Welcoming the Lost
1st Sunday of Advent
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Luke 21
At my last congregation I had been at the church a few months when a member came up to me and said, "I have fourteen family members from Sierra Leone who are coming soon. I need help finding a place for them to stay."
I didn't know what to do, so I took the request to the Mission Committee.
"Oh good," the chair said. "We've been praying for a project."
"Be careful what you pray for!" I said. "You have a project now."
We floundered a bit and then hooked up with the Minnesota Council of Churches Refugee Services Program. They were like angels for us. They told us what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and why.
Six months later we had raised money, rented enough apartment space, filled the homes with furniture, clothing, food, and toiletries I vividly remember a line of little cups and toothbrushes sitting on the bathroom counter, waiting.
A few weeks after the family arrived the Confirmation Class had an event for them, and each family member received a gift. Emmanuel, who was fourteen, received a watch. He was ecstatic. "Why are you so excited about this watch," I asked him.
"Because now I know I will be on time for the bus to go to school."
"You are that excited to go to school?"
"I haven't been to school in two years," he said. "I couldn't go to school in the bush, or in the refugee camps."
I asked the matron of the family once if she missed Africa. "Here I don't hear gunshots," she said. "Here my children are safe."
Being a refugee seems such a foreign experience to us.
It is the experience awaiting the people of both our texts today, the dire, dour texts: Jeremiah’s people were about to be captured and carried off to Babylon. In Luke the Diaspora was just starting as Rome destroyed Jerusalem and Israel. The words seem so violent to us, but I think they sounded different to these people.
We hear stories of refugees today, but still from so far away – people coming from Sierra Leone, Darfur, the Lost Boys of Sudan, the Iraq people flooding into other countries.
But tonight we are showing a movie (Chronicles of Narnia) of English children in WW II, refugees of war sent to the country without their parents so they might be safe.
And, frankly, I don’t think my ancestors came to the US because they were on a luxury tour and decided to stay. They came because they were hungry, they were looking for a safe place to raise their children.
The life of a refugee is not so far back in our memory, really.
And sometimes, just sometimes, we feel like refugees in the midst of our settled lives. We might not feel safe in our homes, or we might not feel we belong. We might feel lost in the middle of people we have always known. There are homeless people in town who have lived here all their lives who had some bad luck or made a series of mistakes and now they are refugees among us. Or we might look at how fast the world is changing and feel like refugees right in our hometown, adrift and without anywhere safe to be.
Jesus came to us as a refugee as well. He was born in a strange town without a home. He traveled as a child to a foreign country as his parents sought safety. He lived as a man with “no place to put his head.”
But Jesus came reminding us that God makes a home with us. Jesus was called Emmanuel, the same name as the boy with the watch, God with us. Homeless or not, Jesus comes to make home with us, to remind us that God is our home, to show us how to be home for one another.
Annie Dillard quoted Meister Eckhart once: "God is at home; we are in the far country. "To welcome the refugee is a little like welcoming the lost part of ourselves, the lost part that is searching for God, for the holy among us, for the One who makes home with us.
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Luke 21
At my last congregation I had been at the church a few months when a member came up to me and said, "I have fourteen family members from Sierra Leone who are coming soon. I need help finding a place for them to stay."
I didn't know what to do, so I took the request to the Mission Committee.
"Oh good," the chair said. "We've been praying for a project."
"Be careful what you pray for!" I said. "You have a project now."
We floundered a bit and then hooked up with the Minnesota Council of Churches Refugee Services Program. They were like angels for us. They told us what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and why.
Six months later we had raised money, rented enough apartment space, filled the homes with furniture, clothing, food, and toiletries I vividly remember a line of little cups and toothbrushes sitting on the bathroom counter, waiting.
A few weeks after the family arrived the Confirmation Class had an event for them, and each family member received a gift. Emmanuel, who was fourteen, received a watch. He was ecstatic. "Why are you so excited about this watch," I asked him.
"Because now I know I will be on time for the bus to go to school."
"You are that excited to go to school?"
"I haven't been to school in two years," he said. "I couldn't go to school in the bush, or in the refugee camps."
I asked the matron of the family once if she missed Africa. "Here I don't hear gunshots," she said. "Here my children are safe."
Being a refugee seems such a foreign experience to us.
It is the experience awaiting the people of both our texts today, the dire, dour texts: Jeremiah’s people were about to be captured and carried off to Babylon. In Luke the Diaspora was just starting as Rome destroyed Jerusalem and Israel. The words seem so violent to us, but I think they sounded different to these people.
We hear stories of refugees today, but still from so far away – people coming from Sierra Leone, Darfur, the Lost Boys of Sudan, the Iraq people flooding into other countries.
But tonight we are showing a movie (Chronicles of Narnia) of English children in WW II, refugees of war sent to the country without their parents so they might be safe.
And, frankly, I don’t think my ancestors came to the US because they were on a luxury tour and decided to stay. They came because they were hungry, they were looking for a safe place to raise their children.
The life of a refugee is not so far back in our memory, really.
And sometimes, just sometimes, we feel like refugees in the midst of our settled lives. We might not feel safe in our homes, or we might not feel we belong. We might feel lost in the middle of people we have always known. There are homeless people in town who have lived here all their lives who had some bad luck or made a series of mistakes and now they are refugees among us. Or we might look at how fast the world is changing and feel like refugees right in our hometown, adrift and without anywhere safe to be.
Jesus came to us as a refugee as well. He was born in a strange town without a home. He traveled as a child to a foreign country as his parents sought safety. He lived as a man with “no place to put his head.”
But Jesus came reminding us that God makes a home with us. Jesus was called Emmanuel, the same name as the boy with the watch, God with us. Homeless or not, Jesus comes to make home with us, to remind us that God is our home, to show us how to be home for one another.
Annie Dillard quoted Meister Eckhart once: "God is at home; we are in the far country. "To welcome the refugee is a little like welcoming the lost part of ourselves, the lost part that is searching for God, for the holy among us, for the One who makes home with us.
posted by Michelle at 10:38 AM
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