In Matthew, chapter 8, a “teacher of the law” offers to follow Jesus wherever he goes. A simple suggestion, but one that poses a dilemma, because … Jesus has no home. Or as verse 20 puts it, more poetically: “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”…. Jesus was a refugee. A homeless refugee…. In Jesus’s time, there were no borders, or border patrols. There were neither passports nor visas. There was no Customs and Immigration Service. If you were persecuted or in danger, then you would just tie your belongings to your donkey, and you would leave. And wherever you went, no one would even think of turning you away or hurting you, simply because you were from somewhere else. That’s what the people of Sodom did to Lot (Genesis, chapter 19), and look at what happened to them. It’s now 2,000 years later. We have refugees in our time, too. Have our moral standards improved since then? Have they?
Most people reading this have never had to worry about where they’ll be sleeping tonight or where their next meal is coming from. They’ll never have to worry about someone dropping a mortar in their living and killing their loved ones. They’ll never have to worry about being kidnapped from their home and being killed for believing in the wrong flavor of Imaginary Friend. Those of us who will never have to concern ourselves with these things are truly fortunate…because there are places in the world where a lack of shelter, food, and/or safety is a very real and immediate concern. Yet how many of us truly feel any sort of kinship with those in such dire straits? How many Americans feel no responsibility towards or feel any amount of compassion for those not fortunate enough to live in politically and economically stable situations?
Judging by the tone and tenor of our collective political discourse, concern about and compassion for refugees is distressingly low. We’re far more concerned about a xenophobic manufactured risk of terrorism from Syrian refugees than we are with trying to assist those in desperate need. Far too many are far too willing to withhold assistance from the many because of the ever so slight possibility that there may be a bad actor among the refugees. Rather than acting with compassion towards those who’ve been forced from their homes by war, religious strife, and/or economic instability, we’re blaming them for their predicament and refusing to assist them because there might be terrorists among them.
The reality that there are terrorists among us seems to not to have registered with those who believe all Muslims to be terrorists. The truth that we face a much more immediate and real danger from Christian terrorists that the wild-eyed radical Islamofascist variety in an inconvenient truth that doesn’t fit the dominant narrative…and so we don’t discuss it.
This holiday season that’s supposed to be about “Peace on Earth and goodwill towards men” should be a time when we give thanks for what we have and look to help those less fortunate. It should be when we live the beliefs so many profess on Sunday mornings when they go to church. Instead, we fear those we have little reason to fear…because Fox News Channel and other alarmist Right-wing media outlets benefit by creating hatred and distrust of The Other.
As we watch the plight of Syrian refugees on the 6:00 news from the comfort of our living rooms, we should be moved to use our considerable resources to help those so desperately in need. Instead, we live in mortal fear of the almost infinitesimal possibility that there are terrorists among them who wish to destroy America.
But at least we can pray for them…right?? That way, we can feel good about ourselves for doing our Christian duty…without ever actually getting off our couches and DOING something that might actually help.
