Readings: Deut 24.17-22; Romans 12.1-13; Luke 10.25-37
Today is the beginning of Refugee Week. And I want to thank John Wilmer very much for all his hard work on our behalf for refugees. Please do look at the display of information on the boards by the piano at the front. More leaflets are on the table at the back. In particular we at HPC support the London Churches Refugee Fund which gives small grants to organisations assisting destitute refugees and asylum-seekers. And we support Freedom from Torture.
Let us stop for a moment and observe how we feel right now as the subject of refugees is raised. I guess for most of us, we are horrified and shudder at what many refugees have had to endure: – the brutal destruction of their lives and their families which has driven them to flee their homeland, to leave behind everything they have hitherto known – only to encounter raging seas and barbed wire. Perhaps we wonder what we would do should we find ourselves in their shoes. We believe that something should be done.
Some of us actively put some hard work in to support and alleviate the trials that refugees suffer. I am deeply in awe of the family in Church Row who put up in their window: Refugees Welcome. They meant it. They mean it. They worship among us.
Some of us may also feel pretty scared of being overwhelmed by the size of the numbers pouring out of the Middle East and Africa. And in no way do I wish to lightly dismiss these fears. This year as we move towards voting later this week on whether we should remain as members of the European Union or leave, as summer moves on and ever more numbers pile onto unsafe over-crowded boats to cross the Mediterranean, our thinking about refugees has become inextricably mixed up with our feelings and fears about general migration. We care – but we are also scared by the enormity of the issues. There is a part of all of us fearful of being overwhelmed by large numbers of those who are ‘other’. And we become prepared to live with the guilt of shutting our doors.
Fear and guilt. Two very powerful emotions we struggle with. Struggle with particularly as Christians, because, as our readings this morning make very clear to us: in our desire to shut our door we are also refusing to welcome Jesus.
Jesus’ famous Parable of the Good Samaritan: who is our neighbour? Who is the good neighbour? The powerful answer in our parable: the foreigner is also our neighbour. The good neighbour? The pattern of life Jesus calls us to: this is to love, take care for everyone whose life touch ours. If all are our neighbour, then our duty of care is to everyone, be they ‘our people’, people like us, or strangers, those who carry a different culture in their veins. The beautiful chapter 12 of Paul’s treatise to the Romans: we are called to embrace the transforming of our lives by the Holy Spirit. Transformation away from the protectionist thinking of the world, transformation into people who instinctively welcome the stranger. And from Deuteronomy we are to do this, not simply because our own lives are enriched by the diversity the stranger brings, but because to do just this, is God’s reign of justice and mercy. We are not to manage our affairs only with consideration for personal advantage, we are to create social structures such that there is always enough for everyone. Note, this is not a suggestion of a system with no differentials, rather a system where those differentials between the talented and the less advantaged, must never become too great.
We have reason to feel guilty. For though of course, we are far from alone in our responsibility, yet the actions of western governments as well as particular individuals, our government’s seeming inability to reign in the avaricious, be they crooked entrepreneurs or heads of state – whose ill-gotten gains we launder for them, our failure to enact justice makes a considerable contribution to the power of the tyrant willing to inflict a terrible destruction on their people in order to survive.
We have rightly celebrated Sir Nicholas Winton for saving 669 children from Nazi extermination. He with his mother, had to find not only families for each child, they also had to raise £50 for each child, a huge sum in 1939.
Today there are roughly 150, such a comparatively small number of lone children in the so-called ‘Jungle’ at Calais with relatives in the UK, yet there is a lengthy and complex process between them and a potential reunion. It seems we are fearful of these children. Children for whom the MP for Bately and Spen, Jo Cox, was tirelessly working. A vital young humanist so tragically killed by a sad and lonely man on Thursday, a man who lived it would seem, by fear of the other. Jo was a passionate advocate for refugees, calling for us to take in the child refugees from Syria stranded alone across Europe.
Why are we so afraid? It is instinctive to be wary of the stranger. I feel it in myself. But let us stop and reflect on this, think again. Refugees are often precisely those people who have stood up for principles of justice – and paid the price. Thoughtful, talented people with courage and strength, with the determination to make something better of life. To make their contribution to our society. Let us find out more. Talk with John Wilmer who is also passionate about these things. Get involved. We might just find our lives profoundly enriched.
As we make our decisions in the polling booth this week, it is vital we choose not on the basis of simply of what we perceive as potentially good for us personally, rather on the basis of what will support justice across the nations of the earth. We live in a global world. For as John Donne wrote in 1624, the words we know so well: No man is an island entire of itself, Every man is a piece of the continent, A part of the main.
If this was true 400 years ago, how much more so is it true today? God’s creation is filled with huge variety. As we look around our world we can but see that it is only as we include minorities, embrace diversity, that peace and prosperity will flourish. These values are the basis of our democracy. It is vital we defend the rights of minorities. The rights of those with whom we disagree, their right to voice their thinking.
We can choose to live with fear and a narrowing of our horizons, or with a growing passion for justice and righteousness. Amen.