The human race has always produced refugees, people who’ve had to flee from violence and oppression. There’s no point in our history when this hasn’t been so. Our Christian tradition reaches back with our Hebrew forbearers to remember the crossing of the Red Sea as they fled the slavery and oppression of the Egyptians. The Exodus story is the paradigmic story of Israel. Once Israel became established as a nation the Hebrew prophets reminded the people, especially those in power, of their past as refugees and thus insisted on showing hospitality to the refugee who came anew into their land.
This story also is paradigmic for Christians. Early theologians saw the refugees at the Red Sea as experiencing a precursor to baptism. On one side they were oppressed slaves, but in passing through the waters of the Red Sea, they came out on the other side as a new community of God. Indeed, we’ve even adopted the Exodus story into our Eucharist as we proclaim Jesus as our “Passover” who is “sacrificed for us.”
Of course, the Hebrew people weren’t the first or last people to be refugees. Many people came to America as refugees from religious oppression in 17th & 18th Century Europe. They weren’t technically refugees in the strictest sense. Refugees are displaced people who desire to return home when the violence or oppression they’re fleeing comes to an end. Some might prefer to call them immigrants, those coming to a new place where they, as the words on the Statue of Liberty say, “long to be free.” But whether one is called an immigrant or a refugee, the human experience is similar: One feels displaced, ungrounded, and vulnerable in the new, unfamiliar place. All of us, to various extents, have known what it’s like to be in such a vulnerable and uncertain place.
That’s why hospitality has always been such an important Christian virtue. Those who came before us in the faith knew what it was like to be in need of it and thus insisted it be a virtue present in Christian practice everywhere. The Greek word for hospitality in the New Testament is philoxenia, which literally means “to love strangers.” It’s the exact opposite of xenophobia, which is “to fear strangers,” a disease many in our world seem to have these days. It’s natural to fear what’s different, but it’s not faithful to allow such fear to set in and determine our practice as Christians.
Some in Europe today want the refugees from the Syrian civil war to go someplace else, although it’s heartening to see how many are embracing them. My hunch is those refugees would gladly go someplace else if they could. They’d actually prefer to stay in the home that they’ve known with their friends and families. But the violence of the past years has made them desperate enough to risk life and limb to go to a safer place. That’s no different than the young folk who have in recent years showed up on our southern border fleeing the violence of gangs and drug lords in their home countries. Imagine the fear that drove them to make such a trek and the courage it took for them to make it. Christians have no borders when it comes to those suffering from violence and oppression. It’s not a minor tenet of our faith to show mercy to those who have been forced to flee their homes. It’s at the heart of our identity as Christians.
+Scott
The Rt. Rev. Scott Anson Benhase was the tenth Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia from 2010-2020. This website serves as an online archives for the weekly email reflections, the eCrozier, he wrote during his episcopacy.