“Let the exile come,
let the stranger come
let the weary come find rest.”
So begins Robin Mark’s haunting song “Come heal this land.”
However, he sings of a challenge to our nation which is both urgent and yet seemingly impossible to meet – the plight of the refugee.
This week is Refugee Week, now in its 25th year, when refugees are honoured and their plight highlighted. Currently it is estimated that some 89 million people are on the move, fleeing conflict and catastrophe.
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As Afghan author Khaled Hosseini points out for us: “Refugees are mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children, with the same hopes and ambitions as us—except that a twist of fate has bound their lives to a global refugee crisis on an unprecedented scale.”
The Hebrew Bible is uncompromising, even as it marks out the people of Israel as God’s chosen people, chosen to be a light to the nations. For the widow, the orphan and the alien have a very special place in God’s heart – as shown throughout the Torah, the Jewish law.
“When an alien lives with you in your land, don’t take advantage of him. Treat the alien the same as a native. Love him like one of your own. Remember that you were once aliens in Egypt. I am God, your God.” (Leviticus 19:34)
Bible educator Rose Button writes of this concern for the alien: “This was countercultural. But God wanted his people to draw the outsiders in, to love them as their own and give them a home and community to belong to.”
She continues: “As motivation they are reminded that they themselves had been homeless as a people more than once, and God had given them homes and provision: they should be willing to pass on this blessing!”
Above all, Jesus himself was a refugee even as a young child when Joseph and Mary took refuge in Egypt from the cruel machinations of King Herod. Matthew here is short on detail – all we are told is that they remained there until they heard that Herod had died. We are not told where they went and whether they were welcomed. There lies a tale not told.
So as Christians, disciples of Jesus, there is simply no argument – we are to welcome the refugee as if we were welcoming Jesus himself. “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me.” (Matthew 25:42f)
And yet, however noble our intentions as individuals they soon hit the buffers of political reality for there is no way the western democracies are willing to absorb the vast numbers of people seeking refuge. Even in countries like Sweden, which traditionally has always given a warm welcome to refugees.
Just eight year ago Swedes took immense pride in their welcome to some 163,000 refugees, most from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. “My Europe takes in refugees,” Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said at the time. “My Europe doesn’t build walls.”
But that was a lifetime ago. We haven’t time to go into detail except to quote one commentator, James Traub: “Even Sweden doesn’t want migrants anymore.” For the political pressure is clear across the Western world: No More Refugees. Hence our own prime minister’s commitment “to stop the small boats.”
But pulling up our various drawbridges hasn’t stopped the flow of people seeking refuge. Sadly each day, it seems, we hear of desperate people perishing in their quest to seek safety, whether it is crossing the Rio Grande or the Aegean sea.
Last week 800 migrants sank off the Greek coast while today, as the world’s media is focussed on the plight of five people perishing in the Titan sub, it was briefly reported that 30 migrants were drowned off Spain's Canary Islands.
It’s not all grim, however. Witness the welcome offered to the women and children fleeing Ukraine by both governments and individuals. People were moved to act.
So what is to be our response to the refugee crisis, a crisis which shows no signs of abating?
This is one of those areas, to quote C S Lewis, where we need to think christianly. There are nuances to consider. We refuse easy slogans on either side – and certainly we would eschew populist politicians who would exploit people’s fears, however unfounded.
For we refuse to ignore the problem as if drowning refugees, like hurricanes and earthquakes, are just another sad fact of life we just have to live with. We refuse to park them in the back of our minds. If nothing else disciples of Jesus are called to be our nation’s conscience.
Faced with this overwhelming need, the fact that we cannot do everything does not mean that we do nothing but instead we do something, whatever may be in our power. For here the church has been at the forefront of welcoming those seeking asylum, often in very practical ways.
But the essential problem is political and here the very least we can do is to pray for our politicians, for as theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once observed: “The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.”
And at the very least we refuse compassion fatigue. As Mark’s song concludes:
May this land we love be a place of safety
Be a light for all the nations of this earth
May Your streams of love, may they flow here freely
Here where every stranger finds a home
Here is our covenant prayer
Who call upon Your name
We humble ourselves before You
We humble ourselves.