200 Welcoming the Stranger: Jesus and the Marginalized

Jesus was an immigrant. Have you ever thought about that? 

Shortly after His birth, an angel warned His father, Joseph that Herod was seeking to kill the infant Jesus and that they should flee to Egypt. 

So, in literally a life-and-death situation, Joseph quickly packed up his wife and young child and left his homeland for a place he’d never been before.  

He doesn’t know anyone there. He doesn’t have a job. He doesn’t know the language. But Joseph has no choice. He has to take care of his family. And love will take all sorts of risks when that’s at stake.

So it was that Jesus spent the early years of His life Jesus as an exile, a refugee, a stranger in a foreign land.  

You have to wonder if Jesus had a special identification with the words from the Mosaic Law that say that God “loves the foreigners” and that His people should “love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.” (Deut. 10:18-19)

In the highly prejudiced, racially divided land in which He lived, how did Jesus relate to the marginalized? And what can we learn from His example?

In the middle of Palestine lay the region of Samaria. Back then Samaritans were a racially mixed group that had come into being during the time of Israel’s captivity. Crudely speaking, Samaritans were seen as “half-breeds,” and as such they were considered aliens and strangers in the land. To the “pure-blooded” Jews, these “border crossers” simply didn’t belong.

As often takes place when a group is marginalized, the Samaritans turned inward and stuck together. Over time they developed their own expression of the Jewish religion. Thus, they were seen as not only racially impure but religiously impure. As a result, they were despised social outcasts and to be avoided at all costs.  

That’s why the story in John 4 is so astounding. Jesus not only goes to Samaria, He encounters a woman there. And not just any woman. She was an outcast even among her own people. 

Ponder that for a moment.  Jesus was willing to challenge social norms and to be seen as being “soft on sin” in order to treat this woman with dignity and meet her deepest needs.  Why?  Because He recognized that she was a person made in the image of God and thus had great value. 

And because He did, a magnificent kingdom harvest was reaped as her friends and neighbors heard the Good News and believed.

Jesus models for us a new and different way of looking at and relating to persons who are outside the circle of cultural acceptability…and that includes immigrants. 

There are Christians at our borders, brothers and sisters in Christ, who not unlike Joseph and Mary, have had to leave their homeland because of life and death issues.

Their lives are in jeopardy either due to direct persecution or indirect starvation. And the question we must ask ourselves is, “What should be our attitude toward these fellow members of God’s family?”

There are also potential Christians at our borders. Men, women, and children who are loved by God but have yet to embrace or even hear of the hope that can be found in Jesus. 

We often speak about how we need to take the Good News of Christ to the world.  Well, guess what?  The world is coming to us and is not merely open but hungry for the gospel. 

Friends, is Jesus your merely Savior… or is He your Lord? And as your Lord, are you modeling your response to the marginalized after His?

 

Text: Matt. 2:1-21; John 4:1-35

Originally recorded on November 10, 2013, at Fellowship Missionary Church, Fort Wayne, IN

 

Learn more about a biblical response to the immigration debate. Read:

 
 
 
Dave DeSelmMicah 6:8, immigration, refugees, love your neighbor, John 4, Matthew 2