“You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” -Exodus 22:21
“I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” -Matthew 25:35
”Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” -Luke 17:18
From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible teaches us how to treat the other. Is she a foreigner? A resident alien? A stranger? The witness of our sacred text compels us to love the other as we would love ourselves. The challenges of how to care for those who speak a different language or practice a different religion or were born on soil on the other side of this planet are complex. As they were for the people in the days of Moses and the days of Jesus. Which is why the Bible talks about it so much. No easy answers yet, the calling remains.
My husband’s grandfather came to the U.S. as an indentured servant. He traveled to North Dakota from what is now Ukraine, although his family had immigrated there from Germany. He was separated from his family in Ukraine, but eventually, a traveling evangelist told him that his mother was up north in Canada, and they were reunited. So, I can relate a little tiny bit to the huge risk that families make to try and start a new life in a new land after persecution and starvation and discrimination.
A few years ago, I traveled with two mission teams from our church to volunteer at Christian Hospital Mungeli in the poorest state in India. It had been started by Christian missionaries 100 years ago and was doing amazing life-saving work for the Dalits, India’s poorest caste. They had a USAID grant to build a maternity ward and dorm for nursing students. So, when we talk about the federal budget, I can relate a tiny bit to the healing and hope our tax dollars bring to widows and orphans and those Jesus calls “the least of these.”
Through our congregation’s local outreach in Kansas City, I have worked with asylum seekers from war-torn countries who are resettled by our local mission partner, Della Lamb. One day, after filling out job applications to work in poultry plants, one of the newly arrived refugees invited me to his home for tea and I was startled by his hospitality. Della’s funding for those refugees who recently stepped off the plane in Kansas City after careful vetting by the US State department was recently cancelled. I cannot imagine their fear.
We humans construct artificial barriers and call the land ours, but deep down, we know that it isn’t. It’s God’s. Remember that old spiritual we sang as kids, “He’s got the whole world in his hands.” As Esau McCaulley writes, “We need more people with the courage to say that we do not have to see the foreigner as a threat but instead as a fellow bearer of the image of God.”*
Grace and Peace,
Carla
*Esaumccaulley.com
