Jesus the Migrant: Deserving Of Our Hatred?

While my son, the migrant, and his family had the time and the means to follow all the rules, Jesus, the migrant, did not.

Every stranger is an enemy~Primo Levi

A number of years ago, I started reading  The Complete Works of Primo Levi. Levi was an Italian Jew, a chemist, and a gifted writer who spent the last years of WWII in a Nazi extermination camp–and one of the few who came out alive.

In his introduction to his memoirs, Levi writes,

Many people–many nations–can find themselves believing, more or less consciously, that every stranger is an enemy.’ For the most part, this conviction lies buried in the mind like some latent infection; it betrays itself only in random, disconnected acts, and is not the basis of a system of thought. But when this happens, when the unspoken dogma becomes the major premise in a syllogism, then, at the end of the chain, stands the Lager [prison/extermination camp]. It is the product of a conception of the world carried to its logical consequences with rigorous consistency; as long as the conception exists, the consequences remain to threaten us. The story of the death camps should be understood by everyone as a sinister signal of danger.

A number of years ago, I posted the above thoughts on Facebook. A good and insightful friend, Cindy Breeding, wrote the following in response:

I know that this thought is hardly original, but Jesus shook me hard the other day. I was in the midst of an advent devotion when I recalled a sermon you preached about angels, and how they must have been terrifying because they told mortals “Do not be afraid.” And then they gave the person a message that would change them, their community and the world. So there I am, reading part of the advent gospel, and it hits me: What if refugees of war, famine and genocide are angels? What if our neighbors in Mexico are angels? What if transgender people are angels? What if they are telling us “do not be afraid” but urge us to do work – very hard, exhausting and emotional work – to prepare the way for the Kingdom of God? What if they are – all of them – angels?

I wept when I read this. What if, indeed, those most despised, the ones we most fear will contaminate us in some way, are the angels among us? What if they are carrying the messages we most need to hear? And are we so afraid of them?

My son the migrant, and his family

Right at the moment, I sit in the kitchen of my son and his wife, who happen to live in Great Britain. Neither were born here. They are immigrants.

My daughter-in-law is from Colombia; my son, US born. When he met and married this amazing woman, she then immigrated to the US where, after years and years of hassle and unreal expense, she gained her US citizenship.

Eventually, the growing family immigrated to Great Britain and earned British citizenship, which was not an easy task at all. In other words, they are all migrants.

These children, now in their late teens, have done what most children of immigrants do: learn the language of their new country perfectly. Their classic British accents would make the Queen/King proud.

However, my son’s Spanish, while fluent, carries anything but a proper Castillian Spanish accent (as his oldest son often points out to him) and my daughter-in-law, totally fluent in English, also speaks with a Latin accent.

Both are clearly non-natives here.

The pejorative terms are intentional

Now, I have deliberately used the more pejorative terms: “immigrated” and/or “migrant.” But because they are “white” [a pointless and useless designation] and have financial means, they are treated well.

They knew how to access the proper legalities and were also not desperately fleeing certain deaths/oppression/extreme poverty/female rape back home.

Do they fit the classic image of one who immigrates to another country? No, they don’t. Again, they had the means, motive and opportunity to come legally, but that doesn’t remove from them the term that is generally used in a negative sense.

Let’s not whitewash this because they look and speak like us.

While my son and family had the time, and again the means, to follow all the rules, Jesus the migrant did not.

Human history: the story of immigration

A week ago, I stood in line to board our overnight flight to London. There, I started thinking about those who travel, some, like us, for pleasure or business reasons, and some forcibly.

Truly, the history of humankind is one of travel, of climate-induced evacuations (while the rate of climate change may be increasing, it is nothing new in the long history of the world), of conquering and being conquered and displaced, of desperate people trying to find life and hope elsewhere, of restless people looking for the greener grass on the other side of the fence, of curious people who want to see how others think and live, or in this case, of a mother who wants to see this segment of her family living in England for the holidays.

Immigration underlies the Biblical narrative

Travel to other countries is also the story of the Jewish people and of Jesus. His parents, desperate refugees, fleeing King Herod’s murderous plan, immigrated to Egypt in Jesus’s infanthood. Those travel instantly labeled their son as Jesus the migrant.

Had they not, he, too, would have been slaughtered as were all the other babies in Bethlehem born in the months/years surrounding his birth.

Ponder it: without the ability to migrate, Jesus would been slaughtered. But a foreign nation, only knowing they were taking in a poor family from a different ethnic group, gave the [illegal] family safety.

In the biblical narrative found in Genesis, Egypt had long before offered hospitality to the beleaguered Jews, desperate for food from an extended family.

They took them in, but eventually turned to oppression and slavery to make those different ones miserable and, they hoped, eventually disappear off the face of the earth by not having any more children.

Of course, the slaughter of infants surrounding Moses’ birth foreshadows what happens at Jesus’s birth. The justification: Let’s kill the outsiders so they don’t mess with our way of life.

But the call to be compassionate and welcome to the immigrants figures so prominently in Jewish history that the Bible is littered with multitudes of reminders to welcome the outsider, often called the “sojourner.”

Turning them away, imprisoning them, ripping children from families, wounding them with barbed wire, and killing them with sharpshooters figures NOWHERE in the biblical narrative.

Frankly, any who say they live by the principles found in the Bible have no choice but to open their door to immigrants. Otherwise, such people are properly labeled as hypocrites–and we know how Jesus, the migrant, felt about them.

US history: a tale of immigrants

Let’s take a quick look at the history of the US: to say that we are a nation of immigrants who slaughtered the innocents already here (themselves migrants from, most likely, the Bering Sea area) would be a nice way to whitewash endless waves that have landed caused enormous damage to those who had already been here thousands of years.

Most native residents of these lands were treated despicably by the very people whose ancestors themselves had only migrated a few generations before.

Right now, we have a real crisis on the Southern border of the US. More people, fleeing poverty, murder, crime, murderous despots (the Herods of the world keep returning) and hopelessness head here hoping for a better life.

Their plight and flight is no different from what all our ancestors have done. Nor is it different from what Jesus’ family did. They fled, vulnerable and scared, and hoped for welcome.

What shall we do?

I don’t pretend to have easy answers. There never have been and there never will be.

But those who call themselves “Christian” and especially those whose religious thinking asserts the literal, unchanging truth of the Bible, had better step up now.

They must figure out a way to come up with welcome mats and reasonable ways to channel these desperate people to legal ways to stay and work here.

Razor wire, guns, and detention centers are as anti-biblical as it comes. Otherwise, “hypocrites” would be the kindest word to use to describe anyone who claims to be “Christian” and yet does not actively seek a way of welcome.

Never forget: Jesus, the migrant, changed the world for the better. Let us do the same.