Immigration and refugee settlement continues to be one of the most politically polarizing issues in America during the 2016 election cycle and the recent president’s executive order to ban immigrants and refugees from seven countries to enter the United States. I am not neutral on the President’s ban on immigrants and refugees. There are many issues that involved, from the targeting Muslims as a religion and the impact it has on families and business in the US. In addition, his ban places a death sentence on LGBT refugees from the seven countries that were targeted.

We have a banner on the church that reads, “Immigrants and Refugees Welcome,” with the image of Mary carrying the infant Jesus and Joseph leading the donkey to Egypt. Ironically, Joseph was displaced to Nazareth from Bethlehem, and he comes to Bethlehem for the census and cannot find shelter as a native son. Now Rev. Al Sharpton tweeted, “Before you head to church today, remember to thank God for his son, Jesus a refugee who fled to Egypt.”
But the response from fundamentalist Christians to this tweet: “They went to pay Taxes in Egypt. They went home. YOU need to pay your taxes and learn Bible!” Fox slammed Sharpton similarly for using Jesus to tackle the Trump ban.
Now to those who claim that Mary and Joseph went to Egypt to pay their taxes, there is no scriptural evidence from the Gospel of Matthew. After the visit from the Magi, an angel appeared in a dream and warned Joseph: “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him.” (Mt. 2:13) Fleeing to Egypt to avoid death is not going to Egypt to pay taxes. This is really “fake” truth or invention of alternative truth to support the ban by racist Christians.

But after the birth of Jesus, Mary with child in her arms and Joseph flee from the persecution of Herod the Great, who dispatched his soldiers to Bethlehem, to kill all male infants from age 2 and under. At the heart of the gospel story, when Mary and Joseph took their infant son Jesus and fled to Egypt, they became refugees. They journeyed as refugees to Egypt.

Joseph took his family and fled to Egypt. There they lived lives as aliens, outsiders. They didn’t speak Demotic, the language of 1st century Egypt, and they were relegated to the most menial of labor. I am awed by the depth of their pain and suffering of refugees. There is often loneliness and strangeness of living in a foreign country that places a strain on immigrants and refugees. Jesus’ parents experienced what it meant to be refugees from violence and seek re-settlement. It is part of the gospel to proclaim Jesus the refugee. Jesus was an alien and refugee, and later an outsider.

Our biblical heritage is full of stories of the chosen people as immigrants and refugees. Abraham migrated from the city of Ur to Canaan, seeking a better life and opportunities. Jacob and his sons and their families migrated to Egypt due to famine, and a couple centuries later, the Hebrews under the leadership of Moses fled slavery and oppress in the Exodus. Ruth migrates with Naomi from Moab to Canaan, and Ruth a foreigner becomes the great grandmother of King David. Many Hebrew families were forced into captivity and go into exile by the Babylonian conquest. The exile was a forced migration and resettlement. The Hebrew and Christian scriptures are full of migration and refugees.

I would argue creatively that God’s incarnation in Jesus is also migration from God to humanity—God with us. As I mentioned in the birth stories of Jesus, Mary and Joseph fled Bethlehem to Egypt to save the life of Jesus as an infant. They were refugees in Egypt.

Now listen to this story of Maria: Maria, a refugee from a different part of the world, perhaps Syria, was 20 years old when she also had to flee a step ahead of soldiers.

My husband woke me in the middle of the night. He told me we had to leave right away. He had a warning that soldiers were coming. We could take only what we could carry. I wrapped the baby to keep him warm. We walked for days. Later, we heard what the soldiers did: they killed all the boy babies in our village. Where we live now, the food and the language are strange. My baby is growing up without knowing his home country. Built isn’t safe to go back, not yet.

This story sounds very close to the story in the gospel of Matthew and the flight to Egypt of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus. I am horrified that the holy family as well as Maria, her husband, and child could be turned away from our country and not granted political asylum. The holy family would now be turned away by homeland security and to go back to Bethlehem.

In our country, we welcome immigrants with green cards, except from the banned seven countries where the Trump administration designated. There are, at least, 12 million undocumented migrants in the United States, and there are nearly two million dreamers, those who were brought to the US as children by their families. They made no decision on their own to cross into the US legally, and the Obama administration asked those dreamers to register. They are terrified at the new administration targeting themselves for deportation. Or those who have crossed the southern border from Central America, fleeing for their lives. We welcomed several refugees from San Salvador, who fled for their lives because they were gay. They were threatened and beaten up for being gay.
Numerous Christian churches and Jewish synagogues have adopted Syrian and other refugee families in their relocation to the US. Refugee families migrate from their home countries from the circumstances of war, oppression, and poverty. All of us, unless descendants of Native Americans, are immigrants. How many Europeans and other nationalities migrated to the US because they were persecuted? Many Europeans came to North America because of religious persecution and oppression while others came for economic opportunities. But they not learn from their experience and appreciate the indigenous people in North America. We displaced many Native Americans from their lands and forced them to live on ghettoized reservations. And now we displace them with oil pipelines. And in the future, are we prepared for the hundreds of million and even billions of human beings who will be climate refugees.

I am the a 3rd and 4th generation descendant of immigrants to the US from both sides of my parents. I suspect that many of us here this morning could claim the same. My Greek grandmother and her sister came from the Greek island of Samos through Ellis Island. They were both unable to read or speak English then. But on Ellis Island were written the bold words of Emma Lazarus:

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! (Emma Lazarus)

The American ideal, enshrined in these words at Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, are embodied in our scriptural tradition of welcoming the migrant and the refugee. Do we dare look upon those strangers, refugees and immigrants welcome them with the value and love that God has for them? Or do we fall into the hysteria and exclusivist vision of rejection espoused white nationalist and racist Christian churches intertwined in a holy union of nationalism with hatred and bigotry? For remember Christ’s words, “Truly I say to you, just as you did not do to one of the least of these, so you did not do it to me.” Do we dare to reject Christ in the face of the immigrant and the refugee? I will never reject the Christ in the refugee and the immigrant. My roots and your roots go back to our ancestral immigrants and refugees.

As you listened to the various scripture verses read antiphonally by Layne and myself, we realize that our religious ancestors in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures were often migrants and refugees.

Jesus teaches us how we individually and collectively treat the least of our sisters and brothers–who are now refugees and immigrants– is the way we welcome and treat him. In the world’s refugees, we encounter the refugee Jesus.
In an article on refugees in the Dictionary of Christian Ethics, Roy Branson observes that:

While Christianity affirms the importance of the individual stranger, it also values community. The sanctuary movement [that is, the historic practice of offering sanctuary to those fleeing danger] not only draws attention to the exile but also to the cities of refuge. As in designated Old Testament towns, and in British and European cathedrals into the 16th century, security from retaliation and injustice must be provided … The theme of exiles and pilgrims as the chosen of God, who must in turn welcome the stranger, is so strong a theme in biblical faith that it creates a presumption in favor of admitting the immigrant, granting asylum to the refugee, and treating the alien as an equal.

The church consists of “foreigners and exiles” (1 Peter 2:11). It was a church of independent women, slaves, various ethnicities, and different classes that came to together as Christians. They were outsiders and from many cities. Many LGBT folks have been treated as foreigners and exiles. The same Christians who do not welcome us, usually do not welcome refugees and exiles; they are outsiders to be feared and shunned. These Christians express an amnesia of their biblical heritage. But they ignore God’s preferential care for the outsider, the foreigner, immigrant, and refugee. One UCC clergy, Rev. Matt Fitzgerald, involved in a Syrian family re-settlement program at St. Paul’s UCC in Chicago, observed:

The people of Saint Paul’s know what it is to be ‘a stranger in a strange land…Therefore, our church has a strong, clear, continually rewarding spirit of hospitality. Welcoming a Syrian family felt like an extension of who we are, rather than a new direction or a risk. Our simple act of Christian hospitality looks bold because of President Trump’s anti-Christian executive order. In a time like this, all the church has to do is be the church for our light to shine brightly.(Supporting the Stranger, KYP)

Like Jesus, we know what it’s like to be outsiders. Many of us have been targeted and excluded as outsiders, despised for sexual orientation or for gender variance. In the world’s refugees, we meet Jesus Christ the refugee. We must reject the racism of the Trump ban, the fears building the wall, and any deportation force that takes away our neighbors. It is not acceptable to surrender to policies based on fear and racism,

The recent visit of Pope Francis unmasked a distorted Christianity in our country. Fox Entertainment, known as Fox News, had commentators highly critical of the Pope’s ideas for caring the poor, the homeless, immigrants, and the vulnerable. The sad part was that they had no idea where Francis was getting his ideas and that most everything spoke and did was based in imitation of Jesus in the gospels. A sizeable number of folks identify themselves as “salvation” Christians, who understand that Christianity is about their personal and individual salvation. It is all about them, failing to consider the needs of their brothers and sisters in dire need. They seem to divide the world into the saved and unsaved. Or the way I envision it an exclusive country club of the saved.

I learned as a young man in the Jesuit seminaries, much like Francis who has a similar Jesuit background, about “God’s preferential option for the poor.” What does this really mean? It originates from Christians who have witnessed extreme poverty around them and the fact the words “the poor” and “poverty” appears in the Bible over 2000 times. When you add words such as orphans, widows, eunuchs, barren women, the oppressed, or any one that is vulnerable, this increases the number of people for whom God cares. I learn as a teacher that you had to repeat any important idea three times for students to remember it. Here are thousands of times that the scriptures mention God care for those people at risk. Yet Christianity has been distorted into a salvation religion, and care for the poor has seriously diminished or has become alien concept. God attempts to communicate that we are siblings and God’s children. We are part of God’s family.

I heard the term “preferential option for the poor” for the first time in 1968 in seminary where I became aware how often God and/or Jesus call our attention in the Hebrew scriptures and the gospels to the poor around us.

I learned through a number of lessons in my life that poor people do not want to you be poor but to empower them to escape the extreme poverty within which they find themselves. The poor and the vulnerable indicate the location where God is to be found. If there is any doubt, Jesus is quite clear, “whenever you do something for the least of my family, you do it for me.” Jesus invites us to see him in the poor.

Today’s gospel addresses the “salvation Christians.” The story of the young rich man illustrates clearly the divide. The rich man asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responds to him, “You know the commandments.” The rich man responds, “All these have kept since my youth.” I hear a sense of emptiness in the words of the rich man.

Jesus invites him: “one thing you lack, Go your way, sell whatever you have and give it to the poor…” Jesus has invited the young man to follow him, to move from a salvation oriented style faith to faith in the presence of God’s companionship of empowerment or the reign of God. In other words, Jesus invites him a discipleship of service to and compassion for the poor, the outcast, and the vulnerable.

The young man is not able to leave his wealth and give it to the poor. The story presents two different and completely conflicting practice of religion: salvation and Jesus’ mission. If your practice is only for your own salvation, you have missed the mark entirely. Jesus empowered his disciples, later the movement which became his church, as a church that serves the poor and vulnerable.
Jesus points to an alternative path, empowered companionship in the presence of God. He teaches, “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is companionship of empowerment. Blessed are you who are hungry, you will be satisfied.” If God values the poor, what does that mean for us? What does mean to the mission of the church? Jesus’ church is defined its mission, and its mission to serve the poor, the vulnerable, the marginalized, the outcast, those who are at risk. In 1 Jn. 3:17, the author writes, “If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”

There is so much evidence from the Bible that God cares for the poor. Leonardo Boff, who writes about the preferential option for the poor, says “the church of the poor, for the poor, with the poor.” This mission is the primary purpose of the church. It is what Jesus understood as the companionship of empowerment that we identify with the poor and those at most risk. It is the place, where we find God amidst human suffering.

I read a wonderful article by Albert Nolan, a South African priest and theologian. He wrote a wonderful book, Jesus before Christianity. I did a book study years ago on his book at this church. He affirms that there are four stages of a Christian spirituality in serving the poor.

1) There is the stage of compassion. Think of the last homeless person you experienced and felt their suffering. Compassion is the starting point when we personally identify with the suffering of the poor and want to alleviate that suffering. That compassion grows as we are exposed to the poor and their living conditions. When I was a Jesuit seminarian, I was sent to work in the inner city of Bridgeport, CT, and later to India where I witnessed such poverty in India unimaginable to a sheltered middle class youth from a small town. Nothing can replace immediate and personal contact with the poor: the conditions, the dirt, smells, the desperation in people’s eyes, the malnutrition of adults and children, the resulting illnesses. Compassion grows, and we learn a little more why Jesus instructed his disciples: “Be compassionate as your Abba God is.” Our compassion leads to action. Jesus realized that the poor make the real presence of God and Christ. Service to the poor is service to Christ.

2) The second stage begins while we may serve the poor. We start with questions. “Why are they poor? What structures and conditions in our society lead to poverty? Is there anything we can do?” Poverty is structurally caused by corporations and governments. It is produced by an economic system that enriches the very wealthy and impoverishes many. An example: large US corporations bought farm lands in Mexico dirt cheap. It displaced the farmers who no longer had any means to support their families. Many traveled across the border to find means to support their families. This is one example, and there are many more. The Bible consistently narrates how God is angry at oppression of the poor, the plight of widows and orphans, and those socially at risk. What would Jesus say and do about these structures that diminish the lives of people? The biggest banker in Jesus’ time was the Temple in Jerusalem. He called the Temple institution a “den of thieves” and acted up, throwing down the money tables, releasing the animals, and stopping the sacrifice of animals and work in the Temple. Jesus was executed for this ACT UP demonstration. We may find ourselves angry like Jesus at the causes of structural poverty in our society.

3) The third stage, Nolan, says come eventually when we discover that we cannot save the poor and the homeless. We come to grips with the humility of our service to the poor. Albert Nolan writes, “When one is dedicated to the service of the poor it is even more difficult to accept that it is not they who need me but I who need them. They can and will save themselves with or without me, but I cannot be liberated without them.” We may save our souls when we realize how much we need the poor to remind of us our mission. Salvation will be attained, but it is secondary to the mission of care and love.

The poor generally have little chance of changing their condition without others. But they also know what to do, and this may surprise and deflate any notion that we are here to rescue the poor. What we learn that Jesus’ authentic church stands at the side of the poor, to assist the poor in envisioning escape from poverty and empowering them to do so. We are called to be at the side of the poor. Jesus announced the reign of God as companioning with the poor, the outcast, and those without hope. Companioning is an awesome gift of extending God’s grace. We create social relationships to help growth. He adds at this stage we discover,

God wants to use the poor, in Christ, to save all of us from the madness of a world in which so many people starve in the midst of unimaginable wealth. This discovery can become an experience of God present and acting in the struggles of the poor. Thus we not only see the face of the suffering Christ in the sufferings of the poor but also hear the voice of God and see the hands of God and his power in the political struggles of the poor.

4) The fourth stage comes from our disillusionment. There is a tendency to romanticize the poor. The poor are afflicted with many of the same issues and faults as we have. The poor are not saints; they are people suffering from at least the burdens of poverty, illness or mental illness. Nolan writes, “As Christians we will experience this solidarity with one another as solidarity in Christ, solidarity with the cause of the poor. It is precisely by recognizing the cause of the poor as God’s cause that we can come through the crisis of disillusionment and disappointment with particular poor people.”

What these four stages of Christian spirituality in serving the poor points out that we discover many things about poverty and the poor, but we also discover much about ourselves. This knowledge is good to understand in order to serve and care for the poor. We discover why Jesus uses the saying inviting us to take up our crosses because service has always its challenges, but it also has its moments of God’s grace.

Christ’s church carries on the mission of feeding the poor, assisting the homeless, clothing and caring for those in need. We remember Jesus’ words when throwing a banquet: “When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

Christ’s church does not build a wall to keep migrants and refugees out of our country. It does not demonize migrants as rapists, violent, and murderers. It does not let people drown in the moats, electrocuted by our electric fence, or drown in moats that we built between San Ysidro on the US border and Tijuana.

Christ’s church does not oppose the Affordable Care Act, with now 18 million previously uninsured Americans.

Christ’s church cares for the Earth vulnerable to predatory humans, corporations, and governments.

Christ’s church does not discriminate against God’s children. We all are siblings, children of God. Black lives matter. But we go further when we as church declares, All life matters.

Paul speaks about the sacrifice in following Christ:

…whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ, Jesus My Lord. For his sake I suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him…Phil 3:7-8