A Refugee's Tale

THE TRANSCENDENT COMMUNITY 

There has certainly been much discussion on the issue of immigration. Aliens, immigrants, “dreamers,” and refugees—however you identify them, one thing remains: Everyone has a name...and a story. Really, after we strip away the politics and semantics, we are faced with basically human issues. And Scripture has ample wisdom to address most any issue that deals with the human condition. 

First of all, from Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is replete with stories of immigrants, dreamers, and refugees.

Abraham was told by God to emigrate from his homeland Haran to Canaan and take everything with him to start a new life. He had no idea where God was going to lead him. Sounds like a refugee to me. 

Jacob and all his family fled to live in Egypt as foreigners and aliens. It took them four hundred years before they were able to leave their refugee camps and become immigrants again in another land that God had prepared for them. 

Joseph was the original “dreamer” with his own dream coat to boot. 

Christ’s followers are often referred to as aliens and strangers whose true and ultimate place of inhabitance is heaven (1 Peter 2:11–12). 

The more I read about what alien and immigrant mean in Scripture, I find that they’re more of a mentality than a geographically displaced individual. 

I really believe that our nation is having so much trouble with these issues today because the further we move away from the Scripture and its tenets and principles, the less likely we will embody the ethos contained in its pages. The American society may have been more welcoming of its strangers when it was more welcoming of Scripture. 

The bigger the political debate on this issue, the more we need to focus on what I call the “transcendence of immigration.” And I find no greater illustration of the transcendence of immigration than in the person of Jesus. Talk about a “dreamer.” A child born in a manger in a foreign land brought there by His parents. Sounds much like the dreamers of today. 

The very notion of God stepping out of eternity into time to live among us is the ultimate immigration story. And Jesus was the ultimate immigrant. 

His entire Sermon on the Mount was a counterintuitive manifesto for this new community of displaced people. Jesus defined this new community as one comprised of immigrants and aliens living in their own land. Their displacement was of the spirit and not one of geography. 

He taught us a new definition of community—simply that everyone who believed in Him would be known by one thing: their love for one another. Everyone was invited to be a part of this community; there were no distinctions. He helped everyone understand that we are all refugees, aliens, or immigrants somehow. When we understand that, our neighbor begins to look less like the bad guy and more like a brother. 

That’s what the gospel “looks” like when its adherents act it out in the name of Jesus, which leads me to this point: The inclusiveness of the gospel best illustrates the exclusiveness of its design. 

Everyone is welcome because everyone is a refugee. We are all in the same boat on the way to the heavenly shore. That’s the inclusiveness of the message, and yet it’s exclusive to the people who embrace it. 

Today, unfriend all the rhetoric of fear, scapegoating, and political wrangling over who’s your neighbor. Look into the eyes and heart of Jesus. And when you do, you will find your neighbor as well.