Sojourners And Strangers

11:13-16 All these died without obtaining possession of the promises. They only saw them from far away and greeted them from afar, and they admitted that they were strangers and sojourners upon the earth. Now people who speak like that make it quite clear that they are searching for a fatherland. If they were thinking of the land from which they had come out, they would have had time to return. In point of fact they were reaching out after something better, I mean, the heavenly country. It was because of that that God was not ashamed to be called their God, for he had prepared a city for them.

None of the patriarchs entered into the full possession of the promises that God had made to Abraham. To the end of their days they were nomads, never living a settled life in a settled land. They had to be for ever moving on. Certain great permanent truths emerge from them.

(i) They lived for ever as strangers. The writer to the Hebrews uses three vivid Greek words about them.

(a) In Hebrews 11:13 he calls them xenoi ( Greek #3581 ). Xenos is the word for a stranger and a foreigner. In the ancient world the fate of the stranger was hard. He was regarded with hatred and suspicion and contempt. In Sparta xenos ( Greek #3581 ) was the equivalent of barbaros ( Greek #915 ), barbarian. A man writes complaining that he was despised "because I am a xenos ( Greek #3581 )". Another man writes that, however poor a home is, it is better to live at home than epi ( Greek #1909 ) xenes ( Greek #3581 ), in a foreign country. When clubs had their common meal, those who sat down to it were divided into members and xenoi ( Greek #3581 ). Xenos ( Greek #3581 ) can even mean a refugee. All their lives the patriarchs were foreigners in a land that never was their own.

(b) In Hebrews 11:9 he uses the word paroikein ( Greek #3939 ), to sojourn, of Abraham. A paroikos ( Greek #3941 ) was a resident alien. The word is used of the Jews when they were captives in Babylon and in Egypt. A paroikos ( Greek #3941 ) was not very much above a slave in the social scale. He had to pay an alien tax. He was always an outsider and only on payment a member of the community.

(c) In Hebrews 11:13 he uses the word parepidemos ( Greek #3927 ). A parepidemos was a person who was staying there temporarily and who had his permanent home somewhere else. Sometimes his stay was strictly limited. A parepidemos ( Greek #3927 ) was a man in lodgings, a man without a home in the place where life had sent him. All their lives the patriarchs were men who had no settled place that they could call home. It is to be noted that to dwell in a foreign land was a humiliating thing in ancient days; to the foreigner in any country a certain stigma attached. In the Letter of Aristeas the writer says: "It is a fine thing to live and to die in one's native land; a foreign land brings contempt to poor men and shame to rich men, for there is the lurking suspicion that they have been exiled for the evil they have done." In Ecclesiasticus ( Sirach 29:22-28 ) there is a wistful passage:

"Better the life of the poor under a shelter of logs

Than sumptuous fare in the house of strangers.

With little or much be contented:

So wilt thou not have to bear the reproach of thy wandering.

An evil life it is to go from house to house,

And where thou art a stranger thou must not open thy mouth.

A stranger thou art in that case and drinkest contempt;

And besides this thou wilt have to hear bitter things:

'Come hither, sojourner, and furnish my table,

And if thou hast aught feed me therewith';

Or, 'Get thee gone, sojourner, from the face of honour,

My brother is come as my guest, I have need of my house.'

These things are grievous to a man of understanding:

Upbraiding concerning sojourning, and the reproach of a

moneylender."

At any time it is an unhappy thing to be a stranger in a strange land, but in ancient days to this natural unhappiness there was added the bitterness of humiliation.

All their days the patriarchs were strangers in a strange land. That picture of the sojourner became a picture of the Christian life. Tertullian said of the Christian: "He knows that on earth he has a pilgrimage but that his dignity is in heaven." Clement of Alexandria said: "We have no fatherland on earth." Augustine said: "We are sojourners exiled from our fatherland." It was not that the Christians were foolishly other-worldly, detaching themselves from the life and work of this world; but they always remembered that they were people on the way. There is an unwritten saying of Jesus: "The world is a bridge. The wise man will pass over it but will not build his house upon it." The Christian regards himself as the pilgrim of eternity.

(ii) In spite of everything these men never lost their vision and their hope. However long that hope might be in coming true, its light always shone in their eyes. However long the way might be, they never stopped tramping along it. Robert Louis Stevenson said: "It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive." They never wearily gave up the journey; they lived in hope and died in expectation.

(iii) In spite of everything they never wished to go back. Their descendants, when they were in the desert, often wished to go back to the fleshpots of Egypt. But not the patriarchs. They had begun and it never struck them to turn back. In flying there is what is called the point of no return. When the aeroplane has reached that point it cannot go back. Its petrol supply has reached such a level that there is nothing left but to go on. One of the tragedies of life is the number of people who turn back just a little too soon. One further effort, a little more waiting, a little more hoping, would make the dream come true. Immediately a Christian has set out on some enterprise sent him by God, he should feel that he has already passed the point of no return.

(iv) These men were able to go on because they were haunted by the things beyond. The man with the wanderlust is lured on by the thought of the countries he has never yet seen. The great artist or composer is driven by the thought of the performance he has never yet given and the wonder he has never yet produced. Stevenson tells of an old byreman who spent all his days amidst the muck of the byre. Someone asked him if he never got tired of it all. He answered; "He that has something ayont (beyond) need never weary." These men had the something beyond--and so may we.

(v) Because these men were what they were, God was not ashamed to be called their God. Above all things, he is the God of the gallant adventurer. He loves the man who is ready to venture for his name. The prudent, comfort-loving man is the very opposite of God. The man who goes out into the unknown and keeps going on will in the end arrive at God.