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Refugees

I have read and heard a couple of commentaries last week suggesting where Jesus would be and who he would be with this week. There is no arguing the point: at his birth Jesus was homeless. Within weeks his was a refugee family as they escaped Herod’s death sentence by fleeing into Egypt.

Don’t believe this newspaper. Read it in the Bible.

Jesus was born into a poor refugee family. Given his ministry, it seems a straight connection to expect anyone who worships him will open their hearts, homes and pocketbooks – their hard-earned tax dollars – to succor the poor, the homeless and the refugee. It is not for nothing that the comic Lenny Bruce suggested that any minister with more than one suit was a hypocrite.

I keep expecting our most vocal leaders of religious movements to put their money where they say their faith is. If assisting immigrants is not at the top of their ministerial commitments, I wonder how much they understand Christianity, that’s all. The scriptures portrayal of Jesus is very straightforward. Why are some ministers so confused?

Blessings are hard for me to understand. There is not a thing I need. Why am I so blessed? Why do I struggle so with gratitude?

In Cincinnati, I worked to develop an urban farm program for poor people to grow vegetables and sell them to earn income. I worked for Findlay Market, a smaller version of Pike Place Market. Findlay Market is 20 blocks from the Ohio River, the heart of downtown, in what used to be called the ghetto.

Cincinnati is also in the South, almost. When I asked African Americans I worked with how they were, they would often respond “Oh, I am blessed,” Now, Artia sometimes did not have bus fare to get to her garden plot and when she came, she might be three hours late, having dealt with family or personal struggles. Yet there were times I knew she was more grounded and centered than I was. Where does that personal faith come from? What a powerful God she believes in.

It is not any person’s God that I doubt. Peoples failure to act as the book they worship tells them is curious to me. How can I believe what they tell me when they ignore the scriptures, the teachings of the God they praise?

That people with almost no resources and greater struggles have a larger God and a more complex faith than the well-to-do is a mystery to me, one that I ponder throughout the year.