Matthew 2:9-10
When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy.
And still they travel, wearied by the journey
with hope outweighing their wisdom
Searching for a sign
Of joy
Of welcome
Of homecoming
And still they are greeted
with suspicion and fear
and passed from one region to another
While politicians scrabble to find ways
to deter their arriving
absolving themselves of any burden of care
While Jesus, who knows what it is
to be unwanted
seen as a threat to good order
by church and by state
then - and now -
aligns himself with the travellers
bedding down with the rejected and the forgotten
longing for epiphany to break through
and for love to shine on all who seek refuge today.
(Liz Crumlish Epiphany 2024)
Oh, and still they are portrayed as parasites, unwanted when they are mothers, fathers, children fleeing horrors beyond imagining. Yet Christ knows them as his children, and loves them for who they are.
ReplyDeleteAnd….some come as economic migrants…fine …...and some come to destabilise the country….not fine …..and some come to flee war and conflict and persecution but NOT ALL. It must remain un the hand of the government to tease out which is which…it is beyond my knowledge base but no doubt MI 5 and MI6 are aware. It is too simplistic to state that everyone coming here is a refugee and we need to let them come because Jesus was a refugee. There are O.T. scriptures of how Christians are to welcome the stranger. Even the Kinder Transport children actually had to pay to come here at the start of World War 2 - £50 for each child…I knew some of them personally. Boats on the English coasts are mostly full of young men to be honest. I get that Jesus was a ‘refugee’ but not everyone seeking entry here to UK shores IS. A flaw of organised Christianity is to be tolerant without question, destabilising actual Christianity in and of itself and now one can now actually face a 7 year jail term in Scotland for preaching the gospel of our Lord on a Scottish street under ‘hate speech’ legislation yet our own first minister can proclaim his, in my opinion, exceptionally racist ‘White’ speech in our devolved parliament.
ReplyDeleteIt is not so straightforward as ‘everyone come to the Uk’ - that is naive in my opinion.
In any case Jesus then grew up to be a political nightmare for the Roman occupying force and the Jews resulting in him being despatched. Betteson’s seminal text ‘documents of the Early Church’ relays how concern they were about Jesus. He was allowed into the country as a baby but I bet he’d have been refused entry as a young man if he’d started his 3 year missionary statements.
Anyhow…just some thoughts for folk to ponder.
He came, he was born, he was a acknowledged, he grew in stature, he preached, he died, he was raised again but…..did he ‘invent’ Christianity or was he calling in a new phase of internalised Jewishness which was open, inclusive and available to all….I do think they are different beasties