Refuge

A birthday party photo graced the screen at the front of my classroom. There crouched my middle-school-aged daughter next to two younger children, their smiling faces painted with feline fur, whiskers, and noses.

Less than a year before, these two children and their parents had left their native Venezuela and traversed thousands of arduous miles to the United States, enduring the particularly harrowing experiences of the Darien Gap between Columbia and Panama and an immigration checkpoint between Guatemala and Mexico.

Shortly after they arrived in Denver, I told my students, a team of people from my church befriended them.[1] For our part, my wife, daughters, and I accompanied them on weekly trips for groceries and bus passes, after which they always invited us into their apartment for conversation and delicious Venezuelan food. And, since I am fluent in Spanish, I also helped during their government-mandated check-in and translated the birth certificates and story of persecution that they would need to be considered for asylum and granted refugee status.[2]

Although students in my Spanish classes were younger and their language skills were less developed than mine, I wanted them to know that they too could be people of blessing. I frequently tell them that learning a second language can be a means of God’s provision to them and to others. In this case, they could experience the purpose that comes with using their language and other gifts—in the words of our course syllabus—“to bring the love of God to a hurting world. This can take many forms, including sharing the gospel, participating in service opportunities, working for racial reconciliation, and advocating on behalf of those who are oppressed and have no voice.”

So, for a week, we said a simple prayer each day, asking God to have mercy on “los refugiados (refugees).” We also watched part of a video about refugees and read a local newspaper article contextualizing the experience of my Venezuelan friends.

Over the last year or two, Denver and many other U.S. cities have seen an influx of immigrants fleeing poverty and political persecution in Venezuela. In fact, during this last month the largest number of migrants in more than two decades attempted to cross the southern border of the United States. In Denver, a recent count found approximately two thousand people living in temporary shelters—as well as a growing number staying in tents outside of the shelters, many of whom expressed fear of the coming Colorado winter. 

On this very week, our elementary school was holding a coat drive for refugees, led by a parent of one of my current students.[3] After I asked if we could join them, he sent me some promotional signs, which I placed in my classroom window. I also placed a large plastic tub along the wall to collect coats (and added an expression of gratitude for “los abrigos” [coats] to our daily prayer). With our smaller number of coats added to the larger one of the elementary students, our school ended up contributing over 200 coats for refugees in our city!

Furthermore, on the last day of the week, my classes got out our colored pencils and made cards to accompany the coats to their recipients. One set we designed in Spanish, with the phrases “Bienvenido (Welcome),” “Que Dios le bendiga (May God Bless You),” and “Feliz Navidad (Merry Christmas).” Since not all refugees in Denver speak Spanish, we also created a set with the word “Welcome” in English, Spanish, and the languages of violence-torn countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, and Somalia.

Immigration has always been a complex issue, as nations around the world attempt to balance border security, labor demands, and humanitarian needs—and in an American election season, political tensions are heightened. I knew that some people might take issue with what I was doing, but my concern was lessened by the fact that 1) my Venezuelan friends had entered the United States legally, 2) many Americans view Venezuela’s government as oppressive, 3) those fleeing persecution generally elicit broader sympathy than those who are fleeing poverty alone, and 4) our elementary school had already begun spearheading the initiative.

Discerning how to act faithfully amidst cultural complexity can be difficult, but in this case I felt led to address this with my students. Over the previous week, I had been listening to the Christmas story from the book of Matthew. While most of our Christmas readings (and all of our Christmas pageants) end on the happy note of the arrival of the Magi, the next part of the story is horrific:

“When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. (Matt. 2:13-15a)

Hearing this passage brought to mind the words of Bible scholar Danny Carroll, who long ago pointed out to me the stark reality: For a time, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were refugees.[4]

When we look at Scripture, we see that God specifically calls the people of Israel to care for those philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff calls “the quartet of the vulnerable”—namely, “the widow, the orphan, the resident alien, and the impoverished.”[5] When Christ came to live among us, he knew that his life would not be easy—and that hardship would began in his earliest years. During the season of Christmas and beyond, may we welcome Him—and experience the joy of relationship with the One who invites and welcomes us into life. Emmanuel.

Footnotes:

[1]The team consisted of four families, along with the founders of Synergy Village, which provided low-rent housing, and the organization Colorado Hosting Asylum Network, which covered the cost of rent and groceries for our friends’ first months in Denver. We came alongside the family after they had been assisted during their very earliest days by the members of Mountain View Friends Meeting.

[2] Technically, my friends are still asylum seekers, but will be classified as refugees if their case for asylum is approved.

[3] This parent was employed by the organization Lutheran Family Services.

[4] Dr. Carroll is Professor of Biblical Studies and Pedagogy at Wheaton College. Although I first heard him include this during a presentation on Scripture and immigration given at Front Range Christian School, this content was echoed recently during a talk presented for the Gospel Initiative at Denver Seminary. Moreover, while some people may not see the Holy Family as refugees because they didn’t cross international borders—but rather moved from one part of the Roman Empire to another—at the very least they were “internally displaced persons” who were fleeing physical threat from the political powers of their own region and seeking refuge in another very different and distant place. In this sense, they were “refugees,” regardless of the equivalencies (or lack thereof) between the political configurations of the ancient world and those of our modern era of nation-states.

[5] Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice: Rights and Wrongs (Princeton University Press, 2010), 76.