Tomorrow's federal holiday marks the arrival of the first major European explorer, Christopher Columbus on this continent in 1492. As I was going through school, like many of you, I'm sure, we lauded Columbus for having discovered the New World. In my mind, I pictured Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria pulling up on the shores of a brand-new land, untouched by human existence, waiting for civilization to arrive and claim its resources. Of course, now we realize that was not an accurate picture at all. Columbus didn't discover a new world, he just bridged two very old and very different ones. He landed on shores teeming with human civilizations, but Columbus and the other explorers and colonists that poured in over the course of the next few centuries did not recognize those centuries-old cultures as civilizations at all, and the destruction that followed, through war and disease, decimated an entire population. Many people therefore choose to mark tomorrow's federal holiday as "Indigenous Peoples Day," to recognize that millions of people lived in this Old World long before the arrival of Columbus and the European colonists.

After the massive destruction over the last five centuries, those Native Americans whose ancestors were linked to the land in the days before Columbus make up only a tiny fraction of the current U.S. population. The vast majority of us currently living on this continent trace our lineage back through an experience of immigration. Whether you came to this country in your own lifetime, your parents or grandparents came to these shores, or some relatives arrived 75, 150, 250 or 500 years ago, almost all of us come from someplace else. We are a nation of immigrants. At one time or another, most of us have been strangers on these shores, whether at Plymouth Rock, Jamestown, Ellis Island, San Francisco, Miami, Los Angeles, New York City, Boston or any other place.

This particular Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples Day, that immigrant past of the majority of our population is particularly powerful to me. Many of you know that I and other members in this church and in the interfaith community have been deeply involved with the Boston-area janitors who are entering the third week of their strike. The janitors union is made up primarily of first-generation immigrants from Central and South America. These workers are in many ways alien to us, speaking Spanish or Portuguese, working night hours that render them nearly invisible to daytime office occupants, bringing new food, new customs, new values to the atmosphere of Boston. Most of these janitors work two, three, even four part-time jobs for low wages and no benefits. David D'Alessandro, the CEO of John Hancock, pointed out that many of us share a similar immigrant history with the janitors. He was quoted in the Boston Globe, as saying "the janitors 'are just like my grandparents' who immigrated to New York in the 1920s. 'When they came to this country they couldn't get work, and no one was going to help them. I continue to be outraged that the sons and daughters of those immigrants are trying to stop them today' from having adequate compensation, 'and I refuse to be one' of them." As these newest immigrants walk off the job and go out on strike, the effort is about more than just wages and benefits, it's even about more than justice. The reason these janitors have entered this struggle is because they want to belong in our American society. They don't want to be alien anymore, and most especially they don't want their children to be alien anymore. The union members came up with their own slogan for the campaign, and you'll see it on the bright purple T-shirts they wear: "Standing Up for the American Dream." These janitors, first generation immigrants, are asking to be full participants in our American milieu. They seek to move from being aliens to citizens, and to have the same opportunities as others who have been here for more generations. They are asking for the tools to help them belong.

Which raises the question: how does one make that transition from immigrant to local, from foreign and alien to "my fellow American"? Those of us who are not first-generation immigrants, who do not remember first-hand journeying to this land in our own lifetime, tend to consider ourselves to be natives of these United States. How many generations must one be present on this land in order to claim for oneself the status of citizen, not stranger, kindred, not alien?

As many of you know, I was born and raised in Virginia. As an undergraduate, I took a course in Virginia history from Professor Clive Hallman, the epitome of a southern gentleman, who began the first day of the semester the same way he had begun his Virginia history seminars for 30 years, looking out over the lecture hall auditorium and asking: "How many of you in this class are Virginians?" As might be expected, nearly 90% of us raised our hands. He pointed to a student, chosen at random. "You, tell me why you are a Virginian." The student in my class answered, "Well, my family came here when I was in 4th grade, my dad works at the Pentagon, so most of my life I can remember is in Virginia." Dr. Hallman would nod and smile, "Ah yes, but you weren't born here. Anyone who wasn't born in Virginia, you might as well put your hands down. You definitely aren't a Virginian." Then he chose another student at random, from those remaining with their hands in the air. "You, when did your family come to Virginia?" The next student answered, "The navy brought my grandfather to Virginia in World War II, and they stayed here." Dr. Hallman would shake his head, "No, son, I'm sorry, you aren't a Virginian either." Then came his declaration: "It takes at least five generations to make you a Virginian. If your family has been here any less than 100 years, you aren't even close. And really, you should go back at least 150 years, before the Civil War, to truly be considered a Virginian."

While such state pride may be characteristically southern, I have encountered a similar pride here in Boston among those who seek a centuries-long pedigree in order to qualify as true "New Englanders." These bluebloods have a lineage that has endowed them with special links to American history and, supposedly, some unique genetic tolerance for the New England winter. Do you know what I'm referring to? I trust that you too have encountered, in some place, at some time, that pride and privilege people claim in their home territory.

What is striking, though, in our nation of immigrants, is just how arbitrary it all is. Apparently 150 years is the magic number to make you a Virginian. Some New Englanders might argue that it takes exactly 382 years, which would put your family arriving in 1620 on the Mayflower. Columbus arrived 510 years ago. But all that pales in comparison to Native Americans whose ancestors have been rooted in this land for millennia. What, then, does it take to be a native in this place or that one? What must you do in order to belong?

Then again, perhaps those questions, that way of making judgments about belonging, is wrong from the very beginning. Maybe we should ask whether or not our sense of belonging should have anything to do with location, with nationality, or with geography at all.

That day in my Virginia history class, there were only three of us that qualified by his definition of what it meant to be a Virginian. I took great pride in being one of those three that could stand up to such scrutiny, and felt an immediate sense of camaraderie with the other two true Virginians in the class. We were kindred, we belonged. But that sense of belonging quickly disappeared when I realized that, of the more than 100 students in the room, I was able to connect with only two. The rest of those sitting around me were instantly strangers, and we were alienated from one another. By building our allegiances on some arbitrary occupation of a certain place for a certain time, we had succeeded only in creating a collection of people who were alien to one another. We human beings love to draw borders, for all kinds of arbitrary reasons. Something within us has us convinced that "good fences make good neighbors," as Robert Frost's neighbor stated. But Frost counters:

Those walls we draw between ourselves, whether based upon how long we've lived someplace, the color of our skin, the language we speak, or the nation to which we pledge our allegiance, always serve to wall someone in and someone out.

The passage Lois read this morning from the Book of Isaiah, however, presents with an alternative vision, where walls are removed and borders erased. This section of Isaiah was written six to seven hundred years before the life of Christ, in a time when the people of Israel were facing constant assault from foreign empires. In the previous centuries, they had established a successful kingdom under the leadership of David and Solomon, and even managed to build a secure border around their territory and enjoy stable nationhood for awhile. But that kingdom had become fractured over time, and by the time of Isaiah the Israelites were constantly being preyed upon by outside forces. The people were distraught, because their sense of belonging in this land had been destroyed by invasion and occupation. The writer describes a "palace of aliens", the foreigners who now occupied Jerusalem. As you might imagine, the description of these aliens is not particularly flattering. The writer basically says, "we welcome these foreigners about as much as we welcome heat in the middle of a drought."

However, despite the writer's distaste, what follows contains no plea for stronger walls, safer boundaries, or more secure borders. There is not even an attempt to distinguish the foreigner from the native. Instead, we hear, "On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples (for all peoples!) a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines." The palace of aliens is no more, never to be rebuilt, and all peoples are instead invited to a banquet of rich foods and fine wine. There are no aliens, no strangers at God's banquet table. God reaches out beyond all distinctions to welcome everyone to the feast God has prepared. In God's realm, everyone belongs.

On this Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples Day when we mark the complex and painful history of various peoples on this continent, when our local headlines are occupied by the continued struggles of immigrants to find welcome at the American table, and when the leaders of this nation begin to take steps toward war with another nation, we need to hear once again the vision God offers in the scriptures. God does not desire for us to be alienated from one another, but instead to sit together at a banquet table and share in a great feast where everyone is welcome and there are no more aliens to be found. God has not created us to be alienated from one another, but to share together in the abundance of creation. We belong together.

The vision in Revelation is even more bold, describing the fruition of God's plan for creation. Instead of just a table of individuals, the vision in Revelation is a city whose gates are always open, in effect a city without walls, where whole nations and peoples are reconciled. God is at the center of the city, and the brightness of God's glory extends out in every direction. Nation after nation is drawn to the brightness of that glory, and all come together through the open gates. In this marvelous city without borders, there is no longer any division of nation from nation, no native and no foreigner, no difference between stranger and kindred. All nations and all peoples are participants in God's realm.

We need to be reminded that this is God's vision for humanity. And we need this reminder not simply so that we can be faithful disciples and servants at bringing about that kind of world, where all are welcome and divisions are no more, but because, in faith, we believe that these words from scripture are more than just a vision. God's welcome table and the promise of healing for the nations are not simply a vision and a dream, but a promise. God is working among us, even in this divided and boundaried world, to promote healing and reconciliation, welcome and community. God will not abandon us to become an alien nation, God does not desire for us to be alien to one another. And more, God will never alienate us from God's own self, no matter what. That is the faith in which we can place our eternal hope, because God has promised, in the words of Isaiah, to "wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of the people God will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited, that God might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in God's salvation." Indeed, let us rejoice in the promise of God's healing and reconciliation for all of us in this alien world.

Let us pray.