immigrants

 

Abraham was seventy-five when he set out on a great adventure with God. He had already seen seventy-five winters. (So have I; but then, we squeeze more than one winter into each year around here.)

God invites Abram to get away — to distance himself — from his country, his kindred, and his father’s house, exchanging these securities — the soil and the people who have formed him — for uncertainty, and for his descendants to become a foreign (goy, or gentile) people wherever they reside.

Like Jews and Muslims, Christians trace their faith heritage back to Abraham. And while there are voices today claiming that Britain must reclaim its Christian heritage, there is no such thing as a Christian geo-political nation, or national people group. Land and neighbour and family matter to Christians, but don’t define us. We are foreigners in the midst of whatever nation we live in; foreigners positioned there to bless this ‘other’ soil and people we live among.

The word used to describe Abram’s father’s house can also be translated ‘palace’ or ‘dungeon,’ and when we seek to elevate the historic palace of Christianity in this nation — its beautiful buildings and music; its position of privilege in the corridors of power — it becomes, for us, a dungeon.

God speaks to Abram about both blessings and curses. Blessings are expansive, words — and actions — of life-giving affirmation. Curses are temporary constraints applied to those whose actions towards others steal life, make their world smaller. Being under a curse — for example, spending time in prison — is intended, in part, to create space to change minds and amend ways, ultimately opening the door to blessing that outstrips the curse.

If anyone is truly concerned that we, as a national society, have lost our sense of identity, confidence, and direction on account of forsaking the Church, the best advice I can offer is that you commit yourself to being found among the local church community that gathers week by week in your neighbourhood; that you submit yourself to learning, alongside neighbours of various origins, the Way of Jesus. That you might move from being under a curse to being blessed, and a means by which others are blessed too. You are not yet too old.

But if you are simply looking to co-opt Christianity as a weapon against other faiths, you won’t find support here.

Genesis 12.1-4

‘Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.’