Theological Reflection by Andy Hamilton SJ

Why worry about refugees?                                                                 

The Scriptures begin with the story of creation.  And by the end of that story,  all that needs to be said about refugees has been said.  We learn these things:  the world is God’s gift, given to us all;  God loves each human being who is ever to come into the world;   therefore all human beings matter.  And so refugees matter.  We are all made in God’s image.  So, when another human being is exiled or abused, God’s image is not treated with due respect.                           

Because God loves of each of us personally, what we share as human beings is much more important than our differences.  The communities to which we belong - our families, towns, states and nations - help shape who we are.  But we also have responsibility to strangers who do not belong to those communities.   When someone who is starving or at risk of their life knocks on the door of our family house or of our nation, we may not simply ignore their plight.  They may not belong to our family or our nation, but they are our fellow human beings also loved by God.              

            We find this insight enshrined in the laws given to the people if Israel.  They are instructed to welcome strangers.  For God had been with them when they wandered as  strangers through Canaan.  Because God had chosen them as friends, they were to befriend other strangers who were also God’s friends. 

            In his teaching, Jesus also insisted on hospitality to strangers.  He shocked the Pharisees by welcoming people whom they excluded from their meals:  Romans, tax collectors and prostitutes.  He also saw the heart of Israel to lie in the great exhortation to love God with our whole heart, whole mind and whole soul, and to love our neighbour as ourselves.  But when Jesus was asked who is our neighbour, he told a story about a Samaritan, a member of a despised group.   In his story the Samaritan was the one who showed neighbourly love.  

Jesus also died as a stranger to reconcile strangers.  He was taken outside the city to be killed, and his brutal killing was designed to strip him of his humanity.  His death shows what sin is like.  In it we take our eyes off God and our common humanity, and concentrate on our own interests and those of our group.  As Caiphas said of Jesus, it was convenient to kill one man for the sake of the nation.  This self-centredness is the attitude that makes refugees and pushes them away from our homes and nation. 

When he rose from the dead, Jesus proved that God’s love is stronger than our self-centredness.  He also gave us hope that our world could be different.  Instead of pushing away and punishing the stranger, we can imagine a world in which the differences between people are a source of life and where we share our resources with those most in need.   This is a world in which refugees are not made, and when they come they are made welcome.  The church, where Paul says there is to be no difference made between Jew and Greek, between men and women is called to be the kind of community we would like to find made between nations.   It is one where asylum seekers and refugees should find a welcome.

So in Christian faith, refugees and asylum seekers are important because in them we welcome Christ who comes to us in the stranger.  We live out our faith in our face to face meeting with asylum seekers.  Nothing is more encouraging than to meet someone who will walk with you and look you in the eye.

We also live out our faith in making some of the energy and resources of our church communities available to refugees and asylum seekers.  This is a very practical way of respecting the image of God in our brothers and sisters.