Rev. Julie Jane Capel ~ Faith UCC in Chicago
January 10, 2016
Jesus was a Refugee – Matthew 2:13-23
We left off last week with the magi… the wise men… bowing down in worship of a young baby. The baby was God incarnate. They were worshiping God, who had come to earth and put on flesh and dwelled among his people.
These wise men offered their very best to baby Jesus. Their best was a quest to find God. Their best was having faith in a sign - a star - that they knew could only be from the Creator of the world. Their best was to offer gifts fit only for a king – gold, frankincense and myrrh.
While fulfilling their quest they had stopped and met with King Herod and asked him, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”
Herod played a long for a while… inviting them to tell him about the star and their journey. He got his advisers and experts to help figure out what prophecies the magi were referring to. Herod even asked them to go find the child, and then come back to tell him where this baby was so that he too may go and worship him.
But that was all just an act. Herod feared:
Anything that would topple his political system.
Anyone who could threaten his power or the status quo.
Herod was out for blood. Specifically the blood of Jesus.
Will you pray with me?
It’s now a familiar scene for too many. A crisis causes people – families - to be on the move. Stories of dangerous travels across deserts and borders. Bags hurriedly packed in the middle of the night because one must rush out of town. Danger behind and danger ahead… yet the former is so powerful that there is literally no other option.
This is true because your home country - that should be protecting you - is now targeting you. Or at the very least, targeting the ones you love. You leave everything and everyone you know, not out of some fantasy to hit it rich or foolish desire for a new adventure… You leave out of sheer fear of danger…seeking survival.
You wonder if you will ever return home. Anxiety creeps up as you question what your reception will be like in a foreign land. You hope that you are making the best decision for your family. The specific threats of death on your life, and the lives of your children, are stronger than the potential death that could take place during your escape, right?
You have heard this family’s story time and again. No, it isn’t the recent Syrian families that are walking through Europe and being barred out of coming to America. No, it isn’t the Libyan family bobbling in the Mediterranean. Or even a Latino family making their way across the deserts of Mexico.
This is the story of Joseph, Mary and Jesus fleeing Nazareth because of a very viable death threat on Jesus’ life. He and all Jewish males under the age of two were to be killed.
One day Kings were bowing down in worship to this little one, showering him with royal gifts. The next day, a different king sent troops to kill that child, God incarnate, with a viciousness that is comparable to modern day ISIS, LURD and drug cartels.
Scripture makes a clear point: Jesus and his family were refugees. Our Lord and Savior, king of the world and all creation… he was a refugee.
Matthew 2:13-14 When they, the magi, had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt.
In the United States we define refugee status with specific legal protections that are available to people who have left their home country for their own safety and are afraid to return. To be granted such status, US Citizenship and Immigration Services requires that you are:
1. Unable or unwilling to return to your home country because you have been persecuted there in the past or have a well-founded fears that you will be persecuted if you go back. Check. Joseph’s dream. And then according to Matthew 2:16 – “When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under.” That is a well-founded fear for Mary and Joseph to feel unsafe to return.
2. The reason you have been, or will be, persecuted is connected to one of five things: your race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or your political opinion. Check. Jesus’ status as the newly born messiah, the rightful king of David, the future savior of the world… has racial and religious overtones and his life is about to start a whole new political and social revolution based in the love and power of God.
Even today, Jesus would have been considered a refugee. This leaves us with two questions:
1. Why is it important that Jesus was a refugee?
2. How does that impact our response to the current crisis that is taking place in our world today?
Why is it important that Jesus was a refugee?
Hebrews 4:14-16 in the Message version: Now that we know what we have – Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God – let’s not let it slip through our fingers. We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all – all but the sin. So let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help.
For people in crisis - a crisis of location, of identity, of sorrow, of abandonment, of pain or confusion – Jesus has experienced it. It is important that we recognize that in every human situation, God incarnate in not out of touch. He isn’t that god who is above the human condition.
God doesn’t sit in heaven and be all, “I don’t get it. I am too holy for that kind of pain.” Watch this… He’s been through weakness and testing… so let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. And then the instruction… take the mercy, accept the help.
The refugees I have known have expressed a deep gratefulness that Jesus’ story overlaps with theirs. It makes them feel not as isolated. It is like how unwed mothers see themselves in Jesus’ birth narrative. Or people who resonate with Peter in needing Jesus to reassure them of his love after denying Christ.
There is something comforting about finding yourself in the narrative of Jesus’ life.
So it was important for the millions of displaced people, the immigrants and refugees to find comfort in Jesus’ story. Knowing his family has been through this. He’s gotcha.
Go proclaim that good news to your friends, co-workers, family members and social media contacts that Jesus was a refugee – he is not out of touch with that reality.
Second, how does Jesus being a refugee impact our response to the current crisis that is taking place in our world today?
I will confess that I am not un-biased when it comes to the issue of refugees.
As a child, my fathers’ close friends were political refugees due to their membership the particular social group who protested in Tienanmen Square in 1989. Chinese troops violently retook the square in Beijing it left thousands of pro-democracy protesters dead and many more banned from China indefinitely.
My first grade best friend, Shewa, was a Hmong refugee. I had no idea what that meant at the time… because ½ of my classmates were also Hmong refugees. I just knew they hardly spoke English and were dirt poor. But they were so thankful for everything they received in school. The Hmong people are the largest hill tribes of Laos – but had to flee the advances of the Han invaders in to their north. They then migrated to Vietnam, Laos and Thailand where they were labeled and persecuted as “barbarians.”
One of my best friends from high school, Lola, is a political refugee after her father was killed by the Nigerian government for protesting their corrupt system. She still talks about living with the grief of losing her father and the fear that if she ever returned the government might kill her too.
The church I attended for many years had a heart for ministry to refugees. We bought a duplex and would, for a year, invite a family to come in and we would help them get acclimated to a bran new world. We would provide English lessons, and Job placement help. We would furbish their home… because they were unable to take anything with them. Out of all the family’s that cycled through this ministry house, I became friends with a man who was my age.
Beam was Somalian, he and his many, many family members had all been relocated to the very cold Minnesota climate in January. Generations of Somalians have been displaced due to civil war and racial persecution. I know that as a Muslim family it was unexpected to be housed and loved by a Christian church. And yet, they were so grateful! I was home that summer and ended up being a driver for Beam and his mother. I would take her to doctors’ appointments… but do to her lack of English and my lack of Arabic all we could do is smile, make hand gestures and laugh. At first she was a little unsure of this young, American woman without a headscarf. Eventually, she warmed up to all of us due to the church’s constant compassion. I took Beam to job interviews and to the grocery store. He told me stories of the refugee camps, needing to be the “man of the house at times”, his struggle to find someone to hire him and his frustration at how long it was taking him to learn English fluently. Watching them start over… with absolutely nothing… was painful for me. But I was thankful that my church was tangibly sharing the love of Christ one family at a time.
A newer friend was once a refugee from Poland to Italy during the time of communist rule. Her family packed for “vacation” one day, and never returned to their home country. Later she and her family would immigrate to the United States. But her story of hurried packing to leave in the middle of the night for an unknown land is eerily similar to the holy family fleeing to Egypt.
Most recently, I became close friends with a Christian man from Iraq who has religious asylum here in the States… an even more intense version of refugee status. He literally fled for his life because the pre-curser to ISIS intended to kill all the Christians in his area. He is now very invested in helping Iraqi refugees, of all religions, start a new… yet hard life… in the United States. He tells stories of upper-class professional businessmen who are now working in gas stations. Of families who weep for their martyred relatives and the parents and children they had to leave behind. He tells of their health issues that were caused by the camps many of them stayed at. And the discrimination they face everyday from Euro-Americans who fear that they are dangerous… that they are ISIS supporters posing as harmless refugees. In some cases, the terror the media and a few high officials have spread has given Americans carte blanche to fear an entire group of people.
Until I started writing this sermon I didn’t realize how refugees have weaved in and out of my entire life. No wonder I am passionate about this topic. No wonder that my blood starts to boil when I read stupid, stupid articles or hear news clips of ignorant politicians saying racist foolishness. I hope that those statements and articles make your blood boil a bit too.
Because as Christians we are not supposed to live in fear of people who look different then us. We are not supposed to ignore them or just give up because there are so many… so “what can we do.”
This is a current reality that we need to be thinking about, contributing to the conversation, praying for and even tangibly doing something to care for refugees. That is the model that Jesus gave us.
We will close with looking at the well-known parable of the Good Samaritan.
Luke 10:25-37 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
He answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all our soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.”
“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down to Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away leaving him half dead.” He is not a refugee… but he certainly is experiencing a painful attack and is vulnerable.
A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side.
So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, he passed by on the other side.
But a Samaritan, seen as lower social class citizen himself, as he traveled came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii… that is his paycheck for two full days of work… and gave them to the innkeeper.
“Look after him,” he said, “and when I return I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.”
Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers? To the man, woman or child, that through no fault of their own has become so vulnerable in their home that they must pack up and leave everything that they know and treasure.
The expert of the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told him, Jesus tells us, “Go and do likewise.”
Mary, Joseph and Jesus were refugees in Egypt some two thousand years ago. But in a very real way Jesus is still a refugee.
According to Matthew 25:37-40 Then the righteous will answer him, being Jesus, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?
When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?”
The King will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
Church, when we stick up for the vulnerable in society… we stick up for Jesus. When we offer hospitality to those in need… we are being hospitable to Christ himself. When we advocate for systemic mercy and justice, we are fulfilling our Christian mandate to love our neighbor.
Church, I don’t know what the next days, weeks, months or years are going to hold for us. What resources we will have to share? Which people are going to come and worship with us? What mission will God lay on our hearts?
But I will tell you this for sure, the current landscape of our world is fielding a refugee crisis and we are not going to sit by and ignore it. We will recognize that the King we worship was once a refugee, and it is by his command that we receive current refugees as we would receive Jesus himself.
Amen?
Please close with me in prayer.