Dear Friends,
The Bible is overflowing with commands to love and care for the poor and the immigrant, both to the nation of Israel and to followers of Jesus. God, it seems, has a special love for those who are suffering, displaced, mistreated, and who find themselves alone or on the outside. God reminds Israel repeatedly that they are an immigrant people and demands that they treat foreigners living among them as their own. Christians worship a god who not only loves and adopts refugees as his own but who became a refugee himself, as Jesus fled with his family to Egypt shortly after his birth. Gentile Christians (that is Christians who are not Jewish) are a refugee people twice over because we come as immigrants and outsiders to seek membership among the people of God, who are already a nation of immigrants. Paul expresses this beautifully in his letter to the church in Ephesus.
Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)—remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
Ephesians 2:11-22 NIV
God has granted us, who were once foreigners separated from God, citizenship in the kingdom of God and membership to his own family. This obligates us to show similar mercy to those who come to live among us as foreigners. America, like Israel, is a nation of immigrants. This makes non-indigenous American Gentile Christians immigrants three times over. As we navigate these challenging times, let’s not forget who we are, a people living as strangers on the earth in a land not our own who have been adopted as children of the living God and citizens in his kingdom.
Pray with me if you will,
Lord of heaven and earth, do not let me forget where I have come from and what you have done for me. Don’t let me become proud and imagine I deserve the good things I have due to some worthiness of my own that exceeds the worthiness of others. Regardless of what happens around me, don’t let me turn my back on other human beings just like me who long to find home and to live in peace and safety just as I do. Amen.
Love in Christ,
Michelle
