We had another April birthday to celebrate last week:

I have lived abroad for short periods when I was a student and it is exciting to do this, but also daunting. There are so many things that are unfamiliar about living abroad: culture, language, climate, scenery and so on. It’s very easy to feel like an outsider, to not understand the culture and therefore offend people inadvertently (last year in India, my left-handedness almost got me into trouble, for the left hand is still seen as unclean in that culture) or to be misunderstood because of language barriers.

In our society, many people feel like outsiders; they feel the loneliness of misunderstanding and the pain of not ‘fitting in.’ I have a plaque which hangs in my kitchen that says

Xenophilia means we reach beyond understanding to love what we don’t understand because we know there are no outsiders to God’s love. As Rend Collective remind us in their poignant song, ‘No Outsiders’, ‘we are all welcome: there’s grace enough.’

You are our refuge
You have no borders
When I was a stranger, knocking at Your door
You took me in
With no questions, and no conditions;
When I was a sinner, running from Your grace
You called me friend.
You called me friend.

There are no outsiders to Your love.
We are all welcome, there’s grace enough.
When I have wandered, Lord, your cross is the open door.
There are no outsiders;
I’m not an outsider to Your love.

You are the harbour
In every tempest.
When my soul was shipwrecked,
Tossed upon the waves,
You calm the storm.
You are the Father
And there are no orphans –
Every tribe and nation
Gathered in Your arms
Sings with one voice,
Sings with one voice.

There are no outsiders to Your love.
We are all welcome, there’s grace enough.
When I have wandered Lord, your cross is the open door.
There are no outsiders;
I’m not an outsider to Your love.

I was tired, I was poor;
I was thrown upon Your shores.
I was homeless and afraid,
‘Til I heard You call my name.
Now I’m ransomed, I’m restored;
Resurrected, I am Yours.
I am loved, yes, I belong.
Oh, my soul has found its home.’ (‘No Outsiders’, Rend Collective)

John Ortberg has written a book called ‘I’d Like You More If You Were More Like Me’, a sentiment that is probably more true than we often care to admit…

We all feel safe loving people who are like us because we understand them. We make allowances for their flaws and faults because they are our own. Xenophilia means to love those who are, by definition, not exactly like us. We are called to love the outsiders, the rejects, the ones no one else cares about, because God loves them just as much as He loves us.

Jesus was once asked the piercing question ‘Who is my neighbour?’ (Luke 10:29), a question which prompted the parable of the Good Samaritan. In that parable, he showed us that our assumptions and prejudices can’t always be relied upon. The Samaritan, the one whom Jews despised, was actually the one who showed practical love to the man who’d been attacked by robbers. Being a good neighbour, Jesus revealed, was about showing mercy, about not passing by on the other side as the priest and Levite had done. We are called to be good neighbours to everyone, not only to those who ‘deserve’ our love and attention, but to those who do not. Grace, after all, is all about getting God’s favour when we deserve only judgment and wrath. Those who have received grace, God says, need to pass it on.

We serve God when we love other people, and we love other people not just with words or speech, but with actions and in truth.(1 Jn 3:18) Hospitality to those who are not like us – and yet who are people made in God’s image and therefore just like us – is one of the many ways we can love with actions and in truth.

The love that God wants us to show towards all people is essentially practical (see 1 Jn 3:16-18). It involves practical help: offering food, clothing, and any other practical help that is needed. Loneliness is endemic in our country, even within the church, but God sets the lonely in families (Ps 68:6) and one of the ways we can show love is to open our homes and hearts to other people – something that our British culture often finds hard to do.

Practical love may mean a telephone call or a text to see how someone is… a visit to someone who is housebound… inviting someone to a meal… arranging a trip out. The early church worshipped together, prayed together and played together (Acts 2:42-47) and we need to be like that too. Rom 12:13 urges us to ‘share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practise hospitality.’ Peter urges us to offer hospitality without grumbling. (1 Pet 4:9) Xenophilia goes beyond this, however, for we need to love all people, not just those we like or who are like us!

Xenophilia means we are not satisfied with loving those who love us; we want to love the people God loves – and He loves everyone. That is not comfortable. It is not safe. There is risk involved in loving people who may not speak our language, who may not share our values and morals, who are not like us. It’s scary. We can’t predict the outcomes. Most of us prefer safety and comfort. We don’t really like risk in our lives.

But we owe our salvation to a God who took risks. God sent His only Son to seek and to save the lost. He faced rejection, insults, misunderstanding and betrayal in order to save us, and so we cannot hide behind our middle-class niceness and assume that that is enough. God is calling us to a radical love. To reach out to our community means reaching out to people who are not like us in many ways, but who need to see God’s love through us. How else will they know that God loves them unless we show them? Who else will go?

Jesus was known as the ‘friend of sinners’ (Luke 7:34). He was criticised because he ate and drank with prostitutes and tax collectors, the lowest of the low as far as the Pharisees were concerned. (Matt 11:19) The religious people had a real problem with Jesus because He didn’t conform to their stereotypes of what a religious teacher ought to be like. But the people, ordinary people, loved Him because they knew He cared for them. We have to be careful not to become religious and respectable. Our love needs to be practical and needs to reach out to all. We need to love all people with God’s love.

X is not the most popular letter in the English alphabet, and so in our series The A-Z of Christian Faith, looking at the essential ingredients needed in a life of faith, we had to borrow a word from Greek: xenophilia, derived from two words (xenos, a stranger or foreigner and philia, one of the Greek words for love.) Xenophilia means a love for strangers or foreigners and is also translated hospitality. We are far more used, alas, to its opposite, xenophobia, often showing a fear of or enmity towards strangers.

Throughout the Bible, we see God commanding His people to show love for the stranger as the visible outworking of our love for Him.(Matt 25:31-46; see also Ex 22:21 and Ex 23:9). On the one hand, we are all strangers and foreigners on earth (see Heb 11:13, 1 Pet 2:11, Phil 3:20), pilgrims travelling towards a heavenly destination (Heb 11:16). The Israelites knew first-hand what it was like to feel like an outsider following their persecution in Egypt and this experience seems to have shaped the laws they were later given to show regard for the foreigner. We are asked to love beyond our natural capacity because of God’s great love for us (Matt 5:43-48, Eph 4:32). Charity starts at home (and we are urged to show hospitality in the church – see Acts 2:42-47, Gal 6:10, 1 Jn 4:20-21), but it’s not enough to stay there. We are urged to love those who are different to us, to love and bless our enemies and to reflect God’s loving nature in all our relationships. The love that we show to strangers is a way they can experience God’s love for themselves; we serve God best when we serve other people and must not show partiality, but must welcome all. (Rom 15:7, Js 2:18-19)