselves.) This passage in Ephesians is the way it articulates the logic of the gospel as calling people who were once aliens, once strangers, to be part of a universal, globalized fellowship.
“So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called ‘the uncircumcision’ by those who are called ‘the circumcision’ . . . remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers (xenoi) to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us” (Eph 2:11-14).
That’s the picture of those who have been brought near and given access in one spirit through Christ through the Father. So there’s a logic of globalization there that is inescapable. It’s at the heart of who we are, our identity as Christ’s people. I could go on citing texts that illustrate this, but it's hammered home again and again in the New Testament. We are the one body of Christ in a way that overcomes barriers of nationality and ethnicity.
There’s a famous passage in a letter called the Epistle to Diognetus. We don’t really know the date of this early Christian letter. It’s probably from the late second or early third century. But this letter articulates the way in which the movement of believers in Jesus transcends national boundaries and dissolves any nationalistic sense of identity.
This is from the Epistle to Diognetus chapter 5: “The distinction between Christians and others is neither in country nor language or customs. They do not dwell in some strange place of their own, nor do they use any strange variety of dialect or practice an extraordinary kind of life. They dwell in their own fatherlands, but as if sojourners in them. They share all things as citizens and suffer all things as strangers. Every foreign country is their fatherland and every fatherland is a foreign country.”
Once again here we see how pervasive this theme is in the consciousness and identity of the early Christians. And of course, all of it points towards the eschatological vision of Revelation 7, in which we are given a vision of the people of God gathered around the throne of God: “After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!’”
That gathering of all tribes and peoples and languages standing before the throne is a picture of where we are headed. It’s our final destiny, our final identity. So globalization is hardwired, as it were, into who we are as the people of God and as followers of Jesus. There’s ultimately no escaping it; therefore, the way we live in the present time should be a foretaste, a foreshadowing, of that globalized reality.
Now all of that may sound very theoretical or very visionary and abstract, but we must ask what we are to do in the situation we find ourselves in now, in which we are suffering the effects of a global pandemic that has caused the shutting off of international travel, that has caused the closing down of communities and businesses and churches. Churches in my country are not meeting, and I assume the same is true in the countries all of you represent. What then shall we do? I don’t know enough about your specific local circumstances to be able to give a lot of detailed prescriptions. I hope there will be a good discussion of that in the breakout discussions that follow this talk. I do, however, want to point to a couple of things in the history of the early church that might usefully inform our thinking.
The first thing is this: one of the institutions that the church established in the early centuries of its existence was an institution called the xenodocheia. These were places for the welcoming of migrants and foreigners. They were housing and care facilities for people who were displaced and needed a place to go (people who were homeless). This was a remarkable thing. There was nothing like this before in the Roman Empire, and it was a matter of some astonishment in pagan antiquity that the Christians would create these places of welcome for people who were strangers and migrants.
The second thing I want to share with you from the history of the early church is a particular story from a time of plague. This story is pertinent to understanding how the church responded in a situation similar to what we face now. I’m going to read you an account from Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria, writing about a plague that hit the Eastern Empire in the year AD 250, in the city of Alexandria in Egypt. Here is Dionysius’s description of the effects of the plague in that city.
“Now indeed, all is lamentation. And all men mourn and wailings resound throughout the city because of the number of dead and those that are dying day by day. For as it is written of the firstborn of the Egyptians, so also it is now: there was a great cry, for there is not a house where there is not one dead--and would indeed that it were but one.”
But then following his description of the terrible suffering in Alexandria, here’s what Dionysius writes about the response of the church: “The most at all events of our brethren, in their exceeding love and affection for the brotherhood, were unsparing of themselves, and they clung to one another, visiting the sick without a thought as to the danger, assiduously ministering to them, tending them in Christ. And so most gladly departed this life along with them, being infected with the disease from others, drawing upon themselves the sickness of their neighbors and willingly taking over their pains. Many, when they had cared for and restored to health others, died themselves, thus transferring their death to themselves.” So the early Christians were caring for those who were afflicted by the plague, even at a great risk to their own lives. Of course, in those days the transmission of disease was not scientifically understood. They didn’t have any personal protective equipment; they were simply caring for the sick, because that’s what they had been commanded to do by Jesus.
I continue now Dionysius' account of what was going on in Alexandria in the year 250. “But the conduct of the gentiles [ethnē] was the exact opposite. Even those who were in the first stages of the disease they thrust away and fled from their dearest. They would even cast them in the roads half dead and treat the unburied corpses as vile refuse, in their attempts to avoid the spreading and contagion of the death plague, a thing which for all their devices it was not easy for them to escape.” The stark contrast here is quite extraordinary—the contrast between the Christians who took responsibility for acting in love and mercy and caring for the sick, as opposed to those who fled in fear and terror and rejected even their own families and those closest to them.
It seems to me that the challenge for us in our time as Christians is to ask: what must we do to resist ethno-nationalism and fear? What must we do to become witnesses through service, through works of welcome and mercy for those who are sick and dying of the virus, and even for those who might reject and hate us ourselves as foreigners and strangers? What must we do to take upon ourselves the suffering of others, which is the suffering of Christ? What must we do to take upon ourselves the suffering of Christ who came and gave himself up for our sake in love? We embody that danger as a community. If we suffer as a result of that, whether hardship or sickness, that is simply a part of our calling to be followers of Jesus.
I want to conclude by reading you a poem by a friend of mine, Malcolm Guite, an Anglican priest who lives in Cambridge, England. He wrote this for the occasion of Easter this year, describing what Easter in 2020 has meant in the context of the pandemic. Here is Malcolm’s poem:
Easter 2020
“And where is Jesus, this strange Easter day?
Not lost in our locked churches, anymore
Than he was sealed in that dark sepulchre.
The locks are loosed; the stone is rolled away,
And he is up and risen, long before,
Alive, at large, and making his strong way
Into the world he gave his life to save,
No need to seek him in his empty grave.
He might have been a wafer in the hands
Of priests this day, or music from the lips
Of red-robed choristers, instead he slips
Away from church, shakes off our linen bands
To don his apron with a nurse: he grips
And lifts a stretcher, soothes with gentle hands
The frail flesh of the dying, gives them hope,
Breathes with the breathless, lends them strength to cope.
On Thursday we applauded, for he came
And served us in a thousand names and faces
Mopping our sickroom floors and catching traces
Of that corona which was death to him:
Good Friday happened in a thousand places
Where Jesus held the helpless, died with them
That they might share his Easter in their need,
Now they are risen with him, risen indeed.”
Jesus is risen. Death does not have the last word. Fear does not have the last word. Nationalism does not have the last word. Nationalism is a sad, angry defense against the universally embracing love of God that seeks to gather us all up as one people, so that the walls are broken down and we are one in Christ. Our task is simply to bear witness to that truth in whatever ways we can. I’m sure that in the conversations that will follow, many of you will have stories to share about ways you see that happening in your own contexts, ways that you found yourself called to reach out and to serve in a time in plague and pandemic. But I’m grateful that death does not have the last word, that we are in this moment yet alive and see each other’s face. The concluding stanza of Charles Wesley’s hymn is this:
“Let us take up the cross
til we the crown obtain
and gladly reckon all things loss
so we may Jesus gain.”
May it be so; may we be one people gathered together under the sign of the cross, people who embody the ministry of reconciliation. Grace and peace be with you all.
(The speech has been authorized to be published without proofreading.)
New Testament Scholar Richard Hays: Welcome Strangers in a Time of Pandemic
