Independence Day was this past weekend. Maybe you were at a cookout. Maybe you sat on a folding chair and watched fireworks over the water. Maybe the flag came out of the closet and got hung on the porch. It's a good weekend, and it's a real gift to live in a country you can love out loud.

But when I sat down with the Bible readings the church appointed for the Fourth of July, I noticed something almost immediately. They're not what you'd write if you were putting together a patriotic service. They don't celebrate the country. They don't wave the flag. They tell us to love strangers.

The Hebrew word doing more work than we realize

The first reading is from Deuteronomy 10. Moses is speaking to Israel just before they enter the promised land, and he says the Lord "loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing... You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt."

There's a Hebrew word in that line worth knowing: ger — pronounced "gair." It doesn't mean quite what "stranger" means in English. A ger isn't a tourist and isn't just an immigrant. A ger is a resident alien — someone who lives among you, eats where you eat, works where you work, but doesn't have full standing. They can't inherit the way you inherit. They live with you, but they're not quite of you.

Deuteronomy uses that word thirty-six times — more than any other book in the Torah. And every time, the command is basically the same: love the ger, feed the ger, leave grain in the corner of your field for the ger, do not oppress the ger. The reason God gives, every time, is the same too: because you were the ger, in Egypt. You know what it was like to live somewhere you weren't quite welcome. So you, of all people, don't get to build a nation where somebody else has to live that way. That's not sentimental — it's covenantal. Your memory of being small in a big country isn't a private wound. It's an assignment.

Abraham never unpacked

The second reading, from Hebrews 11, pushes the idea further. Hebrews describes Abraham as living in tents — in the land he'd been promised. He was in the promised land and he still lived in tents. He never built a house. He never set down roots, because he was looking for something further out, something more permanent. Hebrews says the people of faith "confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth... they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one."

I think that's the line the church put in front of us on the Fourth on purpose. Before we get too settled in the country we have, we're reminded that the whole story of faith is a story of strangers looking for a homeland they haven't quite reached yet. That's not a knock on America — it's the church's word to every country in every generation. Don't build a kingdom you can't leave behind. And every citizen of that better country walks around carrying a little bit of ger inside them — a little bit of not fully home yet.

Loving beyond the circle

Then comes the Gospel, Matthew 5, and Jesus gives us the daily practice: "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you... he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous." Jesus is quoting the folk version of the law — "hate your enemy" isn't actually in the Torah, it's what people had drifted to. He pushes back: the true center of the law is love beyond your circle. "If you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?" Tribal loyalty is cheap. Even the corrupt guys can manage that.

A Kingdom person loves beyond the circle. They love the ger. They love the enemy. They love the person the flag on the porch doesn't automatically include.

The freedom worth celebrating

I want to be careful here, because I'm not doing politics on this podcast — I'm reading what the church put in front of us for July 4th and telling you what I hear. What I hear is that the deepest form of freedom Deuteronomy, Hebrews, and Jesus all point to isn't the freedom to defend your own patch of land. It's the freedom to remember you were once small in someone else's, and to act like it.

If you were at a cookout, and the flag was up, and the burgers were on the grill — good. Enjoy it fully. That's not the enemy of any of this. But somewhere this week, ask yourself: where in my life am I acting like I've always been at the head of the table? Who am I treating like a ger — like they're here, but not quite mine? What would it look like this week to love the person who doesn't automatically fit inside my circle?

That's the country Hebrews is talking about — the homeland with foundations. It's the only country any of us are actually citizens of, in the end.