The pastor of my church has been doing a series of sermons this summer on compassion. Yesterday’s installment was on "Loving the Stranger" and focused on the responsibility of Christians to refugees and other immigrants. It was one of the most powerful sermons I have ever heard. It began with the following:
Did you know that close to seventy Bible verses summon us to care for the refugee, the alien, the sojourner, and the stranger? It’s true. Most of the references are found in the Old Testament, but the New certainly has its share. A classic example is found in Deuteronomy 10.
The entire thing is well worth reading, but I’ll include a few excerpts here.
This is the biblical, theological mandate to God’s people, to Israel, and to the Church. Despite the laws of any given nation, whatever the country might be, God’s people (you and me) have an obligation to care for the refugee, the stranger, the alien. We have a sacred obligation to execute justice—meaning, fairness, wholeness, healing—on their behalf. We have to protect them, provide for them, provide sanctuary, safety, help. We risk caring for them for no other reason than that they are vulnerable and need our help.
All of this sounds oddly relevant today, doesn’t it? As we know, immigration and refugee policies are politically and emotionally charged issues in the United States these days. You know the story: we have proposed travel bans, the construction of a wall on the Mexico border (which will cost around $12 billion dollars, although estimates are as high as $21 billion dollars). This past week a new immigration bill was introduced that wants to restrict legal immigration to English-speaking, skilled workers and to cut the number of legal immigrations by fifty-percent, to so-called “historic levels.” According to the Migration Policy Institute, there were “1.3 million immigrants in 1907, about a quarter of a million more than in 2015. Immigration relative to the US population peaked in 1890, when immigrants made up nearly 15% of the population.” Immigration numbers have ebbed and flowed, especially during times of national crisis. Whether we like it or not, the words of Emma Lazarus (1849-1887) remain part of our narrative:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”[1]
We must be very wary of those who want to separate this vision from what we mean by liberty. The progressive-evangelical pastor/writer, Rob Bell said recently, “When a nation of immigrants starts putting up travel bans, you have officially lost the plot.”
It concluded with the following:
At Catonsville Presbyterian Church, we are reaching out to the stranger, the refugee in our midst. We are serving Christ in our neighbor, it doesn’t matter if our neighbor is Muslim, because we are all created in the image of the same God. You’ll have to talk to the members of the Refugee Relief Group to hear all that this church has done in the last three weeks. Two weeks ago, I shared that we are caring for a family that lost everything in Aleppo, then lived in a refugee camp in Turkey for several years, and then came to the Catonsville area, knowing very little English, with little money, looking for work. The children have been bullied. Their daughter, Aya [not her real name], was assaulted in school, leaving her with a serious concussion.* It’s not safe to play in the streets where they live. They are being picked on for being other, strange, different. Through generous donations and help from our Child Care Center, the children are participating in our summer program. They love it here at the church. They love playing in our playground. Last week, a teacher stopped by my study to tell me something that happened that day. One of the teachers asked Aya if she liked America. She replied, “No.” She said people had been mean to her and her family. But then she said, referring to the Center, being at the Church, playing in the playground, “This is my America.” At the end of that week, Aya's mother baked bread for the teachers of the Center.
I’m grateful that Aya discovered “America” here, on this corner of God’s Kingdom. America, yes, but even more, I like to think that she’s experienced again (or maybe for the first time), something of God’s grace and love for her, expressed through the teachers of the Center. I like to think that after so much trauma and fear, hunger and suffering, she knows, through us, that God loves the stranger, the refugee, the immigrant, the resident alien in our midst. Those that love God can do no less.
I wish similar sermons were being preached from every pulpit in America. I read the diary about the deportation proceedings against the mother of the 8 year old girl suffering from cancer in El Paso, Texas, and I wonder how anyone can justify such heartlessness — whether they are religious or not, but particularly if they claim to be Christian.