Loving The Stranger: Refusing to Turn A Blind Eye to Opposition

Quick Glance: For Your Heart Today
Loving our neighbor is not only about caring for those we know well. Jesus teaches that love also reaches toward the stranger—the one who feels unfamiliar, uncomfortable, or different. Like Peter, we carry history, influences, and experiences that shape how we see others. And sometimes, those experiences can lead us to hold others at a distance. But God meets us in those places. He expands our vision. He invites us to see others as He sees them—each one made in His image, each one beloved. And love begins with seeing anew.

3 Takeaways

1. We all have “the other.”
   Our experiences shape how we see people, and sometimes we hold others at a distance without realizing it.
2. God invites us into a renewed vision.
   Like Peter, we can let God interrupt old assumptions and widen our understanding of who belongs at the table.
3. Love begins with seeing as Jesus sees.
   When Jesus re-shapes our vision, love becomes possible even in places once marked by pain, distance, or fear.

Breath Prayer
Inhale: Jesus, renew my sight…
Exhale: …help me see as You see.

Estimated Reading Time: 16–18 minutes

Loving the Stranger: A Renewed Vision

Introduction

We have spent the last month in a season of celebration—forty years of God’s faithfulness to this church. We told stories, we remembered milestones, we worshiped and we gave thanks. But we also know the story is not over. God is still writing our story, shaping us as a family, as we connect with God, grow together, and change the world in God’s love. And love is the key, and at the core of it all.

Jesus said the greatest commandments are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. Now, you may recall that someone once asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” And Jesus answered with the story we know as the Good Samaritan.

At first, we might think the “neighbor” in the story is the man in need on the side of the road. And he is. But when Jesus finishes, He asks a different question from his interrogator: Jesus asks, “Which one was a neighbor to the man?” The point being not simply to see others as our neighbors, but also that we are called to be a neighbor—by extending compassion intentionally, and at times sacrificially, even to those we do not know.

Loving one’s neighbor includes those familiar, but also those unfamiliar to us. Those who may not share our background, our story or our ways. In other words, Jesus teaches that loving our neighbor includes loving the stranger, also loving those we may consider to be the “other.”

And that is where the challenge of love is a choice becomes real. Because life shapes us. Our experiences, environments, and histories influence how we see others. And sometimes, those experiences can lead us to hold certain people or people groups at a distance.

Now, I want to pause here for a moment and invite you to consider who those people might be for you. Who comes to your mind when you think of those you’d consider to be “other” from you? Perhaps their ways or mannerisms are unfamiliar or uncomfortable and you prefer to keep your distance.

Perhaps it’s people you find annoying, pushy, disrespectful, entitled, arrogant, ignorant, or any number of descriptions that may lead you to step away. To see them as the “stranger” or “other.”

Now please hear me, this is not about heaping guilt or judgment; we are simply trying to be honest before God because he knows anyway.

We all have people in our lives whom we may regard as the “stranger” or “other,” even if we don’t admit it out loud. People for whom, if left to us, we’d be perfectly fine if you stay over there, and I’ll stay over here. We see that division big time in the worlds of politics and religion
right now.

But as the adage goes, God loves us too much to leave us this way. It’s in these spaces where God loves to step in if we let Him.

There is a moment in Scripture where someone who loved God deeply faces this exact reality. Someone faithful, sincere, and devoted to Jesus, like many of us, is faced with making a choice about loving the stranger, the other in his day.

We are going to catch up with Peter, someone who walked with Jesus when Jesus was on earth, witnessed Jesus’ resurrection, was present at Pentecost and delivered a powerful message about the coming of the Holy Spirit, and is now faithfully teaching and preaching as a key leader in the growing early church. AND, God had something to teach him about “the other.”

Scripture Reading: Acts 10:9–23


Unpacking the Text
Sisters and brothers, our text puts us right in the middle of the story. Peter is traveling, sharing the Good News of Jesus, and along the way, at the place where he will spend the night, he goes up to the rooftop to pray. It is around noon, and Scripture tells us that he becomes hungry. Now, it does not say he was intentionally fasting, but it’s a significant detail, because we have a moment where hunger and prayer meet.

The truth is, something unique can happen when prayer and hunger come together. That’s why prayer and fasting are so important as a spiritual practice. Prayer and hunger can create a kind of thin space between heaven and earth, if you will. A space where our physical longing leads us to be a little more receptive spiritually, and God can connect with us differently and more deeply.

So Peter is simply doing what he has always done: turning toward God in the middle of an ordinary day, and he becomes hungry. And in that space, with that combination, he falls into what Scripture calls a trance—we may call it a deeply meditative state—and he sees a vision.

The Bible tells us he sees something like a large sheet being lowered from heaven with all kinds of animals. The text is specific in the animals it lists because, according to the dietary laws given to Israel in Leviticus during the time of Moses, this sheet contains what would have been considered clean and unclean animals, meaning animals that were okay for the children of Israel to eat, and animals they were forbidden to eat.

Now, these laws were not merely about diet. They shaped the way Jewish life was structured and ordered. They drew lines of identity and marked belonging to God’s covenant community. These dietary laws embodied how to live as God’s people in the world. So when Peter sees clean and unclean animals together, it is not just unusual. It is deeply unsettling. This vision touches something at the core of how Peter has understood faithfulness to God his entire life.

Then a voice says, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.” And Peter responds immediately, “Surely not, Lord. I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.” It is an instinctual, automatic response. This is not Peter being stubborn or rebellious. This is Peter being faithful to everything he has been taught about loving and obeying God. The very thought of what he’s being suggested is distasteful and disorienting.

And whether Peter senses it or not, there’s even more going on here, because this vision is about so much more than food; it’s about fellowship and who is welcomed at the table.

The Bible calls what dropped from heaven a sheet, but as I envision it, as a giant tablecloth.

African American theologian Willie James Jennings offers a beautiful insight here. He notes that when we hear this story, we tend to think in terms of consumption, as if the issue is what Peter is being asked to eat. But he explains in Peter’s day, eating was about more than consumption; it was about community. It was about who you sit with, who you recognize, and who you call brother or sister around the table. Eating signaled identity and belonging—which is why we see so many scenes with Jesus at meals.

At first, Peter is perplexed, and he doesn’t understand it all, but I believe when Peter sees this tablecloth with both clean and unclean food, he senses in his gut that God is doing something new.

This vision is about a renewed vision—about who belongs, about who is welcome, about those who have been previously considered the “stranger” and “other.” And in Peter’s case, God is welcoming the Gentiles to the table of belonging.

The voice says, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” The vision repeats three times because this is not a small shift. Peter has to unlearn something deeply learned, deeply held, and deeply lived. And unlearning takes time.

Scripture tells us this twice: in verse 17 it says, “Peter was wondering about the meaning of the vision,” and again in verse 19 it says, “While Peter was still thinking about the vision…” Peter is processing his experience. He is holding what God has shown him without yet knowing what to do with it.

And while he is still thinking about it, some men arrive—Gentiles, strangers, outsiders to Peter’s religious world. And he hears God’s Spirit say, “Go with them. I sent them.”

And I love that even while Peter is still pondering the vision, and probably doesn’t understand what it all means yet, he is also open to what God is doing. We see this in what Peter does next: he invites the guests into the house. And to invite Gentile visitors into that house, to share hospitality and proximity in that space, is something Peter would not have done before.

This is Peter’s first yes to God in this story. Perhaps it was a quiet, “I don’t quite get it” yes, but still a yes that makes room for God to renew Peter’s mind and his vision. And it’s in that yes where growth and transformation begin.

Naming Our Barriers, Boundaries, and Biases

Family, I believe we can relate to Peter and Peter can relate to us. As we began this morning, we all have spaces where we hold back. We all have “strangers” and “others” in our lives. And we all have places where we keep boundaries, barriers, and biases that stifle love.

Not because we don’t care or are unkind, but because we live in a broken world and over time, we have learned to live the best way we know how. We’ve learned to guard our hearts. Life has taught us where it feels safe to be open and where it feels safer to keep our distance.

And friends, this is the space where bias lives, and where God wants to give us a new vision.

Bias is not always loud and in your face. It isn’t always hateful. Hate is fueled by something deeper, and that’s another sermon. Bias is often subtle. Quiet. Almost invisible to us.

Bias is the set of assumptions we make before we know someone. Bias is the story we tell ourselves about others that we’ve picked up along life’s journey.

And the cousin to bias is prejudice.

Bias lives inside of us; prejudice is what happens when we act from that bias. Bias is internal. Prejudice is bias in motion.

And prejudice literally means: we have pre-judged. It means filling in the story before we ever hear the truth of who a person really is.

Now, for people of color and marginalized populations, bias and prejudice are particularly sensitive topics because we have been on the receiving end of both.

The pain has shaped us, and we now know from science what our elders always knew—trauma lives in the body, including racial trauma.

Those who have been wounded by bias and prejudice have learned to protect ourselves in such a way that sometimes, love has no room to move—at least not in our own power.

And because we live in a broken world, even those who have been oppressed can develop prejudice.

Because we are human in a world that teaches us to divide, categorize, and protect ourselves, even those who have been marginalized can learn to marginalize. Because we are shaped—deeply—by the worlds we have survived.

And we were shaped in different ways—by our family stories, the neighborhoods we grew up in, moments of harm, and even pain passed down from before we were born.

So, especially in communities of color or oppression, where trust has been violated and dignity questioned, caution around the “other” is often not accidental.

Sometimes our boundaries are not even about the person in front of us, but about what their presence touches in us.

But here’s some good news. We are not defined by what has shaped us. And love covers a multitude of sins and teaches us to create healthy boundaries. But noticing our bias, barriers, and boundaries is where God likes to step in for healing and transformation.

These are our rooftop moments—where what formed us meets God’s invitation to see differently with a renewed vision.

Peter’s Moment and Ours

And this is where Peter is. His boundaries were not random. They were learned over a lifetime. But God is extending a new way of being and a new way of seeing.

So one question becomes: Why was Peter open at all? Why didn’t he simply shut the vision down? Why didn’t he simply stay true to his experience and reinforce the boundary that had always served him so well?

Peter was able to remain even in that unsettling moment because of his relationship with Jesus. He knew the One who was speaking to him—the same One who called him, forgave him, restored him, and loved him.

And the same is true for us.

We cannot love across barriers in our own strength. We do not overcome our boundaries or biases by effort or willpower alone. We have to choose to say yes to God’s invitation, that’s true.

But we can only begin to see differently because Jesus has already seen us with love. It’s His love that reframes how we see the “other.”

His love widens our vision, so that where we once saw threat and the need to keep our distance, we begin to recognize the image of God in every person.

This renewed vision of love does not erase our history. It does not ignore our caution. But it gives us another way of seeing— a renewed vision shaped not by fear or mistrust but by love.

Not love as a sentimental feeling—feelings come and go—but love as a choice to do good, honoring and recognizing the image of God in every person.

Contemporary Witness

There is a moment many of us remember from a few years ago—the death of Botham Jean, a young Black man who was shot in his own apartment by an off-duty police officer who said she mistook his home for hers.

His family carried a grief that they still carry today. This was a real, painful and needless loss. A devastating injustice.

During the sentencing hearing, Botham’s younger brother, Brandt, was given the chance to speak. He didn’t speak as someone trying to be strong. He spoke as a grieving brother—still hurting.

And the words he spoke to Amber Guyger, the police officer on trial, shocked many. He said:

“I forgive you.”
“I love you just like anyone else.”
“I personally want the best for you.”

He was not saying the pain was gone. He was not excusing what happened. And he was not ending the family’s pursuit of justice—because justice matters.

But something else was also true in that moment:

He saw her—not only as the one who caused harm, but as a human being. A life. An image-bearer of God. Someone Jesus loves.

Friends, that did not come from his own strength. It came from the love that had shaped him—the love of Jesus. And a renewed vision of love.

Love transcended what in human effort would have been an insurmountable barrier. But that is what a renewed vision can look like.

Not easy.
Not without pain.
But possible—when the love of Jesus opens our hearts and eyes to see as Jesus sees.

A Quiet Moment Before We Go

As we prepare to close and move into a time of prayer, I want to invite a quiet moment.

If someone came to mind earlier—someone you hold at a distance—the stranger or other in your life—hold their image gently before God.

And simply pray:
“Jesus, help me see as You see.”

And just sit with that for a few moments.

Because:
Love begins with seeing.
Love begins with a renewed vision.
And a renewed vision begins in Jesus.