Pastor’s Corner for the Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B, by Fr. Russell Pollitt SJ
Whose side are you on?
From the beginning of time, human beings have sought to blame others. Think of how Adam blames Eve or Sarah blamed Abraham when her servant Hagar became pregnant. In the New Testament, we see how the paralysed man blames the people around him for not helping him in John’s Gospel.
Today, we, like those who have gone before us, blame refugees and immigrants. Across the world, we demonise them; we see them as a nuisance, a pain, invaders and a threat and label them as criminals. Most refugees and migrants are good people, often fleeing the most horrendous conditions.
On the other hand, states have limited resources, and often, because of corruption, those resources don’t even reach the people of that state. Politicians seem to strategically design things (to their own advantage) by not looking after their own people. They then blame the foreigner.
Fr Ronald Rolheiser OMI suggests that we examine this question biblically. He says that there are a number of “biblical non-negotiable principles at play. He writes:
First, God made the world for everybody. We are stewards of a property not our own. We don’t own anything, God does, and God made the world for everybody. That’s a principle we too easily ignore when we speak of barring others from entering “our” country. We happen to be stewards here, in a country that belongs to the whole world.
Second, the Bible everywhere, in both testaments of scripture, is clear (and strong) in challenging us to welcome the stranger and the immigrant. This is everywhere present in the Jewish scriptures and is a strong motif at the very heart of Jesus’ message. Indeed, Jesus begins his ministry by telling us that he has come to bring good news to the poor. Hence, any teaching, preaching, pastoral practice, political policy, or action that is not good news for the poor is not the gospel of Jesus Christ, whatever its political or ecclesial expediency…. Hence, any decisions we make vis-à-vis refugees and immigrants should not be antithetical to the fact that the Gospels are about bringing good news to the poor.
Moreover, Jesus makes this even clearer when he identifies the poor with his own person (Whatsoever you do to the least of my people, you do to me) and tells us that at the end of the day we will be judged by how we treat the immigrants and refugees… There are few texts in scripture as raw and challenging as this one (Matthew 25, 35-40)
Finally, we also find this challenge in scripture: God challenges us to welcome foreigners (immigrants) and share our love, food, and clothing with them because we ourselves were once immigrants (Deuteronomy 10, 18-19).
What realistically do we (and many countries around the world) do with the millions and millions of men, women, and children arriving at our border? How do we honor the fact that the land we live in belongs to everyone? How do we honor that fact that, as Christians, we have to think first about the poor? How will we face Jesus in judgment when he asks us why we didn’t welcome him when he was in the guise of a refugee?
Fr. Rolheiser concludes: We should never be confused about which side Jesus and the Bible are on.
This is food for thought… Whose side are you on?
Fr. Russell Pollitt SJ