A few months ago, I spent a couple of days in El Paso along the US border with Mexico. At the time, thousands of immigrants were fleeing to the US from their homes in Central America. While there, I met a young Honduran mother of three named Beatrice.
She said that in her pueblo, the day after the teachers at the local school had received their annual bonuses, a sign appeared on the front door of the school telling them to hand over those bonuses to the local gang. The sign said that each day they refused, one child from that school would be abducted and killed. The next day, a child was missing, and the next day another, and the next day another. Finally, after eight straight days of children being abducted and killed, Beatrice packed up her three kids and, under cover of darkness, headed north to the US, hoping to find safety.
Beatrice is not alone. In this parish, we have met Ricardo and Amelie and Nicole, an immigrant family who fled violence in Guatemala seeking refuge in this country. Millions of others have made the same choice, taken the same risks of becoming immigrants, gathering their children and fleeing for safety, traveling in darkness, not always knowing where they were going and what they would find along the way.
And this immigrant journey is a central theme in the story of Jesus who has no place to lay his head, who faces rejection in his own land and from his own people, who dies as an outcast outside the city walls.
In today’s gospel from Matthew this immigrant journey is writ especially large.
King Herod is threatened by the birth of Jesus, who is called King of the Jews, and in the hope of catching and killing him, he seeks to kill all the male children under the age of two.
In the midst of this slaughter, a tip-off from an angel sends Joseph packing up his family hoping to find safety in Africa, in Egypt.
Down through the centuries, millions of refugees have found strength from this story, because it has reminded them that in their often perilous journeys, they are not alone, that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph have gone before them precisely as immigrants.
What is true of Jesus is true for us, his followers. If we follow Jesus, then we, too, will know the lot of immigrants--perhaps not literally as the Honduran woman I mentioned, or as Ricardo and his family, or, for that matter, as our parents and grandparents who migrated to this country--if not literally, then figuratively, perhaps even spiritually.
This is our lot as followers of Jesus. We are immigrants who are called away from the ordinary and proper, the familiar and the comfortable places, to a new land that God wants to show us.
“Leave your father and mother.” “Let the dead bury the dead.” “Keep your hand on the plow and do not look back.” “Sell what you own, give the money to the poor and come follow me.” The gospels are relentless, calling us to move from where it is comfortable, from where we want to stay, from where we feel at home.
This uprooting can sometimes involve a risky in-between time, when we’re like a trapeze artist in mid-air who has let go of one rope, but has not yet caught hold of the next one. A time of both great excitement and great vulnerability, of grieving for what we’ve left behind, and anticipating what has not yet clearly emerged.
I suspect that in various ways, each of us has already known the lot of an immigrant, whether literally or figuratively. Sometimes we made the choice consciously and deliberately. Other times, we didn’t have to seek it out; it arrived at our doorstep:
- The job that once seemed so promising began to unravel, and you had to move on
- The relationship that suddenly ended
- A transition into another phase of your life, perhaps from school into the workforce, or from the workforce into retirement.
- Or the moment you knew you had to take that next step out of the closet, or the first step toward sobriety
Whether the migration is something we have consciously chosen or not, it always involves a displacement. This can involve moments of grief and confusion and risk. This is the immigrant journey we as followers of Jesus are called to embrace.
What can happen in our work lives and relationships can also happen in our lives of faith. Our old images and understandings of God can suddenly no longer work, and we go through an in-between time of exploration, of being an immigrant waiting for God to reveal new images, new understandings of who God is. This can be a time of confusion and anxiety when we’re not sure where God is or if we even have any faith at all. Or perhaps we find that our old spiritual practices, the old prayers and rituals and symbols that once structured and gave meaning to our lives, no longer comfort and enliven us, and we must seek ways to make them come alive again, seek new ways of connecting our hearts to God and to others.
Why is it so important to embrace this immigrant journey? Because when we embrace this journey, we cast off the illusion of “having it all together” and we remember the vulnerability we share with our fellow human beings of every race and gender and language. We remember our complete reliance on God, and discover each other as members of the same human family with whom we can share our joys and sorrows.
These are the days of Christmas when we remember the mystery of the incarnation, of God becoming human and vulnerable like us. When St. Paul speaks of this great mystery of the incarnation, it’s as though he is describing Jesus as the immigrant par excellence. “His state was divine,” Paul writes, “yet he did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and became as we are…”
Perhaps no one has undertaken a more radical migration. In the incarnation, God did not remain in the place that was proper and familiar to him, but left it behind and moved to the condition of a struggling and vulnerable human being.
God left behind his heavenly place and took a humble place among us mortal men and women, so that nothing human would be alien to him and he could experience fully the nobility and the joy, the brokenness and the tears of our human condition.
This is what we remember in today’s gospel story in this season of Christmas, that in Jesus we find the immigrant in whom God’s compassion becomes flesh. And this is what we ourselves are called to in today’s gospel story, to become, each in our own way, immigrants like Jesus, as vulnerable and compassionate as he is.
I have some questions for you, and perhaps we can take a few quiet moments to reflect on these:
In what ways, in your own life story, have you already been an immigrant, either literally or figuratively?
- How did you experience the vulnerability that goes with being an immigrant? What did it feel like to be vulnerable in that way? How did that experience make you more compassionate?
- In this new year, how might you be called to leave behind the familiar and comfortable and begin the risky journey to a new and unknown land?
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